January 25, 2016 - Come What May and Love It - Last Email

Allyson Smoot <allyson.smoot@myldsmail.net>	Mon, Jan 25, 2016, 10:50 AM
to Steve, Stephen, Jessica, Hannah, Megan, ashley.smoot, Ashley, Sierra, Derek, Corinn, me, braithwaitebryn

My freind hanna (returned sister julien) explained what the last mission of the week felt like by comparing it to the Do-do birds in Ice Age. The all think the end is coming and are FLIPPING out about these 3 melons that they have as food stock. They lose one by one and when they are left with one they all start screaming, THE LAST MELON. I thought it was a very aproprate analogy for my brain at this moment. My head has been exploding with the usual thoughts of "Did i do enough? Did i work hard enough? Did i enjoy it enough? Did i learn what i was supposed to learn?" Then on top of it my half chilean heart is being torn in a million peices while the aticipation of seeing you all is making me so excited I don´t know what to do. All the while i´m trying to stay focused on finding, teaching and baptizing. Basically it´s been a good week.

We saw a lot of miracles this week. We were actually able to have a few lessons and we are seeing a little progress. I left my bag on a bus during a comp exchange. They have a certain bus rout that they follow all day long so we ended up praying really hard and asking every bus that came to the stop for about 2 hours. And then suddenly when i was about to just give up, one of the bus drivers hoppèd out and opened the trunk of the little bus and gave me my suitcase. I couldn´t even say anything. DIOS EXISTE! We also had an church open house to find new investigators and all of the six missionaries made typical food from their country and we gave tours of the chapel. It had very little planning but we ended up having a really good time and finding quite a few people. (I made SO much chili -hehe- and it was a success)

I know thise last missionary letters are supposed to be an amazing summary of all the things that i´ve learned but that would be literally impossilbe. But one of the themes that stuck out this week, enlaced among the many, are described in two phrases from our dear apostles:

Come what may and love it (Wirthlin)

Foreveor is Composed of Now (Uchtdorf)

There are so many things that we learn as missionaries and as children of God. So many mistakes we´ve made. Regrets. Problems. Experiencias of Joy. Of pain. Beginnings. Endings. Continuations. Laughter. MOments where we´re so tire we´d just rather fall over and die. And moments we wish would last forever. And beofre we realize it, all of them are suddenly in the past. And all of those little experiences make up our eternity.

I don´t want to life my eternity focused on my mistakes and the "should haves" and the "could haves." I want to focus on being the best i can now, and loveing whatever comes my way. Enjoying. Now, I wish i could say that after 18 months i can apply this perfectly and that i have a total eternal perspective and I´m happy all the time becuase of it. But i´m still just a human, 20 year old kid that´s learned a lot and strengthened her testimony. And who still as MUCH to learn. But that´s what life is. On big learning experience to make us more like our heavenly father. But even though I lack a lot of knowledge, there are a few things i do know now. And I want everyone in the world to know. I know that my savior lives. His atonements stretches far beyond my understanding. His restored gospel is on the earth once again and we have leaders and prophets that are guided by him. The book of mormon testifies of him and i know that it´s true. It has helped me so much. I love my savior. And hope to continue onward progressing, becoming the daughter he wants me to be.

I love you all so much and thank you for all the support that i have recieved. I can´t even begin to thank you enough.

See you soon

Love,

Hermana Smoot

Jan 18, 2016 La Prueba de Fe

 Hello one and all,

Despite the denial that I am clearly in with respect to the date, I'm doing great. It's funny though because in the morning for personal studies I write the date in my journal and i have double checked it every single day the week. I can't really accept it. But hey, that's just life.

This week was really funny and tiring...mainly becuase all of our investigadors decided to disappear just as all of our goals were so high and our enthusiasm had peaked. But heavenly father knew what he was doing. At the beginning of the week i went on an exchange with the other sisters in our ward that we live with and it was awesome. We had like a million lessons and they have a ton of people with a baptismal date... and i felt really bad for feeling jealous of them. We are really struggling number-wise and it's funny becuase we are supposedly supposed to be the example....

We kept working hard and i was just getting more and more frustrated becuase nothing was turning out right. And we were SO tired from all the walking and stressing.

So on thursday during weekly planning we literally spent roughly 2 hours on the "plans to find new investigators" and tried to think of every way possible to change what we have been doing to get different results. And then, we worked. And contacted and worked. and walked and used different tactics and prayed and prayed and.....did i say pray? haha. But at the end of the week we finally started having few lessons. We FINALLY had a member present lesson and our appointment yesterday didn{t fall through! We found her the other day outside her house and she is awesome.  :) her name is carolina and she WILL be baptized. I just know it. 

Sometimes life is just funny and we are doing all that we can (which tends to be very little) but still nothing seems to go right.  And we just wonder, what else is there? What can i do? when really, we are doing everything that heavenly father want us to be doing. He is just testing our faithfulness and letting us grow and learn. And that, my friends, is the purpose of this wonderfully crazy beautiful life here. I hope I can remember that even in the darkest times :) 

I love you so much. ALL of you. I hope everything went well with the funeral. I love aunt charlene and will always remember how Grandma told me that the three of them always sang trios in the feilds of their canadian farm where they grew up. :) I'm sure she{s singing praises up with her sweetheart and meeting all the people that she's helped over the years.

Have a beautiful week :)

Love

Hermana Smoot