Recognizing Blessings

March 21, 2016

Hello Everyone!
How are you?! It seems like everyone is doing good and I'm glad all the surgeries went well and everyone is healthy and okay. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO JADE AND AUSTIN this week!! 御誕生日おめでとうございます! (Happy Birthday in Japanese) I can't believe she is 1 wow.. And Austin you're getting old! Jokes. LOVE YOU BOTH, HAVE A GREAT DAY! Thanks for the emails and support you show me. Well new transfers started and it's been good, always a little hard to adjust but it's going good still. I am in Izumo still and I LOVE IT! So the Filipina mom who just got baptized, well she is doing awesome! We have been talking a lot about the temple, she wants to go so bad and is doing all she can do to prepare. It's awesome to see her grow and improve. But we also taught her daughter this week the first lesson, and it went awesome. She just has so much faith and said she wants to be baptized just like her mom. So we will keep teaching her, it's kind of hard because she isn't super good at English but we are teaching as simple as we can and hopefully her mom can help her too. So the nurse student, she is doing amazing! Just a little update, ever since she received her answer to be baptized she has just been doing AMAZING! She is almost done with the Book of Mormon and just has such a strong desire to follow Christ. Words can not describe how much I've grown to love her. She will forever be my best friend and I'm so excited to see her be baptized and change her life. So we had a bit of a trial and hard time this week. The dancer, her date was the 20th but she just got a job and hasn't been able to come to church so we moved it to the third of April but she texted us Saturday night and said sisters I won't receive baptisms my parents said I don't need too since I already did in my church. We both just were silent and heart broken. I've grown to love her so much too that words can't describe. So I'll be honest, it affected my mood on Sunday. I was pretty down, couldn't sleep that night and just wasn't sure what happened. I got a call from my zone leader that night to see how we were doing etc. and so we talked about it and he shared with me a quote from PMG now sometimes we need to take a step back and realize we need to just remind them of our desires for them is why we are here. And it made me realize, sometimes as a missionary you get caught up everything that you don't realize you need to take a step back and show them your desire for them.  I learned a lot, we will meet with her Wednesday to talk so update will come next week. Sometimes I don't like agency haha. Well we have a new investigator and she is AMAZING and SO prepared! Wow... Haha let's call her Sarah. She is 18 and from the Philippines. Her mom is a LA and we are working with trying to bring her back as well. But we the first lesson and it was SO spirit filled I can't even tell you. She told us all her beliefs and they were SO much like ours. It was amazing... The greatest part for me was when we went over the first vision, I know it's true but during that time, it just reconfirmed to me that wow, this is amazing and SO true. I'm so excited for her and she agreed to read the BOM and pray. Yay for prepared ready people. Okay so my challenge this week, two things kind of haha first I've been pondering a lot about what does magnify your calling mean? And how do we do so? I want to know what you all think. First, magnify means to make bigger, or zoom basically. As I've been studying it, one thing that stuck out to me was the single word HELP. I found that word a lot as I read things about magnify your calling and it really is helping the Lord with His work. It's that simple, we all have our own certain callings but they are not all the same. We are called to help God progress His work whether it be a a full time missionary or a good example to those around us. But I know we all have a calling and we need to strive to magnify it everyday. but I want to know more so this week please help me out. Lastly, there is a new Easter video called Hallelujah PLEASE GO WATCH IT AND SHARE IT WITH OTHERS PLEASE. Easter is an amazing time, let's never forget why we have it, because of Christ we can all be resurrected, WOW! I am so grateful for that, I've never realized how important that is for us. So please do both of those this week. Please think about the Savior and your calling I love you all and miss you like crazy! But the work is growing so much and I'm so grateful for the Lords help in that because I for sure couldn't do it alone. Keep being amazing people all of you! #RELY#MAGNIFY スミス姉妹