I finally got Kellie to help me put some pictures on our blog. I just wanted to share some of the things we've been doing since July. In August Ben and Katie and the girls came from Florida. We had a family party and celebrated the July and August birthdays with everyone.

These are pictures of Jenna, Dani, and Katie when they came to visit. We really enjoyed having them here and are looking forward to going and spending time with them in February.

Dani seemed to enjoy "This is the way the cowboy rides" Jenna loved brushing the dog and playing with the blocks. She knows right where to find them.

The end of August Jake's girl's came and spent the night and then we went to the zoo the next day. We saw the baby tiger, the baby elephant, the baby giraffe, and baby snow leopards and meercats. We had a picnic and had a fun time.

Timmy was baptized the first Saturday in September. Way to go Timmy! We are so happy for you.

The next weekend, Wendy's kids spent the night at our house and then we took them to the zoo. We had fun at the zoo and then decided to take the scenic route home to Clinton -an hour and a half later we finally arrived. The kids were all asleep.

On October 22, 2009, we got a new grandbaby. She weighed 9 lbs. 3 oz. and was 21 inches tall. She has lots of dark hair and dark eyes. Her name is Sophie Marie Smith. She is a darling baby and we are so glad that everything went well. Way to go Jeni and Jared. Thanks for bringing more joy into our lives.

These are pictures of our infamous Halloween party. I have to admit I was kind of doubtful about having it at first. But it turned out to be lots of fun. It was well planned and I'm pretty sure that it will be a family tradition.





This is Tonja and Sean, incase you didn't recognize them. Aagh! (pirate and indian)

Michele and Family - Meet Michael Jackson, Chicken Little, the grim reaper, and we can't tell who the other person is he is in camoflage.

Wendy's clan - The french maid, dracula, gothic, and darthvader and little kitty.

Of course there was the pumpkin carving. This is Jakes family, - Mr. clean and the cleaning lady, A dead pirate, a dead gypsey, a leopard and Juliana was a clown.

This is the happy Bugs bunny and Elmer Fudd carving pumpkins.

Juliana and Issybelle. They took the little red chairs to the entryway and spent the night visiting with each other. They were so cute.

The rest of these pictures are of Dad's remodeled house. We are putting it up for sale this week. It is on ksl.com. We repainted and carpeted the whole house except for the washroom. This is the family room.

Grandma's bathroom.

Grandma's bedroom

The frontroom. Paul refinished the wood floor. It looks really nice. The ceilings are also textured throughout the house. It looks nice but it seems really weird to most of the kids to see it. It is in a lot better shape than it used to be.

We just got back from our trip back to the midwest. We had a great time. We were able to see many of the Church History sites. The only draw-back was the many hours we spent driving in the car. But we took along some games that kept us busy and we had a good visit with Michele and Stephen.


Our first stop on our trip Adam-ondi-Ahman. It is a beautiful place. It's the place that Adam will return to one day. We spent Sunday in Independence and went to Church there. Afterward we went to the Visitor's Center and then took a look at the Community of Christ Temple. Then we drove to Liberty Missouri and visited the Liberty Jail. It was a very special place. This i s Dad and I at the Visitor's Center. Tuesday we drove to Keokuk Iowa after spending Monday in Branson. We got settled in our Hotel and and then drove to Carthage and visited the Carthage Jail. It was awesome. Then we tried to find Nauvoo by following the back roads because it was shorter. Big mistake! We did get a great tour of the cornfields of Illinois though. This picture was taken at Carthage Jail. This is the room that the Prophet and his brother were murdered in.

When we arrived at Nauvoo we ate a quick dinner and then went to see the pageant. It began raining and we all prayed that the weather would clear so that we could see it. Just before the pageant started the clouds cleared and it stayed clear through the pageant

Luckily we had one umbrella that Michele and I shared. The guys were on their own. The pageant was really good.

Wednesday we toured Nauvoo. This is the Red-Brick store that Joseph and Emma owned. The Community of Christ Church owns all of Joseph and Emma's property. But we had a good tour through them also.

Wednesday evening we did an endowment session at the temple. It is a beautiful temple. I hope that you will all get the chance to see it someday.

These two pictures are both in front of the temple.

Here we are at the Winter Quarters Visitor's Center in Nebraska. We were on our way home.

This is an outside view of the Winter Quarters temple. It is across the street from the visitor's center.

We had a great time. We were glad to have someone there to enjoy it with us.

Well it is way past time to update this thing. A lot has happened since May. We are home from our mission in Arkansas. We had to come home a few weeks early. Camille's dad was having major health problems. He passed away last night, 16 June 2009 at 8:30pm. He was on hospice at Diane and Stan's house and we and Tim were there with them at the time. It was good for us to come home and be here with him and the family. The Lord gave us his release as we prayed about it before leaving Danville. We miss the people there and really grew to love them and the work. One of our investigators has decided to be baptized next month. Well, this is really short but there is a lot to do today. We will get more information on here as it is available.

Mom and Dad's last pics!!

Mom and Dad went to Graceland.

One of Elvis's memorabilia room's in his house.

The front of his house

Elvis's grave along with his grandma on the left and parents on the right.

Mom and dad at the temple endowment and sealing of the Bode family.

Floyd Avery's Chickens. He has 48,000 chickens in 3 houses

Dad and Floyd Avery. And his dog Wistle.

A galss Chaple. Kind of cool.

Mom at Garvan Gardens

Dad given a thumbs up for the Gardens!

Mom and Dad at the Old Mill in Little Rock.

Aren't they the cutest old missionary couple! Love you Mom and Dad! Can't wait to see you in 2 months and 4 days!!!!

Stuff

Only have a few minutes left but thought I should give a little update. We are trying not to collapse on our run to the finish. We are still working and trying to get more teaching opportunities. Floyd Avery made the big commitment yesterday to come to Sacrament Meeting on Sunday. It helped that Sis. Smith is speaking. He always listens to everything she says. Anyway we are way excited for that. We also have found a couple of very less actives that we are working with. We hope we can get them moving in a positive direction before we leave but then the branch will have to keep it going and they haven't been very helpful with that. Pray for these people please. There are not very many Senior couples coming out now because of the economy or something so it doesn't look like we will get replaced. President has already started closing some areas, even where Elders are because he is getting fewer Elders too. Arkansas is really very pretty in the spring when everything is some shade of green. It has been very wet and we actually have more flooding now than we had after the hurricans last fall. Well I am about to be timed out so I better finish up. We love you all and pray for the Lord to bless you always.
Elder and Sister Smith

Hey, Guess what - this is my first attempt at blogging. I am so excited! It is so fun to read all of your blogs. We are experiencing spring weather in the South with all the rain storms and all the pollen. There is yellow pollen everywhere. We wash our windshield every day - sometimes three times a day - just to get the pollen off. Ther are also lots of flowers and weeds in bloom. There is red clover all along the roadways, and wild flowers in the fields. It really is pretty here in the spring.

We took a trip to the Memphis temple last weekend for our temple anniversary. It was wonderful. We left Friday morning. We got there about 1:00. Our first stop was "Graceland". It is the estate of the late Elvis Presley. It was fun to see all the memorabilia. His house was just normal sized, not huge. It was decorated 70's style. It was on a large parcel of ground though. He had horses and airplanes and lots of motorized toys. Elder Smith thought he was going to be bored but he actually found it kind of interesting. That night we went out to dinner at TGI Fridays and we went to the temple. We were the witnesses. The next morning we did another session at the temple. We had lunch and then started home. On the way home we ran into a huge rain storm. We couldn't hardly see. Luckily everyone slowed down on the freeway and we made it through just fine.

We have had a busy week this last week. We went out visiting and finding people. We finally found a woman that we had tried to find before and as luck would have it, she is a girl scout leader and she sold us some girl scout cookies! They have just about everything here in the South!

The Elders had another baptism this weekend. It was supposed to be on Saturday, but the girl's mother took her to help clean houses and didn't get her back on time. So we had it Sunday after Church. The Spanish people are accepting the Gospel very readily as opposed to the English speaking who are very non-commital. But we still love them. At this point all we have been doing is planting seeds. It would be fun to see some of them bloom but as yet, it hasn't happened.

All is Well!

Well, I thought maybe I had better let everyone know all is well here in Danville. Last night was an awesome storm. There were tornados around and we were on a tornado warning. The closest touch down was about 50 miles away. It killed 3 people and really messed up the town. We got some terrible wind and lots of rain and lightning and thunder. The thunder shook the whole apartment. Our neighbor came across the hall and made sure we were aware of the warning and said he would knock on the door on his way down stairs if we needed to go down. If it happens we will go down into the closet under the stairs but we will have to break the lock on the door. Sounds kind of like Harry Potter. Anyway, we got our emergency bag and pillows and scriptures and Easter candy and put it all by the door, just in case. Fortunately our 7:30 Reading class in Dardanelle was cancelled so we got to stay home or we would have been out in the middle of it at its worst. There are trees down even here in town. Beyond that all is going well. We are still teaching most of the time. Derrick Orrell has said he definately wants to be baptized but he wants to read a lot more of the Book of Mormon first. I hope we get it done before we leave. It is more important that he will be totally committed when he does it than that he get it done before we leave. We went and visited Floyd Avery's chicken farm on Monday. He has 3 chicken houses and each one holds 16,000 chickens. We took pictures and will try to get them to Kellie soon to post. His chickens are ready to send to the processing plant this weekend or the 1st of next week. Then he will have 3 weeks to clean up and get ready for 48,000 more chicks that are 1 day old and the cycle starts over again. It takes 9 weeks to get the day old ones ready for slaughter. We also found out that we are both alergic to chickens. For Sis. Smith it was a 3 pill night. Well, I think that is enough for now. We keep praying for y'all. Love and God Bless.

March update

Well, I guess I should try to update what is happening in the Jungles of Arkansas. I think we are allergic to everything that grows here. We are always stuffed up, red eyed or sneezing. Other than that things are great. We now have 7 investigators that we are teaching. The Branch Presidency has finally decided that they need to spend some time and go out visiting those who have become less active. It will be great to have someone from the branch tell them they are missed and needed rather than just us. Maybe now they will begin to believe it. We had a good day at Church yesterday even though we had to speak. I had a really hard time putting my talk together. When I tried to find scriptures that I thought I wanted or an article or talk I always ended up somewhere else. I kind of got the feeling that the Spirit wanted me to say something different than I thought I should. Anyway, I joted down some of the references and took the Conference Ensign with me and said I would follow the Spirit and trust the Lord. Well, Derrick and Stephanie Orrell and their daughter showed up for church. We were excited and Sis. Smith gave a great talk on the Book of Mormon and the Spirit gave a pretty good talk on believing and exercising faith and as I looked at the Orrells he was looking like, hey you're talking to me aren't you. It was great. We are teaching him again tomorrow and I pray the Spirit can be there again. The work is sometimes hard and sometimes frustrating but always worth the effort. The Spanish Elders asked me yesterday if we had started our D&C count down. That is where you start reading the D&C, 138 days before your release date and read one section per day. I said no. I started the D&C the middle of January and finished it the 3rd week of February. It was great. We love you all and look forward to the hugs and love of home. But the time is moving on and we still have a lot to do. We had a Senior Missionary Activity at the Mission Home Saturday. Some of them talk a lot about places they have been and sites they have seen. They can't believe that we haven't been to all of these places yet. For one thing they are much closer to those places. We are serving in the least populated most isolated area in the mission. The next smallest town to Danville is a little more than twice our size. But, we are greatful we are here and can know and serve with these people. We have too much work to do to have the freetime that some of the others seem to have. President Drewes did tell us Saturday that he expects us to go to the Temple more often. So, we may go this weekend. We haven't decided yet. Well, I have to go and this is way too long. Love y'all. Elder Dad and Sister Mom

Flat Timmy Pictures!

Mom and Dad I can tell had a lot of fun with their grandson visiting them. They took him everywhere.

Mom even made him a suit jacket and dress shoes that he could wear when they went to zone conference and to church. This is Lovisa the exchange student they have been teaching with flat timmy.

Mom and dad are such proud grandparents!

Flat Timmy with Elder and Sister Hinkley and some of the sister missionaries.

AHHHHH!!! Please don't eat me!!
It's never boring with Grandma and Grandpa!

Quick update

Just a quick one today because I spent all my time reading everyone else's. We are doing great. It actually snowed here on Saturday. Nothing stayed on the ground and the flakes were so light it really looked like the same 300,000 flakes just blowing around and around. Anyway some stuck on our car in the parking lot and the neighbor kids were scraping it off and eating it. Yuk! The car was filthy. We are still teaching Floyd, Lovisa and Derrick. We should add the Hills to our teaching pool this week. Lovisa committed yesterday to being baptised as soon as she knows it is true. We will probably get it done in April unless she wants to wait until her parents come from Sweden for her graduation. She is thinking about staying in Arkansas to go to college in Russellville next fall. We are going to take the Spanish missionaries and Flat Timmy to Mt. Magazine this afternoon for some great photos at the highest point in Arkansas. We took Flat Timmy to our Mission Tour meeting last Wednesday and got pictures of him with Pres. Drewes and his wife and Elder Hinckley and his wife. It has been fun having a family member visit. Ok, I have to quit or I won't get this posted before the computer shuts me off. Hope you are all enjoying spring.
Love,
Elder Dad, etc. and Sister Mom, etc.

Howdy Y'all,
Well I have about 18 minutes to try to update what is going on in Arkansas. First of all the weather has been pretty good. We have had at least 4 days in Feb. in the 70's. We are waiting for the tornado season to get into full swing and they keep telling us that we will have a snow storm but I think the one flake we saw in Jan. is going to be it. We have daffodills, crocus' and other things blooming. We are still teaching Floyd, Lovisa and Derrick. Derrick and his wife and daughter (Stephanie and Isabella) came to church yesterday. It was great. They only stayed for Sac. Meeting and S.S. because they thought that was all a 2 year old could take. I think Isabella was disappointed when they got her out of Primary to go home. I hope they come again next week. Lovisa is still progressing slowly. She really has started to feel the Spirit more and is wanting to read more and askes great questions. She has talked to her parents about the Church a little. She said she will be 18 soon and whatever she wants to do will be OK with them. She really is a neat young lady. We had a super strong spiritual lesson with Floyd on Thursday. We were all really feeling it. Then he told us he loves us and really enjoys talking with us and learning. He really is having a hard time with his wife and family and friends. His wife tells him we are not Christian and are a cult. He told her that is not true and that we love Christ just like they do. We gave him a Finding Faith in Christ DVD and asked him to show it to her so it might help her understand how we feel about the Savior. Other things are going great. We couldn't find a referral we had last week. Two days later we went back to try again and the Spirit sent us to a house with a little different address and a similar but different spelling last name. It was the place. The guy wasn't home but we had a great talk with his dad and he invited us back. On Wednesday we are having a mission conference. Elder Hinckley of the Seventy will be here. It will be awesome. Well, my time is about to expire. Hope I haven't bored you all. We love you and pray for the Lord to Bless you always.
Love Elder Dad and Sister Mom

I don't know why the bottom ones are all skeewompus but they are....oh well. ;0

Mom and Dad pictures!!!

Ok everyone mom and dad sent me some pictures! So here you go. They start back with mom's birthday til now. So enjoy!

Mom's B-day! Isn't dad so creative! he he he! 60 - 1. Very clever dad! :)

Whoops great minds think alike! me and dad got mom the same thing.

This is Elder Slichter, Elder Sheffer and Gracie Johnson at their christmas day dinner. Gracie is the one that plays the piano in church on sunday and kind of free styles it. :)

A baptism. Noemi Ultreras, Sarah Munn, Jackson and Jayme Munn and the missionaries.

Dad helping move someone in the branch. And look I sent him his Utah beanie!! looks good daddy!

The ties mom and dad bought the Elders for Christmas. They said the missionaries are really into ugly ties so they went to the DI and got them all a tie.

Mom making her Christmas eve dinner. Yummy!!!

Mom and Dad's Christmas eve dinner.

Christmas morning.

Christmas morning line up. he he he :)

you guys are silly!!

Mom with her new digital frame. (One of them)

Dad with their new lion house cookbook and CD.

All their presents combined.

I didn't show all the individual pics

with presents because that's to many.

But I promise they did it.

Mom looking through her

new cook book deciding

what to make next!