HAPPY SPANISH MOTHER'S DAY (yesterday)

Hello Everyone!

First off, Happy Spanish Mother's Day to all the mothers and future
mothers who are reading this :) in Spain they celebrated it yesterday
and I'm even more stoked to have a nice Skype session on Sunday with
my family! This week was interesting. Some highs and lows but that's
missionary life I guess! Here it is....

I'll just get this part out of the way at the beginning. On Tuesday
Lucy failed us which was a little unlike her, but we just planned on
heading over on Friday like normal. When we called her Friday morning
to confirm the appointment, she told us that she didn't want to
continue with the missionary lessons anymore or the church. I was
shocked and sad and angry and depressed and every other emotion
possible. What did we do wrong?! It was hard for me to not take it
personal to be completely honest. I have never prayed more for comfort
in my whole life. I know that God has his hand in every aspect of our
lives, and if Lucy didn't choose to continue with the church, then
there is a reason for that. Please continue to pray for her! Still a
bit sad about that :(

About 2 weeks ago, I read a talk by President Eyring called "Mountains
to Climb" and he starts right out by talking about President Kimball
asking God for a mountain to climb. And then President Eyring goes on
to talk about God giving him a mountain as well, so naturally I
thought, WHY NOT?! Yes, I asked God for my own mountain. Well, this
week I realized that Lucy was the mountain. Getting over her is gonna
be rough because I know how much she loves the things we teach her and
the spirit that she feels when she is with us. Things in Talavera as
far as the branch go aren't exactly perfect with the members and
stuff, so we have set a goal to fix the branch and then the Lord will
bless us with more people who want to hear the gospel. The moral of
that story is that GOD ANSWERS PRAYERS and he will give you a trial if
you ask for one. He's testing my faith and now it's time for me to
stand up to the challenge. He knocks us down only so that we will get
up and become even stronger.

The good news is that we have another investigator named Pedro with a
baptismal date for the 21st of May! He also came to church for the
first time in like 7 or 8 months last week which was awesome! He had a
dream and when Elder Johnson and Elder Bataller were on intercambios
down here, they helped him to translate it. He told them that he saw 3
paths, one led to his church, one led to our church, and the other led
to his brothers church. He saw people all dressed in white and they
were with our church headed towards something that seemed to be good!
So they asked him to prepare himself for the 21st and he accepted. The
Lord works in mysterious ways! We are also teaching his 16 year old
son, Aaron and invited him the same day to be baptized but he asked us
for a little bit more time. We are hopeful and excited for them both
and some prayers on their behalf would be nice too, if you all
wouldn't mind ;)

Guillermo is another guy we have been teaching. We found him through
English Class and he loves to talk about religion!! He came to a
meeting with us and we read the first 2 paragraphs of the Restoration
pamphlet and that took us an hour and a half!! The dude has more
questions than anyone else I have met in my whole life! He asked us
some things that even I have never wondered about in my 19 years as a
member. This is good and hopefully we can continue to meet with him
and help him know more about the church. And there's this other lady
named Nancy from Peru, she is literally golden for the church. Plus I
freaking love Peruvians more than anything, thanks to my trainer Elder
Peña :) She is super open to all that we talk about, speaks perfect
English, and wants to know more about our purpose on Earth. I'm
feeling good about the future here in Talavera!

To close, on Saturday we chatted with my buddy Arturo and my
grandmother in Talavera, Adelina. With these two, you can never go
wrong. They are some of the nicest people I have ever met in my whole
life and have strong desires to follow Jesus Christ and his teachings.
Arturo cut my hair again and Adelina bought us another coke and we
talked more gospel. She even started to sing us songs about Christ the
Redeemer and all this other stuff, it was so great! We walk through
the streets with her and she literally says hi to everybody because
she is so stinking friendly. It was a good day with some really
awesome people :) oh and we had 2 new people show up to sports that
day as well. I really like it here :)

That's all I got. Thanks for your love and support! I miss you all a
lot and your prayers helped me a lot this week. I know God lives and
loves every single one of us with a perfect love. I'm thankful for the
experiences I'm having and they will impact me for the rest of my
life! Have a wonderful week everyone and HAPPY MOTHERS DAY on Sunday
:) talk to you all soon!

Con Amor,
Elder Smith