Week 2

Barez dzez dear dear family!!!

I just want to start by saying that I love you all soooo much! You are all wonderful people and I am so grateful to have come from you! Thanks for the package! I love healthy snacks! I haven't opened the wrapped gift yet, Im saving it for Christmas, but I did open the mug cause I wanted some tea!

The week has just flown past sooooo fast!!!! 2 weeks is nothing! I can't believe that if I were going English speaking I would be done at the MTC in a week. That is insane!!! I really don't mind it here (hopefully I will get to love it), so its ok that I am not leaving until february. So I think our departure date was supposed to be the 24th, but our miss pres has some conference or somethign to go to so we will be leaving a week earlier. Crazy!!

Oh, before I forget, do you all remember Elder Matson? (Joshua Matson), he served in Calgary. I totally saw him at the temple last week. So funny. Apparently he works at the MTC so I will try to go say hi to him some time. I finally saw Hannah last night and she and Andrew had put together a gift for me for christmas! They are the best. I love them! Andrew keeps me updated on his love life through dear elders.

So since last week I have just been learning more Armenian. I can now read a little bit better (I don't really know what I am reading, but I at least know what the letters are so I can sound things out). I can also pray, bear my testimony and apparently teach the first letter... but not really. That didn't go over so well haha. We had TRC last night which was supposed to be 45 min ALL in Armenian, but because not enough investigators showed up we only had to do 25 min all in Armenian. I cannot tell how how blessed I feel that it was only 25 min cause that was still SOOOO painful! I thought I was going to be fine. I have all these words memorized and I know how to conjugate into simple present and simple past tense, so I thought I was set. But when I got in there I just had the hardest time remembering anything and I was so nervous. There were many points when we sat in silence trying soooo hard to come up with something to say. Anything! But the sister we were teaching is the sweetest woman ever. I think I mentioned her last week, it was the same woman. She speaks like 6 lanugages and spends hours volunteering at the TRC every week. What a saint. She was encouraging, but still worked to get us to talk. Euf. Anyway... that was fun, and I get to do it again next week, and the week after that... and so on. All in Armenian.

In other news, my teaching and his wife are going to have a baby! Cute! We also found a mini-me of that teacher (bro dixon) in the cafeteria one day. It was this 9 year old kid who was visiting his grandparents, so we took a picture with him. SO funny... but I guess you would have to know bro dixon to realize how funny it is. I 'll tell you all about it to you later when you're older (haha Emmy!)

Thanks so much everyone for your dear elders. I can't tell you how much I love hearing from you all! It brightens my day so much, and my days are already quite bright. Its not always easy being far from home, but I am so grateful that I made the decision to be here. I can see the Lord's hand in my life. I am learning so much and I feel like I have changed so much already. It helps having a companion there that you want to love and to love you... I have to work much harder at being the best I can be cause she doesn't have to love me like you all do! My testimony of the atonement has already grown so much, and because of that my desire to share the gospel with others has grown so much because I understand so much better the change that the atonement can make. Thank you Emily for helping me to see and understand that so much better through the changes that you made in your life. It gives me so much hope for our family and for the people that I will have the oppotunity to teach. I love you all and I know that we are truly children of God!

yes geetem vor Hesoos Kristosu seeroom eh mez!

(I know that Jesus Christ loves us!)

Love you all!

Sister Smith