Una vonga de bonano

Service project: demolition and painting

Week of intense goodness.

First we had the Zone Leaders meeting.  Awesome.  Planned stuff, talked about stuff, reported stuff,  ate stuff, good stuff.

While I was there I saw... Elder O!!!! My Brazilian comp from La Masica!!! Que macizo. He is the ZL in Olanchito, but he finishes his mission in like 2 weeks... and it was so sweet catching up with him. He told me some pretty amazing stuff.

Elder Smart and Elder O

For example, one of my converts (R) from la Masica, completed a year as a member and has just submitted her mission papers to be able to be a missionary as well!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That is the coolest thing ever. Hermana R is going to be a MISSIONARY! 

Hermana R's baptism last year

Then we had interviews with Presidente Klein!  We got to chill with Big Pres all day.  That means that we didn't get to be in our area, but we interviewed and reviewed the area book of every missionary in our zone... It took all day... But it was awesome.

The next day we did some chopping like every week.  I’m getting good. Then we went on divisions again.

But then! We had our zone service activity. Every Christmas the mission makes a movie about being Christ-like and doing service, with pics and video clips of all the zones doing cool stuff and serving. What we did was we went to  a local school and painted doors, windows and walls, then did some gardening, then broke up some concrete floor so that they can pour a new floor. It was all great stuff. We'll see how the video turns out.

Tearing up a cement floor

Paint on the name tag... looks like Star Wars opening credits

Then the best part. Baptisms.

We baptized Hermana Y (next to Elder Coj). She is the wife of one of the men who were murdered in the past few weeks.  They were going to get married, so that they could be baptized but couldn't take out the last paper to make it final, but then the gangs killed the husband. Hermana Y has been through a ton, and was more than ready to be baptized so that she could fulfill a part of the plan that God has for us.  She misses her husband but knows now that she can do his work for him on this earth through the temple. It was awesome. The other lady we baptized was taught by the Hermanas (sister missionaries). She was baptised as well. The other lady with red hair with the kids is the mom of W, the returned missionary that was killed the same night.  She and Hermana Y always spend time together because of their losses and because they are neighbors.

Week of blessing.

Romans 15:4

4. For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.

MACIZO+

Elder Smart