Welcome to El Ferrol Spain

                  El Ferrol
Brady is headed to the northern most area of the Madrid Mission El Ferrol .  It is a beautiful city on the coast.  We are excited he will discover a different region of Spain. 

Cruise stop in El Ferrol

Santiago De Compostela

The harbor at night

Pics from this week

The Madrid family from Honduras

Christmas Eve

Classic skype family picture 

Abuelita AND family, plus Raul and Nancy 

My second family :) 

SIBLING LOVE ❤

Ward mission leader Daniel

I'm headed NORTH literally!!

ALOHA :) 

I hope everyone had the most wonderful, marvelous, and fantastic Christmas of all time! Mine was really great, I'm happy i was able to be here in B3 with such wonderful missionaries and members to help me celebrate!! Well like I said, transfers were this week and I'm headed north! Like the farthest north that our mission has! My new area is called El Ferrol and its right above A Coruña :) I'm so excited I can hardly stand it! The only thing I really wanted from transfers was to get far away from Madrid and serve on the coast. And I got both of those things, so Heavenly Father must really love me!! Also, elder Morris is serving in A Coruña so we are definitely going to be doing an intercambio and partying it up! My new companion is named Elder Simmons and he's only been out 2 transfers, so I'll be Greenie Breaking again haha :) my new district is just 2 elders and 2 Hermanas so it should be a hoot. My train leaves tomorrow morning at 9 AM and it'll be a good 7 hours to Coruña and then another hour by bus! Wish me luck and I'll send more updates next week. Now more about my last week in B3!

So on Sunday, we gave the priesthood to Carlitos, the 14 year old son of the Honduras family. THAT WAS LIKE THE COOLEST THING OF MY WHOLE MISSION! It felt like all our hard work paid off, and he is really excited to prepare and bless the sacrament for the first time next week. I'm amazed at the change I have seen in that family, I would even consider them my own! They are so awesome and I’m really gonna miss them. It's just gonna be a matter of time before the mom and youngest son get baptized then they can get ready for the temple :) it was a good way to go out with them! 

On Christmas Eve, we went out with the goal of giving Books of Mormon as gifts and for the first 15-20ish minutes or so, we got nothing but hard core rejections. So I decided to pray, ask Heavenly Father to soften the hearts of the people, and let us do our work. Literally 2 seconds after I said amen, I gave the first Book of Mormon of the day to a guy named Freddy from Bolivia and he gave me his number too! After that first initial Book of Mormon, we ended up giving out a total of 21 Books of Mormon and got 7 references!! It was a Christmas miracle! I was so happy and elder Johnson was giddy! But we were so happy that he listened to our prayers and helped us achieve our goal. 

If you know anything about my family's Christmas traditions, you know that we write "I love you because" notes every year. When I read mine this year, I just sat on the couch and cried of happiness!! I am so blessed to have the amazing family and friends that I do. So thanks mom and dad and sissys!! You guys are the BEST :) so good to see your faces on Skype :) I cherish all of our friendships and memories and I'm really excited to see you all in a few months :) but as for now, the people need me here and I need them too! I'm gonna miss B3 like crazy, more than I thought actually but I'm really excited for Ferrol. It's gonna be a good few rainy transfers :) 

Okey dokey that's all I got! The rest of the week just consisted of good byes and contacting and failed lessons. But the area will be left in good hands :) I love you all, I hope you have a great week and you'll be hearing from me soon!! HAPPY NEW YEAR :) ❤🇪🇸😊

Con amor,

Elder brady smith 

PICS FROM THIS WEEK

5 zone Christmas conference last week!!

Caroling last night :)

Merry Christmas from you neighborhood B3 Elders :)

Toledo P-Day today!!

Old Friends hehehe

"YOU'RE NOT SANTA...YOU SMELL LIKE BEEF AND CHEESE!"

Hello Friends and Family!

I hope you are all swell :) we had a nice little week here in B3!! CHRISTMAS IS IN 6 DAYS WHATTTTTTTT IM SOOOO EXCITED!!! I hope you all are too :) here's how the last few days went :)

So we have been giving it 110% in the streets this week, trying to find the people that we know the Lord has prepared for us. One night, we got home a little bit early but I had a strong feeling that we needed to go back out and find someone, even though we were tired and super not excited haha. So we left, and after talking to about 10 people, we finally came upon our new friend Marina :) she was hesitant at first but agreed to give us her number and meet another day. So this week we met up and she was so happy and wants to come on Sunday's with us!! She has a lot of time during the week and wants to meet up a couple times a week. IT WAS A MIRACLE! I was so happy! God answers prayers!!

Last night we went caroling at a residency home for old folks and it was easily the greatest thing I've ever done in my life! I led the music and at the end like all the people were crying tears of joy! Such a great experience :) after we stayed and talked to all the old people and literally every single one of them looked at me and said "MADRE MÍA QUE GUAPO ERES" hahahaha it was so great. I love old people. Singing and service go really well hand in hand and it was an experience I'm never going to forget! We are actually going back this Thursday to visit the people again for one last time before Christmas 😋🎄

Last week in our Christmas conference, president pack showed us a quote from Harold B. Lee that says "You must learn to walk to the edge of the light, and then a few steps into the darkness; then the light will appear and show the way before you." I love this and we can apply it in every aspect of our lives, especially missionary work. Once we start to feel comfortable, we need to push ourselves just a little bit more and then we will start to see miracles. We have tried hard this week to put this quote to the test and have been seeing the results big time. My testimony has been strengthened so much and I know that God has his hand in this work! I just love it out here so much!!

Well, transfers are this Saturday night which also happens to be Christmas Eve! With the amount of time that I have here in B3, there's a high chance that I will be leaving. I'm basically positive I'm leaving haha. So that should make this Christmas a crazy and unforgettable one! I love you all so much, thanks for your letters and Christmas cards, they are the best! I hope you all have a wonderful week leading up to the greatest holiday of all time and for all you missionaries and missionary families, HAPPY SKYPING :) love you all!! MERRY CHRISTmas!!! 🎄⛄❄🎁🎅🏽

Con Amor,

Elder Brady C. Smith

Pics from this week

a big hug from elder smith to all of you :)

turning on the madrid temple lights and the christmas concert!

We painted a house last week!! First time in the mission!

this guys name is smith! what a great guy!

That much closer to SKYPE :))

HELLO FAMILY :) 

Things have been good. It’s been quite a few days!! We went to the temple this morning and i love how i feel right after being there :) it’s a nice little refresher. I listened to the session in Portuguese and it was actually kinda cool how much i could understand! The first 20 minutes it was Italian and then i switched but either way it was the same spirit as always! But i am so excited for Christmas it’s not even funny. Like seriously Christmas as a missionary is really fun. It all depends on your attitude and Elder Johnson and i are determined to make this the best Christmas ever!! Here is a little summary of what has been going on recently :) 

I had a couple of intercambios this week and the first one was with my Spanish buddy Elder Trassierra. He's a mission homie and we had a good day. We mainly hit the streets with some contacting but had a few lessons with some less actives and they just needed a little bit of animo. Then a few days later i went with ELder Holt and he is from Idaho :) we literally had every single lesson fail us and on top of that, his eyes were flipping out the day before so i took one for the team and stayed inside all day sunday after church and took care of him while our companions went to all of our appointments :) it worked out well and elder holt is like one of the biggest mission homies that there is. I'm really happy with the way things are right now :) B3 is bumping hahaha. 

Yesterday we had our big Christmas Zone Conference! It was super awesome. President and Hermana Pack prepared a lot of stuff for us and most of it was about faith. Faith in Finding, Faith in Teaching, Faith in Baptizing, Faith in the Lord. They are very certain that if we increase our faith, we will see miracles. They also invited us to look over what we are doing wrong or things that we can change in our obedience and fix it to be able to see more miracles. It was an awesome conference and i felt the spirit so strongly! After, we had a wonderful cooked meal by Hermana Pack and then played White Elephant by zones :) it was a solid day. 

Elena's husband Angel came to church this last Sunday! We have an appointment set up with them tomorrow and we are going to see what he is thinking now about baptism. I hope that things go well, they told us last week that in the beginning of January they are going back to bolivia, but i wont be here. So he will probably be baptized in Bolivia, but miracles are possible and we still have a week and a half of the transfer here! Pray for their family if you wouldn't mind :) thanks guys!!!!!

Well, i love you all. Isn't Christmas time just the best?!?! I hope you are all enjoying it as much as me :) SHARE THE BUENA PALABRA and ILUMINA EL MUNDO CON LA LUZ DE CRISTO!!! I promise that if we keep strong with the light the world program, we will see miracles :) President told us yesterday that in one of the popular Spanish newspapers, it said that the LIGHT the WORLD video was very popular with the Spanish culture :) it softens hearts, invites the spirit, and makes Christmas time that much better! I will talk to you all next week, have a great one! WE CLOSE TO SKYPE TIME :))))))) 

❄️ @DiO$ chavales ⛄️

con amor,

elder smith

Pics from this week

P day fun J

Waiting for the bus yayyyyyy

My Christmas Tree from home, new haircut and ivory flower tie!

The worst email of my mission.... I'm sorry!

Howdy!

I have like no time haha i am so sorry. But to be honest, not that
much happened this week. Twas a bit slow. But I’m still happy and
things are plugging along :) here is what happened!

We are going really hard with all the new Christmas stuff. Last night
we went to a big Christmas concert at the temple and took a few less
actives and investigators with us! They really seemed to enjoy it :)
they turned all the lights on at the Madrid temple too and it was
almost as good as the Salt Lake temple! Sorry but nothing compares to
salt lake but it was pretty good i guess :) we are really hitting the
streets with the #ILUMINAelMUNDO campaign and showing lots of people
the video. It has gotten us a good amount of references so we are
excited about that!

We met up with a few people this week like Raul and Nancy, Elena,
Erik, Daniel the Dominican, the Madrid's from Honduras, and various
others. I am so happy to see the gospel changing these people’s lives.
Seriously i don’t know what i would do without it. It brings me so much
happiness and i just can’t even describe it. I am grateful for the
chance i have to be a missionary, and with it being Christmas time, it
just makes everything that much better!! Keep on doing all your acts
of service and i can promise you that you will see results!

I have no more time and can't think of anything else cool that
happened. This is definitely the most lame email of my whole mission.
I got super sick last night and only slept about a total of 2 1/2
hours haha so that wasn't fun :/ things are great, we have
intercambios this week and the temple and our Christmas party/zone
conference the next! So next Monday i won’t be emailing but it will be
Wednesday instead and i promise i will have a lot more updates for you
guys then :)

THE CHURCH IS TRUE, GOD LOVES US ALL, AND I HOPE YOU ALL HAVE A
FANTASTIC WEEK :) keep on getting into the Christmas spirit! I'll be
skyping with my family in just 20 short days WOOO HOOO :))

Con Amor,
Elder SMITH

P.s. I seriously am sorry for the short crappy email... i feel bad.
But next week's will make up for it :) so if i didn't respond to you
personally, next week i will for sure!