Elder Benjamin S. Smith

Elder Miller and I did a lot of teaching the past couple of weeks, which is always a great experience. We've taught people online, over the phone, in their homes, in the church parking lot, on the doorstep, and any other way we find. We've been able to have spiritual experiences and bless the lives of people who are struggling which has been exciting.  We also got to take out a cement wall in someone's home which was so much fun. Elder Smith

  Elder Miller and I were able to do a lot of service this week. We scratched glue off of a floor from a carpet installed 50 years or so ago, we helped build a small fence, and we packaged some boxes for storage at a food bank. Service opportunities are great experiences especially because of the people we can talk to during them and the life experiences we hear about. We also started street contacting. My companion and I have never street contacted before but we just went for it and it worked fairly well. We also went on splits with the Zone Leaders so that they could train us both on street contacting. During that training we saw a lot of Halloween decorations. It was so much fun. We were also able to help a few people out. One guy in particular called us a few hours after we spoke with him just to let us know how much our conversation meant to him. It was a special experience. Elder Smith

This week Elder Ramirez moved to East LA and I stayed here and received Elder Miller right out of at home MTC. It was fun to remember my first week out here as I saw him go through the same experiences.  One of those experiences was his first lesson. Of course he was very nervous approaching the door and meeting everyone, but once the lesson got moving he knew what to do. The spirit was strong as we testified of truth and our friend said that he felt something last time we came but this time was just wow. After the lesson Elder Miller was so excited to continue working hard.  Elder Miller is a distance runner and he was called to Brazil, so we both know some Portuguese. This week we are going to try to start speaking in Portuguese to each other.  Elder Smith