Week 2 in Smyrna!

Elder Mitchell with President and Sister Andersen

Hola!

My second week in the field. Whew. Life in Smyrna is pretty good. A typical day pretty much goes like this: wake up, have studies, do an hour of additional study for the 12-week training, then language study. After lunch, we usually spend most of our time tracting, with a teaching visit here and there. After dinner, it's back to the streets to do more tracting. (We do a LOT of tracting). It's often hard to set appointments with the Spanish people, because they work so much and have crazy schedules. So we do a lot of drop-by visits, which sometimes works, and sometimes doesn't. But whenever our plans fall through, there's always more tracting!!

We've been trying to see a number of investigators, but not with much success. Our most promising is H, but we weren't able to see him this week. We've also been trying multiple people who are just kind of stuck on the first lesson. It's hard to get people to progress. Yesterday though, we found a new guy named J, and he seemed very interested in our message. We do have one other investigator, R, and she is doing well.

We had a lesson with R on Wednesday about faith, repentance, and baptism. We committed her to be baptized, and she said she would, but she didn't understand why it was important, because she's already been baptized in the Pentecostal church. We invited her to pray about it, and she said that she would. It was a really good lesson though. If I've learned anything this week, it's that serving in the Bible-Belt is no small task. So many people reject us, and I'm not sure how many times I heard, "No, soy Catholico." (No, sorry, I'm Catholic) this week. We also have lots of people come up and talk to us. Sometimes it's good, sometimes bad. People definitely recognize us as missionaries. It was funny, in Murfreesboro this week, someone pulled up to us and said in the most polite way, "Ya know, y’all need to get out of the Mormon Church fast as ya can." I just kinda laughed. It happens a lot, there’s a lot of persecution. It's hard with investigators, because many feel that they've already accepted Christ, and that they don't need to do anything else. It's been a little bit of a rough week. Most of our plans fell through this week. We are working very hard here, and trying our best to be obedient, but sometimes, that just happens.

There was some good to this week though. President and Sister Andersen visited our district meeting this week. We had interviews with President. We also had a great surprise! While we were in the middle of a role play, Elder Z comes in and says, "Elder Mitchell, we need you!" (Elder A was in his interview, and they needed a Spanish Elder). This family had walked into the church off the street, and so I was just excited, I said, "Hola, como esta?" The man looked at me funny and said, "Ummm..do you speak English?" (Elder Z thought that they were Spanish.....but they weren't Spanish.....awkward.) I said, "Oh, yeah. Of course". Anyways, it was a little embarrassing, but it was cool, because they were actually from Bethlehem! They sell little Nativities made from Olive wood, and they just like going around visiting Christian churches. They were actually a really cool family. Sister Andersen talked with them and handled it like a pro. She talked to them about the Book of Mormon, and invited them to church, and they seemed super interested! It's not all that often when the investigators come to you, so it was pretty cool.

On Friday we had a Zone meeting. The ZL's are pretty cool, and they gave some great training. Also, after Zone meeting, I got my I-pad! It's pretty cool. You have the whole gospel library on it, all the Mormon message videos, the area book, the planner. It really makes it simple to keep track of all the people and all the things that you have to get done. My I-pad is mostly functional, but there's a bug on it that won't allow the email to work yet. Other than that, it's working well. Hopefully they fix the email feature on mine soon. It really is a blessing to have technology assisting us in our work as missionaries.

On Sunday we had ward conference. We had a combined English-Spanish ward council, as well as other meetings with stake leaders. The 2nd Counselor in the Stake (Pres. Pennington) speaks really good Spanish, as well as one of the high council members. It was great to have them come teach us. During Sacrament, President Pennington and Presidente Rivera spoke. I'm still having some trouble understanding, so I'm not super sure on what they talked about, but I'm sure it was good! After the meeting, Presidente Miranda (the 1st counselor in the branch) asked if I would give a talk next week. So that should be fun.

Hopefully this week goes a little better for us. We just gotta keep working at it. Hope you are all doing well. With much love,

Elder Mitchell