Hey Family!
You were right, preparation day was moved to today, Tuesday, so that we could email in the library. This last week has been pretty eventful. I had my first baptismal interview this week up in Cheraw. It went well and the Cheraw Elders' investigator was baptized this last Saturday and was confirmed Sunday. While I was in Cheraw I went on an exchange with the Elders in my district. One of the Elders got really sick while I was on an exchange. He had a fever and the chills. We gave him a blessing and he started to feel better, but he said that he was still feeling the residual effects of the illness when I talked to him last night. I was excited to give a baptismal interview, it was a really neat experience!
Among several people we taught this week we started teaching the mother of a recent convert. We had an awesome lesson and she really hit it off with the fellow-shipper that we arranged for her. The member in the ward that we have arranged as her fellow-shipper is a really awesome lady. She even drove our new investigator down to a doctor's appointment - a 40 minute drive away. We have put her on a baptismal date of March 6th, and we are really praying that she will be baptized.
Story time:
Earlier last week during morning studies I had a frightening experience. Mornings can often be difficult for me - as Mom can testify, having dealt with me many mornings before early morning seminary, I am not a morning person. So one morning, after I had prayed, exercised, showered, eaten, and had "Sacred Grove time", I started my studies. I was studying out of the large quad that Grandma Smith gave me before I left on my mission, totally engrossed in a difficult passage in the Bible that had been discussed a few days prior. While I was studying, squinting at the small text, my eyes still blurred from sleep - I saw a huge "palmetto bug" scurry across the very text I was trying to study! I leaped out of my chair and yelled - my companion, half awake, broke his glazed over stare at his scriptures, alarmed at my sudden out burst. Noticing his great alarm I sheepishly explained that a Cockroach, or "palmetto bug" (As we call them here) had run across my scriptures. My companion chuckled and returned back to his scriptures, uninterested in my problem. I had a roach on my quad. I managed to flick the roach, with a piece of paper, off my quad and onto the ground. I stomped on the roach with vengeance, upset that my study had been disturbed by such a disgusting little bug. When I peered under my shoe, I found nothing. I was certain that I had stepped on the roach! I looked at the white carpet, then at my shoe and saw no evidence of that crafty little booger. Oh well, I just hope I don't see it again.
I hope mom's surgery goes ok, I will be praying for her. Watch for a package I will be sending in the mail. The Bible included in it has seen better days, so I am sending it home, sorry no note is inside. You can throw it away if you want, it doesn't mean as much to me as does the Book of Mormon I had sent home a few weeks ago. I will leave the choice up to you. The real reason I am sending home that package is another object that is included - I will leave it to be a surprise. I hope you enjoy it!
My studies have been really brought to life as I have begun to memorize one of my favorite general conference talks: "Safety for the Soul" by Elder Holland. If you pull up the talk you can see where I am at in memorizing it. I started memorizing at the beginning and right now I am about 1/3 of the way through the talk at the part which says "Love, healing, help, hope, the power of Christ to counter all troubles in all times, including the end of times. That is the safe harbor God wants for us in personal or public days of despair. This is the message with which the Book of Mormon begins and that is the message with which it ends, calling all to come unto Christ and be perfected in him. That phrase taken from Moroni's final lines of testimony, written 1,000 years after Lehi's vision, is a dying man's testimony of the only true way." (I just memorized that last section yesterday and typed it from memory) I was able to memorize that far from the beginning of the talk in one week, and I hope that I can memorize the rest of the talk in another three to four weeks. It gets harder to memorize as I get farther into the talk, because it gets harder to link together passages when you already have so much memorized. Right now it takes 5 minutes of talking at a pretty good clip to get through what I have memorized. I am doing the memorization hoping that it will help me to better be able to teach people about the Book of Mormon. Now, I wouldn't recite the entire 15 minute talk on a door step word for word, but maybe take an excerpt at a time and talk about it in a lesson.
To answer your question:
I have not played the organ for this ward yet, but I have played the piano for general opening priesthood.
I received the valentines package on Saturday and I am really enjoying it. Thank you for the chocolate and the sugar cookies!
Love,
Elder Calvin Smith
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