#FeartheBeard

Hello children/hijitos

Howz things. I'm super duper on this awesome April Monday :) we've been having some great weather as of recently. Makes for some nice short sleeve contacting! Before I get too far into the week I gotta give a huge congrats to Ellie Faye for making sophomore class officer!! Couldn't be more proud and I'm happy you followed in my footsteps 👣 the legacy continues :) I've said this before and I'll say it again... I'm a prideful and proud  older brother cuz I got the 2 best sisters ever. Anyways....

So I owe an explanation on Julie and her family. They are the cool Colombians we have been working with lately. Entonces, Julie drops a bomb on us last Friday night and said that she was moving to Australia to study English and she was gonna be there for 9 months. Literally both of our hearts shattered. Then we got thinking and decided to invite her to be baptized before she left. We wouldn't normally do that but she was very prepared and we were super hyped that this might actually happen! So we talked to her about it and she was totally down for it and then she got a second opinion from someone (I won't name names) and got super hesitant. It was a real bummer. She is so prepared and loves the church and members and knows that this is what she wants for her family. Long story short, we met with her like 4 times this week but she is leaving this wednesday to Australia so we wouldn't have enough time to do the baptism. Good news is that she is gonna find the church over there and keep taking the lessons and we will continue to teach her family here :) it was a super tough situation and we knew we were rushing it, but we wouldn't have done it with anyone else other than Julie. Oh well. I know it's in the Lord's hands :) 

We are also teaching a few other peeps... our guy named Cesar is doing good. He's had a rough life but he is loving everything that we share with him. Hopefully we get him baptized soon as he is completely willing to do it! We are teaching another lady from Haiti named Maile Ruth who works a ton but is ready to be baptized as soon as she can change her work schedule :) and last but not least, this girl named Brandie from Washington! Yep, she's American and super awesome! She's studying here and we contacted her super late one night right before we went home and we have met up with her a couple of times and she has a lot of good questions about the Book of Mormon and stuff. She's got Mormon friends back at home! So things are definitely rolling here and I'm liking it. 

Other than that... not too much else to report on! We went to Gijón this week for a giant combined district meeting and the Bittons were there from Coruña doing piso inspections so they bought us all lunch! They are the best :) it was so good to see them again. We also found out this morning that today is some lame holiday only in León so everything is closed. That makes for a super tranquilo p day :) I love you all, thanks for being good kids, and good with kids! Go south!

Con amor,

Elder smith