Elder Benjamin S. Smith

This was a strange week. My last couple of days in California were great. The highlight is that Greg was reading the Book of Mormon and decided that he wants to be baptized! He's a great guy and I hope I'll be able to reconnect with him in a few years and see what he's accomplished.  Then on Thursday morning I am dropped off at the airport. The trip to Brazil is three flights and takes the whole day, so I arrive in Brazil at 8 am on Friday (4 am Cali time) on maybe 2 hours of sleep. There are some missionaries there to greet me and all is going well as we find our Uber. In the Uber, as any good missionary, my fellow Elder starts talking to the driver. Eventually the conversation moves into a lesson and, like any great missionary, the experienced Elder works hard to get me involved in the lesson. But while dealing with the shock of a new world and going on two hours of sleep my brain was not ready to use Portuguese... So that went... alright. After a while the driver just st...

I got the call, I'm going to Brasil! I'll be flying out next week. I knew these last two weeks would be my last in California, and they were great weeks. We started teaching Greg and I love him already. He came to us with a million and one questions about why we are here and where we come from and what's the point of it all. After a couple of discussions, we invited him to come on a morning walk with some of the members. He accepted, but it turns out that the walk was cancelled because everyone needed to go help clean the building. As a side note, we were cleaning up because in person church is starting here next Sunday. Anyways, Greg ended up coming to help us clean the church before he ever actually attended church and he loved it. He was amazed at the community and the service everyone provides. Since this was my last couple of weeks, I said goodbye to a lot of people I had been teaching for a while. One of these was Janice - such a kind lady. Another family baked some c...

The last couple of weeks went on exchanges with a few other missionaries. During one of these exchanges I found myself switching places with a Mandarin speaking Elder. It's only 30 minutes away, yet an entirely different culture, people, and "feel" of the city. As we walked around and talked with people, I wasn't the most useful, but it was still lots of fun. I could pretend that I was in Taiwan with my brother Dan Smith. The weather is nothing like Taiwan, but that's okay. On a different day, we had a lesson with a kind lady in a park. Her idea of God is very ambiguous. Some powerful force that can't be understood. That understanding makes it hard to imagine having a personal relationship with God. Having that relationship with God is something we've focused on in much of our recent teaching. With new people we've met, we have talked about God being our loving Heavenly Father and we've asked them to pray and say whatever they want - what they are ...