Elder Matt Smith: I have a little more responsibility now.

Hey guys how are y’all doing? I'm doing great, I really like the area out here in Mao. It is huge! I really would love to have a bike or my truck back again out here. But yeah I guess y’all know that I am DL now, so I have a little more responsibility now. We have a really young district and I have Elder Jimenez who was my old comp in my district as well. Well I kind of have hot water. It is a zapper that only works half of the time but it is nice when it works. And I do have to play the piano here as well so I need to start working on the Christmas songs. That is cool that Britt made it on TV, it looked like BYU scored a quite a few points in the game. Congrats to Makenzie and Jacob in basketball.

On Monday there was another strike (huelga) so we couldn’t leave that house at all so it was kind of lame. Good thing the other elders in Mao live a minute from our house so they came over and had some fun. When I got here I asked my comp for the area book and he didn’t know what it was, and we found it underneath a pile of junk. So my comps trainer was really lazy and they didn’t get too much work done. But Elder Castillo is a stud and is a great teacher and a funny guy. This transfer should be awesome. There are a ton of people in my area and it is a relief after being in my last area. We got some awesome references from the members this week and we have a lot of good people now.

The ward here is kind of small, there was only like 75 people in church Sunday, but the members here are awesome and we are going to start working with them. We have a lot of young couples and families that we are hoping will progress. So I have a lot of excitement to work here and I have a feeling we will have a lot of success. We have an awesome ward mission leader and Elder’s Quorum president and they will help us out a lot.

So thanksgiving is coming up and we are going to buy a turkey in the district and we have someone with a huge brick oven in our ward and we are going to cook it there. It is awesome here there is a member that has a bakery around the corner so we get fresh bread in the morning. I hope that y’all have a safe trip to California and enjoy y’alls vacation. Take care and have a great week!

Love, Elder Smith

Here are a few pictures from Puerto Plata