Short and Sweet

Well mother I hate to break it to you but our mission president kind of got angry that we were going to get more freedom or something like that and decided to cut our writing time and communicating time and everything so i actually do not have a lot of time to write a gorgeous letter because I have quite little time right now.

We are going to talk to president in two weeks for a conference, but today and next week you guys are going to have to deal with some small emails.

Also I would love to talk to you and Andi for like 5 minutes each, could you get on ASAP and send Andi a text to do the same? Maybe we can try Google hangouts or something.

I love ya!  Hope to see you soon!

-Elder Smiley

Mark John Smiley	Mon, Feb 18, 1:48 PM (21 hours ago)

Yeah well there are some complications in this mission for right now so I am not sure I will be calling you guys much (mostly for lack of devices to do it with) and our mission president is pulling a quick one on us and cutting our time to write and all that, so I am rushing to write everyone right now.  But quick question, when is mom´s exact birthday? I know I am the worst son alive but I can’t remember when it is in March! Thanks Paps!

-Elder Smiley

Great week in Mexico, and not just the weather

Monday 11 February 19

“Pues, pues, pues”

That is a Spanish joke.  Pues is used to say stuff like well.  But not well as in good but like when we wanna say stuff like ¨well, maybe. ¨ or ¨well, what do you wanna do?¨  

So we were saying the phrase ¨well, well, well.¨ And making jokes and stuff waiting for our interviews with president, and this kid who hates language study just says ¨pues, pues, pues¨. And it has been a joke ever since. Poor kid.

Anyway. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRREAT WEEK!! We put two fechas down for this Friday and will probably have 3 more for next week!  This is so awesome I don’t even know how to feel!  This area and work and lifestyle has been so crazy and such a contrast to the rest of my mission.  We are just juggling so many people with potential! I love it!

So we got Silvina and Hector.  Silvina is the mother and Hector the kiddo.  Silvina is this humble, extremely timid woman who hates speaking in front of others, so when we need to get an answer from her, we have to talk one on one without any of her extended family there.  But this week we got her to say that she will get baptized, but IF AND ONLY IF she passes the baptismal interview.  And we are going tonight to go over the questions and get her and hector ready to DIVE IN!!!!!!!!!

The next family is this guy named Alejandro, his wife Elizabeth, and their son Alejandro.  They have two other daughters who have crushes on us.  They're like 6 and 3.  Alejandra is this lit guy who feels a connection to the church and has this dark past he’s trying to leave behind.  I LOVE THIS GUY SO MUCH.  we connected super well and I remember he kind of left Elder Weech in the dust sometimes and made him feel really bad for his Spanish.  Kind of direct, kind of a jerk, but SO AWESOME AND SO PREPARED.  We are getting that family in the water quite soon.

i am learning an ancient language called Nawatl.  It is so lit and we are learning little phrases bit by bit and it is so much fun.

Thanks for the support and congrats if you made it all the way to the end of this email, you survived! I love you guys, I love the mission, and I love God. In case I don’t see ya, Good morning, good evening, and good night!

-Elder Smiley

Look at Mark's "Cowboy Companion"  

Mark and his companion get a whole family to church!!

Monday 4 February 2019

I wrote the subject line as such because my comp Elder Weech found a random hat while we were on divisions and wore it to leaders council with the whole mission, and dressed like a cowboy. We had fun chats about cowboys and now he thinks my papa is just the coolest guy because of the stories I told him.

This was kind of a garbage week because we had to go to Puebla (garbage meaning a lot of little things that got in the way of helping our own area and our investigators), and help the sisters move, and deal with a lot of pesky things that get in the way of the Lord´s work, but we still ended up getting a WHOLE DOG GONE FAMILY TO CHURCH YALL.  WHOOOOOO.  The branch got so excited, and for the second hour Weech and I taught the branch about John the Baptist, and that was fun to lead the whole branch in a discussion.

Changes came and went, and Elder Weech and I are staying together! We were both relieved to be honest, we don’t like the other companion options too much and were both hoping to stay together.  

We don’t know why, but Silvina and Hector have started to decline in their progression.  So, we need to see what the heck is going on there (pardon my language).  The Montalvo Aparicio family is the one that came to church and they have continually said they are expecting something special from us, who knows what it could be? (BAPTISM AND ETERNAL LIFE WOOT WOOT). We would appreciate some prayers for both of those parties. As well as Fany, who needs a push towards baptism, but needs the push to be just right, not too strong, but still puttin´ some pressure.  We are going to try and find that balance this week.

Something I love that my comp shares about the Book of Mormon is that it is either a lie, or the truth. It is black or white, no gray.  There is nothing in between.  Joseph Smith was a prophet, or he wasn’t. It’s that easy.  All we have to do is find out which, and then everything falls into place.  I love this gospel!

Love ya’ll, stay solid and stay purty.

Elder Smiley

A lot happened this week - and we did not talk about any of this on Christmas

Oh my GOODNESS i have been so excited to share with you guys some of the coolest experiences of my ENTIRE LIFE THIS WEEK

Anyway so I am going to apologize for the call because I was sick and don’t remember a lot of the call but apparently everyone else remembered and liked it so that’s chill.

I want dad to tell me how Jimmy is doing! I got to talk about him this week and would love to hear from/about him.

Ok, ok, ok, so these past couple of months have been months of a lot of diligence, months of rejection, months of walking but the Lord was testing us, and we passed!!!!! This week we had a man come up to us and tell us he wanted us to teach his daughter the gospel, and so we put a cita for Sunday, thinking this is going to be incredible.

On Sunday, we show up to church, and during the three hours, two more people show up to church out of nowhere asking us to teach them about God and help them get over various problems they had.

We had two of the most spiritually powerful lessons I have ever had in my entire mission on Sunday, and it was so incredible!  Now we are teaching David, and Dana, and Miguel, who are all looking like very quick progresors in the gospel. 

Ah, this is the best part of the mission!  I had the opportunity to exercise the power and authority of a servant of Jesus Christ and promise blessings from on high, and feel the Holy Spirit give testimony of my words.  Ah, there is no other place I would rather be and nothing else i would rather be doing!

I love all of you! i wish i could share more, but we are (as usual) short on time.  Take care!

-Elder Smiley

Christmas Eve Letter

Monday 24 Dec 2018

HOW IS EVERYONE DOING BACK HOME?

This has definitely been a week of diligence i tell you what because practically everyone we knew or were going to look up is on vacations right now and wont be back until January. We have a large list right now of people to start looking up January 2nd.

We have been working on getting more members involved in missionary work right now since practically half of our ward (or it seems like it) are returned missionaries, and they love us because the missionaries a couple changes back were not very into diligence or obedience, and then we showed up like PREP THE FONT PEOPLE ARE GONNA BE TAKIN THE DIVE and they are loving it.  It’s been a lot of member visits, but all in all we are looking like a busy January.

I would say more but I will see you guys tomorrow, I love you guys!

-Elder Smiley

PS: Can’t send pics because this computer is quite the dinosaur