What A Long Week...

Family and Friends,

This week seems like it has been very long. It’s been stressful (not too stressful, just a little) having to care for my district. All of their errors fall on my head now.

I could really use some new garments though. I have been meaning to say that for a while now, but have kept forgetting. Just bottoms. I feel like an Indian now with a cloth piece by how much they are wearing down.

So this past week, we did something that I’ve never done before. We went wedding crashing. We taught this couple the first lesson, and they said that they were too busy to even think about religion right now because they were getting married that weekend. But they left us with an invitation to go to their wedding rehearsal. So that’s exactly what we did. We went there and went around to every table of people eating, talking about our church, made a lot of appointments, and made a lot of friends. Then we headed out, but not without snatching some food.

Anyways, yes, I got the SD card. Thank you! I also have put the wrapped presents on the corner of my desk waiting for Christmas. I can’t wait to open them!

Haven’t heard anything yet on the bank situation with my money that was stolen.

Mom- Elder Cox's family moved away from the Boise area this past summer due to work issues, and now they are living in San Francisco, or at least close by there. But Elder Cox was telling me that they don’t have other "Cox" relatives in the area, or so he thinks. His moms email address is "kerriejcox@gmail.com". He is an awesome companion! He has been helping so much, since he already has almost 6 months here. He knows just about everybody.

Tell Tiffany to send me an email. I’m allowed to email her since she’s immediate family, but I don’t have her email address with me and I always forget to bring my address book with me. If I arrive here next week with an email in my inbox, it will just be way easier to remember to ask her a question that I have in mind.

Attached is a picture of me in the area, and a really ironic picture. Its pretty dark so its hard to see exactly, but there is a picture of a Bar, and above it is a Building for Alcoholic Anonymous. I thought it was pretty funny.

Well, until next time!

God Speed

Elder Smidt X

A lot of change and sadness...

Hello Family and Friends!

Before I forget, mom, you need to send an email to Sister Fortunato (sisterfortunato@hotmail.com), our Mission Presidents wife with an attachment of our family pictures that we have on our wall in our house. She apparently needs it for the Christmas conference. Write down my whole name and missionary name, and yeah, I think that’s all.

Well, this week has been interesting. There have been good things as well as a lot of sad things that have happened. I was transferred this past Wednesday to Divinópolis. It’s about 2 hours away from Belo Horizonte in the opposite direction of Montes Claros, so its a lot cooler. I will miss my companion A LOT. We became so close. I would really like to return someday to São Paulo after the mission just to stay at his house for a while. I told him that I would leave the Oregon shirt for him in the mission office. We both grew so much together. My new companion is Elder Cox, my first American companion. He is way cool. We talk Portuglish during the day without really even thinking about it. He has two more months than me on the mission. But the weirdest part is, I knew him before the mission. Yep, Aaron Cox. Before Rocky Mountain opened up, he was going to Eagle High and we were even in the same Seminary class. I remember we did some group activities sometimes, and once in a while he was my partner. I could have never imagined that I would ever be walking down the same streets with him in Brazil. Its weird. I was also handed a lot bigger load of responsibility this week. I was made District Leader here in just a little over 10 months on the mission. That will give me a lot more time to get the district leader calling down, and maybe it will work into zone leader. If not, I’m totally chill with being D.L. till the end. Too much responsibility might cause problems for me :)

But anyways, this last week, I was robbed by the bank. They deposited our money into our accounts, but when I went to take the money out of the ATM, the machine just said error, and then later showed that I had no money left in my account. Apparently this has happened to almost all the missionaries here. So I had to use all personal money for travel expenses and to buy new food as the mission tries to figure out what happened.

I finally received letters and packages! It was about 7 weeks. Because Montes Claros is so far away, we weren’t getting anything, and the mission president forgot to bring the letters and packages for the missionaries when he came. But he gave us permission to read our many letters when we got them. We don’t have to wait till p-day. So when I went to Belo Horizonte for the transfer, I picked up all my mail, but just to be clear, there were two box packages from you guys, and an envelope package from Tiff and a lot of mission ties letters. Is there anything missing? I haven’t read them all yet because there are so many. But from what I have read, I will make my comments now.

If Elder Taylor Wood is reading my emails, tell him to tan those Samoan hides. A lot of missionaries think that its like tattle-telling when they talk to the president about what’s going wrong with other missionaries, but what it really is, is reporting about our missions. Some missionaries may think "its his mission, he can ruin it if he wants"… Not true, its your mission as well. It’s all of our missions. We can’t allow for one missionary to stink up the program.

Heidi, I am so glad that things are starting to work out for you. I knew that the prayers would work, but now I have a challenge for you. Pray now more than you were before just to thank Him. Always continue in prayer, even in your heart. Don’t forget who it is that blesses us.

Shawn, thank-you for the many updates. I would love to go duck hunting (not talking about NCAA) some time with you. I have ALWAYS wanted to but never had the opportunity. Keep me up-dated on KeKe.

Tiff, it was great to hear about your new life, how all the kids are adjusting, how brave Keaton has become. It was awesome to see those pics of the Kids, especially Jack with his awesome little duck hat.

Dad, thank you so much for your letter. I got all super excited again about my bike, then I started telling all the other missionaries how cool my dad was and what he was doing for me and they all just got depressed because they don’t have cool dads like I do. So then I upper cutted each one of then, except for one shorter one which I decided to give him a round house kick to the face instead, then told them to get back to work. Mom, thank you for your updates. I always love to hear of the dogs and what’s going on with the family.

Nana and Pops! Thank you for the updates! I can’t tell you enough how excited I am to have a family reunion. The only thing that I ask, is that we have some really cool water activities planned. I love water activities and I’m missin them. Oh, and plenty of Doritos.

Mom, as far as the ties go, thank you so much! I was really suffering there for a little while. All the ties that I got I love. The ones that were my favorites before my mission as well as the new ones, I love. I noticed one tie though that really stuck out. The golden tie. I love to wear cool, modern ties, in fact those are my favorite type of ties to wear from day to day, but then there are other ties that are just pure beauty; ties that I would like to only wear in the presence of heavenly beings. The Golden Paisley tie is one of those ties. I’m almost scared to wear it on any other occasion.

Well, this week has been great so far. I just am missing my last area a lot. I REALLY got close to the members there.

I love you all so much!

God Speed! 

Elder Smidt X

Here are some photos of my first service project with Elder Cox and holding a baby chick. My companion is 6' 5" so I look like a little kid next to himJ

The big guy on campus...

Hello Family and Friends,

     I thought that I should start off getting my requests out of the way. Please send me a picture of me eating the homemade sandwich that I made my last week home. I would like to show it to my companions and the people that I teach. Also, I am sorry to say this, but I no longer am in possession of the watch that was given me by the Howard Family before I left. After breaking the front face, it was already reaching its mourning days, but then when the battery died, I thought about just taking it in to get the battery replaced and just keep on keepin' on, but then one of the young men that is preparing to serve a mission told me that he wanted a watch for his mission, but that they were all too expensive. I told him to take my watch and use it; replacing the battery would be a lot cheaper that buying a new one. I'm very sorry Tiffy that I don’t have that cool watch anymore, but I want you to know that it went towards a good purpose.

      Well, the Big President came this week and it was awesome! He is such a neat guy and very funny. He decided that it would be easier for him to come here than for all of us in our zone to go to BH. It was the smallest zone conference that I’ve ever been to ( 8 missionaries) and it was my first Zone Conference where I was the only American. I liked the Zone Conference way more this way because of the personalness. We got to talk with him during the conference, like it was more of a conversation than it was a conference, resolving all of our doubts, problems, and questions. It was really cool. Then for lunch we all went to a Rodízio, all you can eat steak and a bunch of other meats. It was gooood, and then afterwards we got to have personal interviews with him. It was a really cool experience.

      I was telling my companion that it was a good idea in my opinion that they lowered the ages for young men and women to serve missions. I've seen too many times when teenage boys get out of high school and use their new found liberty to get into bad things and screw up their life. I think that the sooner they can leave after high school, the better. And for women also. I know that A LOT more women will be serving now with this change. 21 years was such a long wait.

    So yesterday we had a baptism and it was really cool how we were able to baptize her. We weren’t able to get a hold of Patricia ( our investigator) for almost a whole week and we thought that she must have just been avoiding us. We started to give up, but didn’t have any investigators to bring to church Sunday, so we just decided that we would pass by her house to see if we could bring her to the church. Luckily she was finally in the house. While we were walking with her to the church, she gave us a bunch of reasons for why she wasn’t able to talk to us forever. In my mind I was just thinking, "yeah, nice try, but I know that you’re just telling us lies and excuses." But as we were arriving at the church, she turned to us and said, “so today’s my day right?” I was kind of puzzled and just said, "what?" and she said, “todays the day that I’ll be baptized, right?" I kinda just froze up and was shocked that she actually had a sincere interest to be baptized still. I tried to not let my jaw hit the ground. When I collected my senses I said, “well sure you can be baptized today, but we still need to teach you some of the commandments before you can be baptized”. She told us to teach them to her right then. I taught her about tithing and the Sabbath Day, and then I talked with my Zone Leaders so that they could have an interview with her and decide if she was ready to be baptized. It all worked out perfectly except for that the Baptismal Font didn’t have any water. It was back to the buckets and running back and forth down the hallways getting it filled.

    But anyways, those are my experiences from this week. There is a picture of the baptism and the zone conference attached.

God Speed!

Elder Smidt X

300 days....

Dear Family And Friends,

     This week has been good. I loved the talks during general conferences. I think that my favorite talk was during the first session Sunday, by Jeffrey R Holland. I love his talks. Mom, if you think that not being able to watch the talks live and having to watch them recorded kind of stinks, try watching it in a different language. I'm so lucky to have had the opportunity to watch it, but it’s not even close to being the same as hearing them first hand. The people translating don’t do a good job of translating the humor. You don’t get to hear the people laugh. But what really kind of stinks, is you don’t get to hear the emotion of the speakers, the tears, etc. All you hear is a monotone voice translating the words. Its still great, but not the same. We were able to bring several investigators to the meeting, three of them were teenage boys that we met on the street. Im not sure if the conference was really up their alley, but hey, I tried.

    Saturday afternoon, the other missionaries had a baptism but forgot to fill up the water in the font. As we were about to leave the conference, we heard that the baptismal font was empty but there was a baptism in thirty minutes. My companion and I decided that we would help to fill up the font. We were running back and forth carrying buckets of water trying to help fill up the tank. It took about 40 minutes and a lot of sweat to get it filled.

     So I've been slowly losing weight just by rationing my food better during lunches. This wednesday I will reach 300 days! Three hundred is a cool number because some people made a movie called "300" about my life. And this Sunday I will be hitting my 10 month mark. I will be making a lot of Jell-O to celebrate.

     I finally got some hand written letters done and sent them out with more news and details about my mission. I’m sorry it has taken me so long to get letters done. Im glad you guys had a good trip to the Ducks game. I would have really liked to go. I really miss them but there is work to do here. But don’t worry, I’m spreading two kinds of the good word here in Brazil! Baptisms, and my companion now has an Oregon Ducks sticker behind his name tag. So, you see, we are doing lots of good works in Brazil.

     God Speed

Elder Smidt X

P.S. I would like to just say how extremely happy I am that I have a chest being filled with all of all my favorite things I am missing while on my mission. I would also like to express my long felt love for a certain video game called "Halo". I think that it is so fascinating how Uncle Tim, Aunt Janet and their family all pitched in to buy a Halo game for John while he was on his mission. Seeing how our family is so cool, I suspect that Halo 4, which comes out sometime soon, will also find its way into the chest. And I especially love the fact that usually when you pre-order the Halo games using "Best Buy”, they always throw in a really cool bonus feature on the game. And I'm pretty sure that John loves this too, and if you guys have any questions or need any assistance, he'd love to be of help for you guys. Way to go fella's!!!!

hey, hey, hey...

Well mom and dad, 

I think I may have officially become the strongest man in the world. I don't want to sound arrogant, but I think it finally happened. 

That photo that you sent me, maybe I can put it on my flash drive and then bring it to photo printer but I think it would be easier sending it through the mail. I was also thinking that maybe you could start planning another calendar for me? I love the calendar I have. Its probably the coolest thing I have on the mission. And before I know it, I will be hitting my one year mark.

If I have any really cool "Aha" moments, don't worry I will be sharing them with you, but this week I haven't had any. Except for when I found my jello mix under the refrigerator.... mmm, it was pineapple. We are still waiting for the president to come. I think it will be tomorrow, but we never know. They like to make the visits unknown, like the sixth sense, they just randomly occur.

I'm trying to read the entire bible, cover to cover and now I am about 1/8 of the way done. Its very interesting. I never realized how many things Moses did that are the same things that we do today, especially with temples. But I never have had such an interest in the Old Testament that I have now. Its really neat. So today I will be going to a "Mall" to look around, that should be fun.

I'm glad that the postal strike is finally over here. I was scared I wasn't going to be getting any mail for a long time. Its been a while now.

I really don't know what to say this email. Elections are really funny here because every person that is running has their own music, which is always really cheesy and there are millions of cars that blast this music everywhere. I have political music stuck in my head now. 

Yes, I dream in Portuguese and English. I don't remember all of my dreams, but sometimes I wake up and realize that my whole dream was in Portuguese. One time I talked to my companion in my sleep and he said that it was Portuguese mixed with English, and he told me while I was sleeping, "I didn't understand anything you said," and I just replied in Portuguese, "me neither."

Hopefully I will be able to send you guys a package for Christmas with some things, what do you think?

I loved that photo that you sent me mom. I'm glad to see that you are opening up to the truly pleasant things of the world. Please tell John to save  that photo that he made for me so that I can put it on Facebook after the mission. I was laughing soooo stinkin hard. I love it.

Well I love you all!

God Speed!

Elder Smidt X