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