Pics from this week

Day of the Nations celebration

The trash can was already completely full of beer bottles so they
just started a stack to the side... this is right outside our piso
haha

American Boys at the American stand in the nations party..
we made brownies :)

Día de las naciones fiesta :)

Elder Jones took a picture of me studying this week then turned it
into a masterpiece on his tablet haha!

work work work work work

Hola tíos:)

I hope everyone had a wonderful week! Ours wasn't too bad :) our
Wednesday temple trips always throw off my weekly writing schedule but
that's okay because I still have some quality stuff to report on
today! So stay tuned and keep reading for more infooooooooooo :))

So our new #1 investigator is definitely Nancy from Venezuela. She's
been to church the last 3 weeks in a row and absolutely loves it
there. I lost track of her yesterday after Gospel Principles class and
went to look for her and she was already in relief society, sitting
down, chatting with the other ladies and ready for class to start.
Haha I was like "we'll see you after in the hallway nancy!" And she
was like "ok I'll just be talking with my friends!" Hahaha it was the
most awesome thing of all time! Then we got talking about baptism and
she said she wants to start 2017 off with a bang and get baptized in
like January. We told her that she was already very prepared and she
realized that I'll probably be gone and so decided to rethink it! But
she has already picked out what member she wants to baptize her and
everything! Whether I'm here or not, she'll definitely be getting
baptized which makes me super happy 🙃

We visited our family from Honduras this week and they haven't been
coming to church very much so we prepared a lesson for them on the
sacrament. We intended to be up front with them and get our point
across. When it came time to testify, I couldn't remember anything we
had said and the only thing I felt for them was pure love. I started
telling them about the blessings we receive when we obey God's
commandments and the spirit was so strong! Testifying of God's love
for them and for all his children brought tears to all of our eyes
haha and I was so happy. We committed them to sacrament meeting next
week and I'm really excited to see them all there! They've only come
once in all my time here in B3 so the goal is to get them coming
consistently before I leave :) I seriously love them so much though.
It's insane!

Other than that, not too much happened. It was a short week since I
wrote last Wednesday. I don't know if I talked about our Muslim
investigator David yet, but he's from Mali and he came to church for
the first time yesterday and loved it! I don't know how well he
understands the doctrine or Spanish for that matter, but the spirit
worked with him so he had a good time :) he called me this morning to
tell me he's already planning on next week and he wants to meet up
again to learn more! I'm loving it out here and time is getting faster
and faster. The weeks are starting to blur together but it's all good.
I love it :)

Have a great week and Halloween and keep being the awesome,
extraordinary, fantastic people that I know and love :) talk to you
all in a week!!

Con Amor,
Elder Smith

Pics from this week

These shirts that one of our investigators gave to us that
support his new book that he just wrote! 

Just 2 Bountiful boys roaming Spain :) 

Templeeeeee

With kids and stuff

Zone Conference 

Shoving

Hello familia :) 

Well we went to the temple this morning which was a wonderful experience as usual :) I don't have much time today but there were a few cool points to the long work week so here they are!!

• So Dionisio passed his baptismal interview but we decided to put his baptism off so he can come to church a few more times before he gets baptized. He understands pretty much everything really well but he doesn't quite get how important it is to come every Sunday. So he will be baptized soon, we just gotta get him to come a few more times and then we will be golden! :) 

• We got permission to teach our friend Erik this week and he keeps telling us how he wants to be baptized! He's that 10 year old kid who has a bunch of friends in the church so he's basically just waiting to be finished teaching. He's super excited and so are we!

• Nancy, our other investigator from Venezuela came to church again and has a baptismal date for the 5th of November! Little by little with her, she lives with her daughter and has some problems but really likes to listen to our messages. She's a really sweet lady and gets along so well with all the members here! 

• We picked up a new guy this week too named Mike S. who is from New Zealand! He speaks English but his parents are Spanish. He really wants to be a comedian in the United States so he always practices his material on us hahaha. It's so funny. We taught him the restoration a few days ago and he was so intrigued the whole time! We have another lesson set up with him tomorrow :)

As you all can see, things are going good! It wasn't too weird or strange of a week, but just a normal hard working one :) we had interviews with president which went great, we are preparing a dance for the Nations party we will have as a ward on Saturday (as Americans, we decided to do the napoleon dynamite dance haha), and we had a dope zone conference about reaching every part of our area! It was a good week. I feel like this summary was a little crappy but hopefully it works :) 

Well I love you all, I love the church, I love the Book of Mormon, I love Spain, and I love my Heavenly Father :) TALK TO Y'ALL ON MONDAY CHAVALES :) oh and I have the best mother in the whole world because she sent me HOMEMADE CARAMEL CORN THIS WEEK 😍❤️

Con Amor,

Elder Smith 

Pics from this week

Beautiful Sol

     Me and elder Jensen :)

TGI Fridays and sportssss yessss :) 

    With the niño in the heart of Madrid :)

Sol ☀️

Super Tasty Baby

Hello Hello all my loved ones :)

Well we managed to stay out of the hospital this week so that's a plus! Haha but really this week was a good one. I'm so happy where I'm at and wouldn't change it for anything in the world! I do have to admit though... missing the World Series kinda stinks :/ but the work moves forward! I don't have a whole ton of time but here's a little bit of what went on this week! 

Our Chinese investigator Dionisio is officially ready for baptism! We have reviewed the baptismal interview questions with him and he's golden. I'm so happy to see how far he has come! Never in a million years did I think we would baptize a Chinese person in Spain but hey, weirder things have happened! I'm just grateful that we have been able to help him this far and we will get him baptized here quick.

We found a new guy this week from the Congo named Darly. I contacted him like 2 weeks ago and when I talked to him, he was wearing head phones and normally I don't like to interrupt people doing their own thing but I felt something pushing me to talk to him. So we had a nice conversation in the street and he has actually been to the wards by the temple before with the missionaries! We met with him this week and my goodness, it's amazing to see how the Lord prepares his people. Darly said that if after reading the Book of Mormon and coming to know that it was true, he would drop everything and come to church and be baptized. This guy is like the same height as elder jones but like 3 times his body size. He's a rugby player and one of the most intimidating people I've ever seen but the spirit did something to him and he listened very closely to our message. We are seriously so excited to continue teaching him and see where things go! 

3 of our other investigators came to church and really enjoyed it. We have found some quality people this last transfer to teach and they are all coming along slowly but surely. We missed the sacrament portion of the meeting yesterday waiting for some investigators to meet us at a metro stop which isn't good but at least they made it and felt the spirit! But I can definitely feel a difference of when I take the sacrament and when I don't. It is a must every week, something so sacred that I love so much! Before my mission I definitely took it for granted but now I have a little bit better understanding of just how important it is. Things are awesome here, I love it so much :)

Sorry it's kinda boring today but it was a normal week :) today for p-day we went to Sol which is basically the best part of Madrid. It's so pretty and historical and I love it. It was elder jones first time too so obviously a must! We ate at TGI Fridays and watched some MLB, NFL, and NBA action!! Holy cow how I miss this time of year for sports, but being on a mission is something I'll never get again :) so I guess sports can wait. Although it was good to get caught up on a little sports, we've got a lot more work to do here in B3!! 😊🇪

I love you all, have an incredible week! Thanks for the prayers and support, i appreciate every single one I promise :) talk to you next week! 

Con Amor,

Elder Smith

Pics from this week

Conference weekend at Madrid Temple Square!

More conference weekend fun

Carabanchel Graffiti :)

The sicko of the week and his IV

Me desmayé :)

Hey Guy! (that's for GHam)

Holy schnikes it's been a crazy week. Keep reading more and you'll
find out hahaha. I think the best way to describe the events that
happened would be day by day so I'm gonna switch up the format a bit
:) here goes nothin!

Monday - It was p-day so we went to a Chinese all-you-can-eat buffet
with a couple other elders. The food was not good and super over
priced haha. (Bad decision) Later that night, we had a meeting for
trainers and trainees just to see how things were going in the first
transfer together. President and Hermana Pack were there and gave us a
lot of good ideas on how to make our studies more meaningful and
stuff. The greatest part was when president pulled elder jones and I
aside and told us how proud of us he was for all our hard work we have
been putting in. Can I just say that there is no better feeling than
your mission president saying that?! We were so pumped. So that was a
good way to end the day :)

Tuesday - We had intercambios with the Zone Leaders. I went with Elder
Gonzalez who is a 26 year old Spaniard. He's actually from my MTC
group so that was fun to chat with him. We went hard all day long,
every one of our lessons failed us except for 1 and the 1 lesson that
we did have, it was with 2 Dominicans and they ended up fighting with
each other. So it was kind of a crappy day for teaching but we did a
lot of contacting. We ate McDonald's for lunch (another bad decision)
and then started a fast with a member here in the ward so that she
could get a little extra help with some stuff that's going on in her
personal life. Overall not a bad day, but things are just getting
started.

Wednesday - Elder jones woke up and did not feel good so he slept all
morning until district meeting. We went out to eat after at Domino's
(yet another bad decision) and then we had to cancel all our lessons
for that day because my poor comp couldn't even stand up straight
without moaning. He was sore, had a gnarly stomach ache, and wanted to
sleep. So we went back to the piso and he rested while I cleaned and
did laundry and made cookies and lots of other stuff. By this point,
he was going to the bathroom so much that he had lost about 7 pounds.
He couldn't keep anything down.

Thursday - At 1:30 A.M. I woke up to what I thought was someone being
beat to death with a baseball bat but it was just elder jones puking
his guts out. And that lasted for the next 9 or so hours. So I called
the other elders and they came over to help me give him a blessing and
then we called Hermana Pack and went to the pharmacy to get him some
medicine and they both told us to take him to the hospital. He
couldn't even keep a sip of water down. So we checked him in and
waited forever until the doctor could see us. Spanish hospitals are
the worst. It was seriously so bad waiting there all day.

So finally here comes the crowning event... they start to draw his
blood and asked me to come in and translate for elder jones. At first
it didn't really bug me because I've seen blood before, but by the
time they had taken like the 4th vile, I thought he was gonna die
because they took so much of his blood! So I looked away and then felt
like I immediately needed to throw up. I told him I was gonna go to
the bathroom but then I realized I wouldn't even be able to make it
half way there before it all came out and then everything went black
and all I remember saying is "puedo sentarme?" Turns out that I
fainted!!! Hahahahaha!! When I came to my senses, I was upside down on
a hospital bed and the nurses had taken off my tie and unbuttoned my
white shirt half way. Some lady was fanning me with a paper plate and
a nurse had my legs lifted up above my head hahaha!! Elder jones was
laughing and I asked what happened and then he said he caught me and
took my backpack off before I hit the ground! It was nuts. I've never
fainted before but that was quite the experience! It was a bit scary
but now I just look back at it and laugh because I'm sure I looked
pathetic. Hahahahaha 😂 I didn't know that blood bugged me so much
until now haha.

They ended up sending us home because elder jones didn't throw up a
cup of water for at least 15 minutes. He was hooked to an IV all day
so he was getting some good liquids flowing through him. So we dropped
him off in the piso with elder liptrott (from the other companionship
who was also sick) and elder Trassierra and I went to an appointment
with a member. When we got home, elder jones hadn't even come out of
the room and he ended up sleeping like 14 hours straight.

Friday - I woke up to elder jones singing in the shower so I assumed
he was feeling better. And he was :) we had 2 eating appointments that
day and he took it easy even though he wasn't 100%. That day we had
meetings in the church building and English classes so it was a lot
more relaxed.

Then CONFERENCE 😍 my favorite talk was by President Uchtdorf right at
the beginning. The plan of salvation really does bring so much light
into our lives. For me personally, I love knowing where I came from,
what I'm doing here, and where I'm going. It really is a plan of
happiness created by a loving Heavenly Father for his children. There
were a lot of great talks and I'm so happy to sustain our prophet, his
counselors, and the quorum of the 12 apostles :) this church is the
greatest thing to ever happen in the history of all history!!

So overall it was a pretty crazy week. We taught a total of 3 lessons
hahaha!! But don't worry, we are planning on making up for it big
time. Our Chinese investigator Dionisio is getting closer and closer
to baptism! We have to finish teaching him and have his interview then
he should be ready. He prays like a machine. This dude is so awesome
haha I love him! And elder jones is feeling a lot better. In the span
of 3 days, he ended up losing about 12 pounds. Being sick is no fun
and it's not fun to be a sicko's companion either but somehow we both
survived! He saved my life and I saved his! We're a good companionship
:) transfers are today but there weren't any changes in our district
so it was pretty normal. We are anxious to get back on our feet this
week and keep spreading this wonderful gospel!

Sorry it's a long email but I hope you enjoyed a detailed report of la
semana :) don't eat in all-you-can-eat Chinese restaurants or
McDonald's and you should be alright haha :) have a great week
everyone!! Love you all!

Con Amor,
Elder Brady Smith