Elder Calvin B Smith Email 10/18/2010

Dear Family,
This week we had three people at church. Arnold came to church. He is a pretty interesting guy. He seems to believe everything we believe already, but he calls things by different names. For example, he calls the priesthood the anointing, and the holy ghost and light of Christ the "Christness". He also told us that he believes that we can become like Christ. It has been really fun to teach him. He does not have a baptismal date yet because he is just visiting from New Jersey. He is trying to buy a house here so he can retire. He explained that the cost of living here is much lower than New Jersey so that's why he wants to move down here. After he buys his home he plans to go back up to New Jersey while the home is being remodeled. We are not quite sure what kind of time line he is on. He is really interested in being baptized so that he can receive the gift of the holy ghost. Vivian also came to church. This was her third time at church. She really enjoys it and she knows that she needs to be baptized. She is working on stopping smoking and drinking coffee.

I really enjoyed reading from this month's temple edition of the ensign. It was wonderful. I really liked the articles and how simply they explained the importance of the temple. I really hope that I will make time when I get home to attend the temple often. I wonder if there are any statistics out there that show how much work is done at each temple for the dead or on temple attendance. Or it might be cool to know how many names are processed each year by the church as a whole. It seems like everywhere I go people are trying to lay claim to the title of the busiest temple in the world. While I was in California, it seemed like soon after the Newport beach temple was dedicated it was said that it was one of the busiest temples, but then temple attendance went down drastically until they had to close a few sessions during the week. While I was in Provo, the MTC boasted that they are next to one of the busiest temples in the world because of the proximity of BYU and the MTC. While I have been here in South Carolina one of the couples that was really into Family history work told us that the South Carolina Columbia temple was one of the most active temples, performing more ordinances than other temples in the area. So I was wondering how all that was measured, or if there is any list of the number of ordinances performed available. If there is a list, I would like to know about it. I am excited to read the conference edition of the ensign comes out.
Love,
Elder Calvin Smith


PS. Cameron, why do you say that Columbus day should really be Viking day? Really, it should be Jaredite day right? The Jaredites came to the Americas long before Columbus did.