Great Letter! You can tell he is getting to be an "old" missionary

We had 4 big things I would like to tell you this week.

#1       Ania was baptized this last week. It was a beautiful baptism. Because she technically lives in Elder Wilsons area did the interview and she was just so prepared. It was just incredible. It was wonderful to see the change in her from that Sunday that she came to church a month ago. In the end she talked to her parents and they said, “We respect and love you Ania but we do not support you.” It was hard for her but she said that she knew this is what she had to do and this is what she would do. A great blessing!

#2       We had a stake meeting in Vitoria on Saturday so all the youth from the whole stake of North Spain came. As I was standing outside waiting for some of our members to come Jessica came. She just screams ¨Elder Smiley!!¨ It was good to talk to her for a few minutes. It was incredible to see that she was preparing for a mission. To see her excitement made me excited and reminded me of the girl in short shorts and a belly shirt smoking in a park just 1 year ago.

#3       As we went to Barcelona for our meeting and was talking to the leaders of the Islands and they told me that in the district conference Manuel received the Melchizedek priesthood. We had a great time talking about him. He is still Manuel, but just that now he has the priesthood and power of God.

#4       The last one is that I was talking to President Pace and we were talking about my new companion and just what was kind of going on. After a little he invited me in his office and pulled up the letters that all us missionaries write to him, and clicked on one from Elder Ponce. He read it out loud and it made me cry a little. He said ¨Now I understand what Elder Smiley had to do to put up with a new missionary that thinks that he knows everything, etc.¨ He went on and on complimenting me about how well I trained him. It really made me remember all the sacrifice and patience that I did and learned training him and all the miracles that came because of such. How beautiful it was.

Please just pray that we can find new investigators. We are running with few right now. Thank you!

I love and thank all of you! I hope that everyone of you can have angels to help and guide you. I thank you for your prayers in my behalf and the missionary work here in Vitoria. You are all the best and I love you!

Élder Smiley

The two Zone Leaders with their new Greenbeans

"You look good in White"

Being a tourist in Northern Spain

Great letter, and you can tell that he is becoming an "old" missionary

We had 4 big things I would like to tell you this week.

#1       Ania was baptized this last week. It was a beautiful baptism. Because she technically lives in Elder Wilson’s area I did the interview, and she was just so prepared. It was just incredible! It was wonderful to see the change in her from that Sunday that she came to church a month ago. In the end she talked to her parents and they said “We respect and love you Ania, but we do not support you.” It was hard for her but she said that she knew this is what she had to do and this is what she would do. A great blessing!

#2       We had a stake meeting in Vitoria on Saturday so all the youth from the whole stake in North Spain came. As I was standing outside waiting for some of our members to come Jessica came. She just screams ¨Elder Smiley!!¨ It was good to talk to her for a few minutes. It was incredible to see that she is preparing for a mission. To see her excitement made me excited and reminded me of the girl in short shorts and a belly shirt smoking in a park just 1 year ago.

#3       As we went to Barcelona for our meeting and was talking to the leaders of the Islands and they told me that in the district conference Manuel received the Melchizedek priesthood. We had a great time talking about him. He is still Manuel, but just that now he has the priesthood and power of God.

#4       The last one is that I was talking to President Pace and we were talking about my new companion and just what was kind of going on. After a little while he invited me in his office and pulled up the letters that all us missionaries write to him.  He clicked on one from Elder Ponce. He read it out loud and it made me cry a little. He said ¨Now I understand what Elder Smiley had to do to put up with a new missionary that thinks that he knows everything, etc.¨ He went on and on complimenting me about how well I trained him. It really made me remember all the sacrifice and patience that I did and learned training him and all the miracles that came because of it. How beautiful it was.

Please just pray that we can find new investigators. We are running with few right now. Thank you!

I love and thank all of you! I hope that everyone of you can have angels to help and guide you. I thank you for your prayers in my behalf and the missionary work here in Vitoria. You are all the best and I love you!

Élder Smiley

"You look good in White!"

The two Zone Leaders and their new Greenbeans!!!

Taking in the sights in Northern Spain

I like getting these kind of letters

(I hope all noticed that I tried to take lot´s of pictures)

It was a hard week just because I was out of town for a 2 full days. That is a shot to the numbers.

So everyone knows I will be training Elder Ganowsky. He is a gangster!!!! He is from Dixie and just a stallion. He is just so ready to baptize everyone.

Let´s talk miracles:

The first day back we just set out doing pass bys and talking with everyone.  An old Spanish lady that Elder Ganowsky contacted said she would like to listen to us. She liked what we said, then accepted the Book of Mormon. This was all taking place on a bench. As we are finishing up the lesson, an old contact of mine came and said that when we could that we should go to his piso and teach him. Almost dumbfounded I fumbled out yes. We finished the lesson with the lady and went up to the man’s piso. He loved it. He had lots of good questions and we answered them all pretty well and he liked it. We even got to visit him another time on Saturday night and he came to church after a simple invite from Elder Ganowsky and the recent convert of the Hermana´s.

After church we went to passby a couple people and we saw massive miracles! We found a family right there on the street that agreed to talk to us right then and there on a bench, such a great miracle. It is so incredible!!! Everyone is just saying yes!!! People on the street, members agreeing to help us, old investigators willing to listen to the lessons again. I love it because Elder Ganowsky is probably thinking “This is the norm, we just always see huge success and miracles.”

I hope that we can help him to continue to believe that it is simply just tons of baptisms here in this mission.

This Friday is the baptism of Ania. Thank you for all your support and prayers. It has been an incredible experience to have helped her, teach her, and watch the conversion. She has even talked to her parents, and they said they don´t support her but they won´t abandon her. They will respect her decision though. I love baptisms.

If you could pray for the few investigators we have right now and that we can find many more in the weeks to come.

Fabian. Accept a fecha. Read, invite his family to listen.

Juan Carlos and Luisa. Accept a fecha. Read. Pray.

Find. Find. Find. 

Thank you for your prayers and love and support! Let´s go baptize the world!!!!

Dave and his new Greenbean straight form the states!!

Dave and his first Greenbean, Elder Ponce in the middle, and now Elder Ponce's first Greenbean

Élder Smiley

The one constant, is CHANGE!!!

Wow. Big week. Probably the most overwhelming, crazy, packed week of my life. First I will tell you what we did then I will tell the miracles!!!

The first of the week pretty normal until Thursday, then we set up the whole chapel for the zone conference, the first zone conference in Vitoria since I have been in the mission. We had to set up and change and do a ton of stuff to prepare for the zone conference on Friday which President and Hermana Pace said was a hit! They loved it. It was a super good zone conference then right after the zone conference we didn´t even make it back to piso because we had to prepare the chapel for the activity that would be there that night. (Dad we did something similar to what you said) We had a huge ¨cultural activity¨. Tons of people came. Members brought their friends. Investigators came. We had a talent show that went incredibly well. Everyone participated and everyone enjoyed the acts. There was a great balance between funny talents and actual talents. We did a talent with the bishop which I am in the process of sending to y´all about the life of a missionary compared to a bishop. Super funny! We were the funniest act of the past ten years according to many members.

After the activity we came early in the morning to clean up the chapel to prepare the chapel for stake conference. We cleaned the entire church then went outside and set up parking for all the cars and a whole bunch of other stuff. It was crazy well organized. Then Saturday afternoon began. 5 hours of straight meetings. I wanted to die!!!!!! Y´all already know how much I hate meetings and 5 hours of them just put me under the earth. One thing I just hate about being a leader. Then Sunday came around and we broadcast the meeting from Vitoria to the rest of the stake all over northern Spain,  a great technological miracle here in the church.

The big miracles from the week were:

1. We found new investigators from the activity on Friday and we got on the members side even more.

2.Ania pretty much told us she wanted to be baptized as soon as possible.

3. On Monday we got a bunch of member references. 

    1.Masiel ( crazy member) told us to come to her friends house to talk with her and help her. She would like to hear more.

    2. A less active talked to a missionary on a bus on the way to the bus station and said it is her time to go back to church.

    3. A member in Bilbao told us that he had a friend here in Vitoria that is having lots of troubling times and needs help so he sent us. It was a great blessing! Huge blessing and huge miracle!!!

Another thing. They have asked Elder Wilson and I to split our areas and train. So we will both be receiving new companions from Barcelona. We are excited and the ward is fired up about it.

If y´all could just pray for me and my new companion that we can go and find and baptize in this area. It will be difficult because we will not have any investigators going into this. So........ here we go!!!!

Let´s go baptize the world!!!! 

Love you all!!!!

Life is Good in the Vitoria Zone!! Mission time flies by, even for Mom & Dad, when the letters look like this!!

Imma goin’ to keep it short this week!

Huge miracles! Everyone remember Ania? This week she got her answer!!!! She knows it´s all true. She just needs a few more chats and boom. Huge miracle!

We are super excited for what is happening. It was kind of a hard week but we saw huge miracles in finding this week. We found a family of 5. Finally. Elder Polansky and I contacted them about 3 weeks ago and we finally got around to visit them. .

We found the friend of a less active lady. We were sitting outside a less active member´s house on a bench. We didn´t know exactly what we were going to do or where to go for the next half hour until our next visit. A lady was sitting there waiting a bit at the door next to the street. We went to go contact her right when the less active lady came out. We started talking to the two and the less active lady still doesn´t want to come back but her friend had super good questions and wanted to listen to us. She was extremely excited to meet with us. She met with us, and even came to church for a little activity, and met a bunch of the members. She even brought her friend. Boom!

The hermanas had a baptism this past weekend and all of our investigators got to come. It was a huge blessing. His name was Apuri and he asked me if I could do the baptism. It was a great blessing to see the change that came to him. The hermanas found him because of a reference I gave them that ended up dropping them but Apuri lived next door. Accepted an invitation to sports on Saturday and 1 month later was baptized. Boom!

The biggest miracle came from ideal member missionary work. (Take note) A member brought her two friends to church. She called us over and presented us and explained what we do and how we do it. She then took them to all the classes and taught them, explained to them, and answered their questions. They accepted a return visit and a Book of Mormon with excitement. It was a very large miracle.

I thank all of you for your support and your love and your prayers. 

I ask you to pray for

1. Ania for her baptism and that she can keep reading and praying.

2. Daisy and Grace. That they can accept a “fecha” baptismal and read and pray.

3. Santos and Carrol, that they can progress in the gospel.

Love all of you!

Élder Smiley