Elder Matt Smith: Jarabacoa

Hey guys, what is going on, are y’all enjoying the cold? But yeah this week has been a really interesting week and one of my most active weeks. Raulin and his family were going to get baptized this Saturday, but something happened and he had to have surgery on something, I didn’t understand on what, but he has to wait 20 more days until they can do it. It is heating up here, and I am sweating beads out here and it isn’t even summer yet. There will be photos today, and I have some sweet photos from today. Today we went up into the mountains by Jarabacoa and went to the waterfalls up there as a zone and they were legit!

Our area is doing great right now. We have some people that are just golden! Our hard work is starting to pay off, and we are starting to see the fruits of our labor. We have a lot of families that we have contacted in the night that are really intelligent which is hard to find people to teach like that, and they read and understand everything. There have been times this week when we did a contact and left a pamphlet and come back the next day and the parents read everything and have questions for us which usually never happens. Hey in the Ensign there is a girl that is in the questions and answers section, and she works with us a lot and we got like 3 golden references from her this past week but it is cool that she is in the Ensign. When Elder Reyes and I got here, and when we got the cell phone, on the screen it said Framboyanes Chupa, which means framboyanes sucks, but we have had a positive attitude this transfer and we have learned to love the area. We might not have as many lessons as the other missionaries but we have quality in every one of our lessons. But yeah the Carnival is freakin crazy here, and it is way worse than Mardi gras. On Sunday we couldn’t leave the house until 7 and we were 2 cites away from the main stuff. Carnival is the holiday of Satan, no joke. The other missionaries have to stay at our house for this month, so we have another 4 man house but they aren’t as much fun so oh well.

This week I had the most interesting Testimony meeting this week on Sunday. It had everything from complaining about the church, the members, also a lot of storimonies, and most important we had the Holy Ghost in the flesh in our meeting. Some crazy guy went up and starting ranting and speaking way loud with his whole body and I was trying to keep from bursting out laughing. He started off I am the Holy Ghost, and none of the kids can touch me. And starting going off on some weird stuff and the District President had to go up and kick him off, and the District President was pissed. He had to apologize and give his testimony afterwards. I was glad that something came up for almost all of our investigators so they didn’t have to see that.

Also this week at 9:30 last night we got faked robbed by 2 ex missionaries that are inactive, and we crossed them and they came up and they did a bad job at trying to rob us, so it was pretty funny. So apparently there is a lot of apostasy in the branches here and they are inactive because of that, they do everything other than go to church which is weird. So there are a lot of problems that I learned this week in the district here, it looks strong but really there is some bad stuff going on.

But yeah, I hope y’all enjoy the photos I am sending home, the internet is really slow right now so I will try to get as much as I can home. Take care guys and good job Makenzie in basketball, and Jacob good job also, sometimes things don’t work out the way we want them to. It sounds like things are going good for you at work Dad, and that is awesome. Take care guys and have a good week.

Love, Elder Smith