Sept. 29th E-mail from Matt

Hello!

Sorry the email is a day late but this is transfer week so P-day switches to Tuesday and our district meeting was on Monday. We found out last night that Elder Marini and I are both staying here in West Cleveland. No one is leaving our district except for our district leader, Elder Waterman, who has served his 2 years and is going home. Elder Carter (from the Parma area to the south of us - he is the one who acts just like Elder Chris Nestman) will be our new district leader. We should find out tomorrow who will be replacing Elder Waterman in Strongsville to be Elder Brown's companion.

Good job at the youth duck hunt everyone! It sounds like it was zounds of fun. I can't believe dad would wear a BYU shirt in public! Just kidding, I knew there was some good in him the whole time. Tell me how feeding the Sisters goes.

That's cool that Nate had his farewell. Does he do all his MTC time in Provo or is there an MTC in Argentina he will be going to for a while also? How many weeks is he going to be in the MTC?

That must be confusing keeping up with 2 different parts of the Book of Mormon's storyline at once! What part are you reading other than 1 Nephi? It is good to hear that you are still doing family scripture study (and prayer, I hope), though.

Sorry to hear about Lauren's wrist. I hope it gets better soon. Is a buckle fracture better or worse than a normal fracture? It sounds like the zoo was fun. We went to a zoo a couple weeks ago for P-day, but there wasn't anything that great there.

Too bad Delaney won't get to play in Satan's orchestra, but I guess you don't want to have too much on your plate at once and bite off more than you can chew. School is more important.

I like that quote about families - it is pretty cool. (note from Patty-the quote is "A missionary leaves his family for two years...so that the people he teaches can be with theirs for an eternity".)

Yes, please send me the coat liner pretty quick since it is beginning to get colder. I could also use a beanie or some other kind of warm hat. Did I leave any boots behind other than my hunting/hiking ones? If not I will probably have to find some. Also, please send a scarf. I am pretty sure I had one or two laying around.

Thank you for praying for me and for the temple prayer lists, I wouldn't have thought of that. If you are putting my name down that must also mean that you are going to the temple, so good job!

We didn't have much success this week overall, and Elder Marini hasn't been feeling well, but he is starting to get better. We talked to a less active member yesterday who recently moved into our ward who I think is going to start coming back to church so that brightened my day. Then we visited a media referral who had requested a free bible. It turned out to be a Baptist pastor. At first he just wanted to bible bash with us, but when he realized that we weren't going to get belligerent with him and our response to everything was just to testify of Jesus Christ, he mellowed out a little. I am glad we didn't try to bash with him, since that would drive away the Spirit, but I couldn't help looking up a bunch of scriptures that I wished I could tell him about once we got home.

Like I said, we didn't have much success this week. Our "teaching pool" consists of basically 3 investigators, but the only one we have been able to teach this week was Dorothy. We had a good lesson with her early in the week, but she wasn't there for our next appointment, and her phone has been shut off for a couple days. Tenika we have been able to contact, but she hasn't been there for the last two appointments we had set with her. She seems to really enjoy talking to us, but I think she just forgets, even when we call and remind her. Pauly we have not been able to contact all week. We talked to the man she lives with, Merle, and he is pretty nice, but he said that Pauly just has a meltdown every once in a while and disappears for a few days or weeks. I guess we will see her when she gets back. In addition to them, please pray for Elder Marini to get better.

We haven't found Mike yet, but we are still looking. Not much else to report.

I am way excited for conference. Sister Frisch (From the North Royalton area in our district) said it is like "Two days of Christmas in a row". The sessions are two hours later here because of the time difference, so we will get home late from the Priesthood session. That is weird. We will be watching conference at the church, I found out.

I love you! Thank you for your prayers!

Love, Elder Smith