Where do I begin?! This has been the craziest, most fun, awesome, incredible week of possibly my whole mission! Ok I have only been out for 3 months, but still...

We taught a guy who speaks Mandarin; the language barrier made it kind of hard, but he gave us good pointer on how to teach people coming from his background.  We taught him when I was on an exchange with Sister H.

Our District Meeting was on Thursday which coincided with my 3 month anniversary in the mission field.  I had been asked to teach on the Area Book and Reporting Tools. WHAT?! You are giving me 2 hours (1 hour on Wed, and then another on Thurs during Personal Study) to plan this lesson? Trainings are hard because it is for the other missionaries. I think I would much rather teach members or investigators, but oh well!  The lesson went well; the Spirit truly teaches!  All of us sister missionaries wore white shirts and ties to this meeting.  It was really fun and the elders were all laughing and shaking their heads!  Love it!

On Saturday we we woke up early, got the other sisters and then headed up to our Stake Presidents house. Sister D had breakfast ready for us, because we were going to go up to the mountains to gather wood as a service project.  I love being in the mountains; being in nature is wonderful!  So we headed up for about an hour or so, got to Colorado and we loaded huge things of wood into trucks! It was SO MUCH FUN! We tossed logs to each other and staked them up in huge trucks. The elders stacked huge 8 foot logs (poles/trees) on a flat bed. We were by a lake, it was very pretty. We ate lunch up there, and then headed back down to Wyoming. On our way back we got a text from P: "I had an event today that really strengthened my testimony."  We set up a time to meet with her on Sunday so she could tell us about it.

At district meeting on Sunday I found out that I will be training a new missionary, and that I’m staying in the current ward in which I’m serving!  I am so excited!  Then I received a call from one of the assistants to the Mission President.
“Hi, I am calling on behalf of President Brown. He wants you to train this transfer.”
“Yes, I just found out!”
“Well, we have something to tell you about the sister you will be training.”
“Ok...”
“She has been assigned to speak Spanish.  We don't have enough Spanish speaking sisters to train, and President wants you to train her. Will you commit to being obedient and to have language study with her every day?”

He continued to give me some more instructions and then we finished the call.  Wow! This training assignment just got 10 times cooler! I get to train a sister who has been assigned to our mission to speak Spanish. I have not been re-assigned to speak Spanish :( but that's ok! I get to learn Spanish for the next 6 weeks! We are going to find some Spanish speaking investigators/ families so she can teach them in Spanish!

We also found out that there will now be two districts in my town, and 16 missionaries total. Missionaries galore! SWEETNESS!

On Sunday I helped my companion pack for her transfer to Colorado.  We went to church and then met with P.  She told us her experience from the day before.  I love her so much!  She truly knows the gospel is true and was able to testify to someone about it, and she wanted to share that with us.  She is incredible!

On Monday we headed to Fort Collins and stopped at the temple lot.  The groundbreaking is this Saturday.  It’s very exciting to have a temple being built in our mission.  We continued on to the stake center where I met my greenie, in a fur coat.  Yes, I really did it;  it happened to be in one of the vehicles the Elders brought and was from Salvation Army, so I wore it when I came into the room and gave her a hug! Way to make an entrance and a good first impression right?! It was hilarious! My new companion, Hermana S, is AMAZING! She came directly from the Mexico MTC (where she learned Spanish) and then all the way to Colorado, then to Wyoming all in one day! Poor Hermana! This wonderful Hermana has never taught the lessons in English, and I will help her with that, and she can teach me some Espanol. I AM SO EXCITED! I wanted to learn Spanish for my mission, so here is my chance. I want to be able to bear my testimony in Spanish, how cool would that be?!

Well, I am excited for what this new transfer has in store! I want to see some wonderful people be baptized! I love you all, thanks for everything!!

Love,
Sister Kelly Smith

 P. S. This was my dodgeball outfit for an activity on P Day....