Letter #19

Dear Friends & Family: I'm feeling better LOADS better for some reason today. I spent time to look over some art I got and its helped me get over things. I got your letter an it made me feel better in someways, I'm working on loving it out here. Things have kinda slowed down, but I don't normally get too discouraged by slow work, what happens happens (k sera sera). This week has been hard but I learned I wasn't the only one having a hard time. Mosbrucker has been struggling as well and it really had him down for awhile. I had a pretty spiritual experience! I'll hopefully remember to mention it in the home letter... I gotta gather all these things up for my journal. that would be nice. I feel uber energetic today an I don't know why. In someways its good in others I'm kinda like whats the deal here. Also HOLY CRAP MOM! All I needed was some stuff to help me sleep! I didn't need a pharmacy of pills! I made a joke about brother Larsen about it. I was like, "dang! when Larsen turns 80 I'll STILL be taking more pills than he does!!!!" Brother Larsen was pretty sad when Mosbrucker said he might be leaving. Then he keeps telling me that I'M gonna take over the area!''' noooooooooooo thank you! or training! I don't think so! well let's see . . . OH! you know whats funny? how people act around here. We just finished tracting Oakville and we had some relatively funny experiences. for starters MY favorite and really the only one I can remember right now aside from Jack is we were knocking on this door, it had little Christian stepping stones talking about god and two angels on either side of the door, we walk up and knock on the door and this little girl about jessah's age opens. we say high in a friendly manner, introduce ourselves etc etc. She looks at us with wide eyes like we were gonna eat her and says. "w-we're jewish!" we stand there for a moment and are like. .... oooookay? well have a nice day! then another kid from the backyard yells 'we're jewish!' I thought it was funny! its so wonderful to be able to write you all today! I sent Orange, Aaron and savannah a letter today and we are rather busy... okay maybe not - but we're changing gears and going for reactivation efforts!! also, we are running out of tracting room! this town's too small to just tract a year... so everyone is pretty familiar with us. We also ran into an old friend... during my first week here we had a guy who was rather miffed at us because we told him 6 o'clock we had an appointment which got in the way of his having us 'follow his lead' he immediately hung up, of course not waiting to hear WHY but we heard him yell WOOOOW, and his WIFE hung up. so guess what happened. not only that, but he told HIS missionaries that we could burn in HECK for all he cared... such a lovely guy right? Well guess what. HE CAME TO OUR WARD! brought his guy to our ward since he's in OUR area despite the fact that he's getting bapised in Olympia.... he was kidna rude at first and honestly he was rather Arrogant. asking me if our gospel essentials was NORMALLY a set thing or not. he wasn't even wearing church clothes!!!!! Then close to the end of our lesson the topic being work the investigator asked why we hadn't said a prayer to open, we had forgotten especially since he and that other guy were the only ones there for the first fifteen minutes of the lesson. we explained that it had been forgotten and the guy who had called us turned to me and said 'aren't you glad your not the one teaching him.' and I promptly told him we LIKED it when we had questions asked and such. it kinda ruined mosbruckers day even though I kept wanting to talk to him and let him know that we WEREN'T going to go to heck despite his wishes and that we were SUPPOSED to go tracting at that time and that he should LISTEN before hanging up! ..... -.- anyway yeah. SO that's about it this week! jean fell off date but Natalie is still going to be baptized! =D yay! well folks I gots ta go! I'll see you soon! FIVE MONTHS DOWN! BOOYA! I've gotten everyones packages! Tell Grandma Greene I LOV ED my package - it was great! and its been a GREAT DAY! Love, Elder J Smart

Letter #18

Joshua's 18th Letter HEY GUYS! so holy cow so much has happened this week!!!! to start off I'll give a brief synopsis: Wrestled a cow, buried a goat, laughed at mossbrucker, worried about an injured mossbrucker, gave a church tour and Natalie set a date for baptism! NOW for the long part! Okay, we did a lot of service for Sister Sisk and whilst being up here, (she's kinda a regular, she's stuck in a wheel chair so we often go by), she fed us lunch as she does everytime and well... it varies. She made tuna melts and those were.... great! I can remember mossbrucker trying to eat cream of mushroom soup because he HATES it but unlike me he doesn't let people know. He just kinda toughs stuff out... I on the other hand either avoid it or try and eat it... in which case I can only take a couple of nibbles. I need to work on this. I remember pulling off all the toppings off a deluxe pizza and getting looks because of it. Moss and Sister Sisk just stared at me as if I was strange. I looked at them like, "What?!" Anyway! back to this particular service project! So we were picking cherries for her in her tree for starters, I had gone to the other side of the electric fence. This fence was the same one elder mossbrucker had zapped himself on weeks before which was funny but not as funny as this time. We had been testing the electric fence to see which wires were live or not and he decided to try and HOP over the fence from the ladder onto the other side to try and save time. Well he fell short and ended up hitting the ground while his legs were all tangled in the fence! So he's squirm'n around yelping: OW! and I was laughing everytime he got zapped! THEN we went to go chase down a bull! There are about three houses two on either side of sister sisk that have ALOT of cattle. SHE only has two heifers and a HUGE FAT bull who got out, we chased off the heifers and the two calves so THEY wouldn't get out too. These other bulls were having hissy fits with the bull on the other side of the fence. One bull took a little more yelling at to go away whilst the fatty was a pansy and left pretty quick. We chased this bull and the entire herd of heifers down at least half a mile, the frigg'n punk knew EXACTLY why we were there. BUT he didn't wanna leave his 20 new girlfriends so he would dodge around into the middle of them. At one point we almost had him but he bucked and trotted back around, it was then that Mossbrucker said it was time to give in.. I got mad at the bull and yelled at him. 'YOU TWO TON PIECE A CRAP!' at which the bull ignored me. that's my BIG story for this week! Spiritual time! NATALIE suddenly wants to be baptized! we had a bishops meeting on Wednesday... I think that's why we were there, BUT mutual was going on and Natalie came up to us and said she wanted to be baptized. Now, NORMALLY we'd be pretty excited, but we KNOW Natalie and she is kinda an over complex individual, so afterwards we met with Natalie and her mom and sat down and had a chat. We don't know how legit she's being but we have decided to give her the benefit of the doubt, we're very hopeful and we are trying to teach all the lessons to her. Pray for her sweet crazy head! well folks that's all for now! I gots ta go!

Letter #17

hello all you happy people!

Elder smart is back and he has a raspy scrappy voice!  That's right, I've been sick.  I've been bouncing around with respiratory illness and a fever that was gone come Saturday thank heavens.   Sister Weaver was telling me they might have to have an exchange so that I wouldn't get 5 people sick!  But thanks to bed rest I just BARELY made it down to the wedding!  And it was great.

I had the blessing of doing the missionary moment, despite a really messed up voice I gave what some said was a very good restoration story.

In all honestly I am so excited to be married some day.  Both Chris and Sarah are so lucky for that blessing and I couldn't help think about what my life would be like when I get married.

They were both baptized and married on the EXACT same day for which in itself was a miracle.

Also, another brief miracle, I had been doubting I was going to make it to the baptism at all, but my fever suddenly dropped and I was able to make it.

I'm sorry for such a short letter but I am still not feeling very well.

Love,

Elder J Smart

NOTE FROM HIS MOTHER:  Joshua is still not doing very well.  At one point he was coughing up a little blood so if you could, please pray for his health.  Ever since he had Valley Fever (as a sophomore in HS) he is prone in pneumonia so when he gets respiratory illnesses it becomes a concern.   He has lost 25 lbs.  

Letter #16

Helloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo my friends!

great news! we have been UBER busy lately!   we have two new investigators, Daralyn Shoe and Jean wilder (no not from willy wonka.)   we have had so much crazy stuff happen this week that its not even been funny.... okay a lot of it was.  my favorite being the fact that elder Mosbrucker almost soiled himself because of  a run-in with a german Shepard.  we were walking up to a house talking and I see a german shepherd.

Me: thaaaats a german shephard

Moss: oh yeah that is.

us:.... (silence)

the dog:..... (silence . . .  the starts to growl)

instantly we both turn on our heels and walk towards the exit praying we making it past the electric fence before he feels like eating us.   

we've been doing a lot of service today too!  Helped Rebecca get some furniture from all over and the like. 

I am SO grateful you write me as much as you do, it helps me.

OH!!!!!

I defended the faith and did a GREAT job when a guy tried to bash with us. I was calm and dignified, Mosbrucker was impressed!  sarah and chris went away for the week so we helped Rebecca and all the kids every other day or so.  I am almost out of smarties because maralyn and saphira try to eat them all and sometimes steal them!  BUT this sunday they behaved SO much more than they usually do! This sunday we made sister bently cry because even though we already have to kinda babysit saphira and maralyn during sacrament (we sit on either side of the pew so they don't get away.) but trina's boy braden (who is very rude to his momma)  came and sat with us, so that was nice.

we had an anti-child abuse presentation this sunday which was hard to hear about.   brother pickett stood up and almost to the point of sobbing testified that we should all talk to our bishops about it, he was abused physically and its rubbed off on him so he needs help with that often.  

I'm really confused by the scriptures you sent me in you hand written letter. they make it sound like you think I've been arguing with everyone and being contentions, and hey, wheres ethan! he's the one I Actually WROTE to so far!

Tell Aaron I am way proud of him!  His artistic ability is improving greatly.

Got to go

Love,

Elder J Smart