Letter #24

HELLO!

this elder smart, your ever wacky, ever... um something that rhymes with whacky.... glitchy?  I dunno.

anyway thanks for reading everyone, heres the set up for today.

starters, we said goodbye to christensen and hatch who were some of my favorite companions so far so I wanted to quote them.

hatch quotes:

"elder smart, as your personal therapist I want you to look me in the eye and tell me you CAN do this"~ on the topic of ME driving.

Christensen: in his final testamony~ "I WANNA TALK ABOUT CHICKENS!"

and quoting me. "salamander!"

 and had a reunion with elder anderson, one of my trainers, we also had the opportunity to welcome the newest watacian missionary, elder Tani! who.... well might be the most feminine hawaiian I have ever met!  (for those of you who know me my reaction was like this. 0.0 -facepalm- OH COME ON!!!!) 

he is a pretty funny guy though:

"I just want everyone to be happy, if your happy, I'm happy.

if your not happy... well I'm still happy but I'm less happy for you!"

I've also had a movie experience.  it was kinda like in the movies where a crazy kid takes you on a grand adventure and you end up in a mystical place with great experiences?  well in this case we went on a chase through a apartment... into a hilly trailer part... and met a family! so yeah!... still the same concept!  this kid was like 'hey! you guys! you took us to church!'

and me and elder tani (still working on saying his name right) were like 'we did??'  so we followed him on his bike where we met his mom and sister who wants to be baptized and her name is tyler... or tylee... or maria... or whatever the heck she feels like being called at the time.

also I'm going to delve back intime for a bitback to my ol' rochester days.

so we all remember natalie right?  right.

well at one point she was 'dating' a sixth grader by the name of Jacob wolfe or if your me (or saphira tristan or maralyn) making fun of him

"YACOB VOLFEE!!!" in a russian accent.

well we were hearing this long story about this boy and some of her trials with him (natalie being a typical middleschooler issue gal)  when some one asked what his grade was which she  or her mother replied that he was a sixth grader, to which I quickly reply with.  'wait, so your a cougar??' to which I received an evil glare from her, but a high-five from her mother.   aaah good times.

well folks I'm off! I believe I have sent good blog-fodder for today!

a special shout out to my mother, my savannah and all my other friends who are routing for me!

peace off!

Elder J Smart

Letter #23

Hello everyone, tis elder smart relating his week so far!

lets start off with the the goodies!

for starters, I got my super awesome package from my beloved madre! thank you!I love all of the stuff ya'll gave me! 

good news is that we have had 3 baptisms this week all at once. ^^ maria,  louise and william foote.  I only really know maria and louse and helped int heir teaching.  but hey! a baptism is a baptism.

so here are my two funny experiences XD

during this week we met a guy named, mark anthony, one fo the nicest black dudes I have ever met... and the drunkest.  we talked to him for like thirty minutes... and this is as far as we got with him!  These were his tidbits of knowledge:

* mother theresa is worth 15 billion dollars 

* the most expensive dog is named trouble and

*  obama is spying on us... 

* aaaaand oprah is worth less than mother theresa

* I was smarter than elder lonas and more intune (even though I hadn't even said more than ten words to the guy) 

* and that I had freakishly huge hands.... 

however that wasn't the only part..  as we were talking another guy walks up and as lonas is about to say hi and the first words out of this new guys mouth are, threating cuss words and then he said if you talk to me again you will pay the price!'    and as soon as he said that up pops mark: 

"HEY! yo-you SHUT UP! you don't talk to them!" and was ready to stand up and probably pick a fight with this guy. fortunately lonas stopped him and got him to sit down... till the other guy kept talking so up pops mark again:

"don't you talk to them!!" in which lonas had to ease him back down, however  we were finally able to walk away so we could avoid the confrontation!  soon after he was SO protective of us that he wouldn't let us go down the street we were aiming for.  Mark then began to  stereo typing his own race as thieves and not to throw pearls before swine and as we were walking the OTHER way, up walk two normal brotha's just walk'n along,(mark turns and tells us that these guys would shoot us up.) in which mark felt inspired to protect us from... by first spitting in front of them... and then pounding one of their fists  he walked away talking to them but kept telling them to "let them alone."... crazy right? 

The next guy was a really nice guy who tried to help me play basket ball and

he kept calling me ray ray!   and for once in my life I felt like I actually did a cool basket ball shot!  also, lonas and Hatch owned two black dudes in STREET basket ball!  it was awesome!

also had a pretty nice interview with president... he basicallly told me to be the best missionary that I could be... he was talking to me about how heavenly father had made me the way that I was so I could touch peoples lives...... he even tried to make sure that I was looking him in the eye... I think they actually do care alot, but I just wish they'd take the time to know me better so they could help me more.

Well, talk with you next week.  Thank you all for keeping me in your prayers and thoughts - I need all the prayers I can get - I am working hard at trying to work even with my OCD driving me nuts.

Love,

Elder J Smart

Letter #22

Hello everyone!

Its your ever adoring Elder Smart coming to you via email!

for starters I would like to just start with a big thank you to all of you that sent me letters, Cortnie Johnson,  Brother Nilsen, Sister Sneddon, Brother Case and my Aunt and Uncle, Becky and Travis and the kids.  I appreciate you remembering me and caring about me.  The words of encouragement and words of wisdom have helped me and I am trying to work harder and be happier.

alright, there is something you all need to know as far as letters go, 

last monday we had a mission picnic where I was approached by several of my comrades handing me letters!  so I JUST got a good chunk of them all!

We've had so much happen and I am sure that I won't remember everything. 

first I wanted to tell you about a play we got to see called, THE JUDGEMENT! dun dun dun.... -snrk-

here is my review,

the way they did the show, it was in a small church called the door a small place in town, it was rented space kinda place but that aside it was a lower budget product meant to 'inspire' spirituality into non believers.

it starts with a subpar explaination of the plan, where appearantly the devil got one over the heavenly father and he had to humble himself and become Christ so as to save us....   so they would put people in these situations  where two types of people would die, randomly normally at the same in various ways the first being two families, one of which was a father and son, who wouldn't go to church due to some normal silly reasons, his son asked him about it and his father gave him a silly excuse but h loved his dad  and said he wanted to be just like him and then they crashed into the 'righteous' family who were off to applebees on the sabbath....

they all end up in heaven and the righteous family got to go into heaven whilst the father and son who was totally ignorant of what was going on were banished by christ to and escorted into heck by the devil... (dressed as a member of kiss.) ... to sum it up it was an atrocious debatchery of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.   the son was sent to heck without any knowledge of good and evil, in the end it was simply a way of intimidation to force people to go to their church, on several occasions they called us out in obscure ways that I think were a pathetic attempt to convert us.

HOWEVER I was aproached by a guy who tried to talk to us about it.

Here are some of my other experiences, we have been doings ALOT of church tours with some success.

OH! we have a guy names tomas we're working with, he originally lived in vegas and wants to have faith so he came to us.  so far he's pretty much just jumped in without even looking so we are teaching him whenever we can!   he's a great guy with... a couple of issues.

Also, we talked to a guy named scotty.... he was probably the most bitter person I have ever met in my entire life like, he was okay, but he really clung on to the things in life that made life so hard for him.  I kept looking at myself and going '... is that me?'  I got to experience the home bubble again, I got a new hair cut and... she... she shaved my eyebrows.  okay she didn't SHAVE them but she cut them! she was a master hair stylist and... holy crap she did her job thoroughly! it was insane! she was LOOKING for hair to cut!

she also said that it was her calling and that she would be the one to do Christ's hair (so I don't know if she was all there), she also said that Heavenly Father made ME who I am and thats perfect!  I liked that!!   I wish I could enjoy that more minus the OCD. I'm working on getting it all together.

I look forward to hearing from home.  I am very busy in my new area and I am learning to like it.  I'm with a greenie, as well as the zone leaders and they are all pretty cool.  I'm okay, struggle here and there but heck I'm alive so thats good.

can't wait to see you all again but I'm doing my best here.

Love,

Elder J Smart

Letter #21

yellooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow my beloved mission fans!

let me esplain my current situation!

I am no longer in rochester!... that was a relatively tearful and bummer full day BUT I have survived the infamous 'lakehood'.... which is basically like AZ only wet... and they have lots of trees....

its pretty busy here for the most part, my new comps are christensen, lonas, and the greenie, Hatch, there all pretty cool... 

I do have my griefs with them that will make up the biggest part of my 'funny story of the week' so.... we have already had ONE baptism. Jeremy sanchez, kinda reminds me of Javier and Jared put together... only short... and mexican... and he's in the army...

anyway, we woke up and left pretty early to go set up for his baptism, Christenen and lonas left us to go and fill it up so it would all be ready... I think they had a church tour... something like that,. so the baptism started even if our fearless leaders were late XD and I gave a very brief talk on baptism, my second one so far.

so AFTER the bapstism everyone was leaving and we were setting things back up.   our leaders rushed off to do ANOTHER lesson but we were going to get another ride via other elders, when we remembered  that the stilecoom sisters had a baptism later that day.   we were GOING to leave the font full for them, BUT our ward mission leader unplugged it and what took and HOUR AND A HALF to fill, pretty much drained with in fifteen minutes -.-

SO we stayed to fill the font, our ride left and we sat and waited, well by the time it filled the sisters came and we texted christensen and lonas to come get us...... four hours later we are sitting there talking to sister wilkins and her greenie whom, after finding out we had been there since 9 this morning gave us the 'your crappy missionaries' look.

a couple hours earlier we had sent a text to our leaders saying we were ready to be picked up.... they sent back 'come get you soon'.... I still question there definition of 'soon.' because we didn't leave till the sister's baptism started.... at FOUR!.

needless to say hatch was rather P.o.ed  and I couldn't blame him.

HOWEVER, before the SECOND baptism started we called steed and dedchus... I think thats how tis spelled... my complaint was that I had been rather hungry and been wanting to grab a pizza but we had some pretty amazing luck, cuz Steed and his companion were JUST at a birthday party as we called them. SO we got to eat a bunch of pretty awesome authentic tres leches cake!!! 

so all in all aside from almost killing our leaders everything turned out okay.. in my book, it was still kinda messed up how the ditched us though.

Love,

Elder J Smart

Letter #20

Dear Everyone: I've kinda had my worst week ever! I've been transfered to Lakewood now. Me and mosbrucker had a HUGE fight and I went on an exchange and felt kinda lonely and left out... I'm with ZL's and a greenie. president needed someone to take over the area, and I obviously didn't have it in me. In alot of ways my OCD is alot worse, I feel fuzzed out and i had a HUGE anxiety attack so I was panicking and fighting an... it sucked XP sunday was pretty dry, I felt pretty bummed that I was leaving, despite all of my grief and anxiety I really really LIKED rochester... not as much as home but still. I was fine until I got to the striblings.... I cried a little, but then my stupid OCD keeps messing with things and I keep... gah, I'm so frustrated with myself. well, I got to see epriams rescue!!!! we LOVED it! it was so awesome! WAY funnier than the other church movies, honsetly the most entertaining church movie I have ever seen. I really really liked ephriam! we had two baptisms though!!! right before I left I got to see natalie get baptized, ate a couple cups of ice cream etc etc. then on sunday... the day before I left I... well yesterday, Jean got baptised... I had a hard time with the missionary moment, I couldn't think of really anything to say.... I feel kinda like a defective elder mom.

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!