June 21, 2021

From Dad - A trip to Grandpa and Grandma's

Hi Elder Smith!

I imagine you are getting used to the title by now. We were excited to talk to you today.

It’s been a busy week this week. I was grateful this week to spend a few days with my parents. It’s been an uphill battle for them as Grandpa recovers and mom and I thought it would be good to spend some time with them and help out around their acreage. With Covid and not having anyone else around much I think they were getting lonely and started doing crazy things like buying a brand new Mazda CX-9 SUV.

We spent lots of time figuring out all of its bells and whistles.

It was fun to see how excited Grandpa was to buy Grandma a brand new car.

We got lots done around the place. Working with my parents was a real joy. There is relationship magic in working and creating together.

We hooked up irrigation, started some new fencing

Put together deck furniture

Visited great Grandma Smith. She is doing quite well physically though she says she misses Grandpa a lot and often finds herself asking him a question before she remembers he's not there. She has a great hope for the day she will see him again. That is the part of the great message you bear, Ben, to bring hope of life after death and the opportunity to live together forever as a family.

We enjoyed watching the Bectell kids play softball for the Stake youth day. So nice to see things going somewhat back to normal. Rachel is graduating this year. She and her friends got together for pictures on Saturday night in their beautiful grad dresses.

She had a small scare during softball when the ball careened off her bat and hit her square in the nose. Luckily it only bled a little and didn’t bruise in time for pictures.

We enjoyed watching Mia’s streamed play at the Bectell’s. She belted out her song flawlessly. The streaming was a little glitchy so apparently they posted it to YouTube. Not sure if you have access to YouTube so I'll try to pick out a few clips to send to you next week.

We’re proud of you Ben. You are choosing a great work, a work that brings a healing balm to the whole world, even the balm of the atonement of Jesus Christ to an ailing and confused world.

I love the advice President Hinkleys father gave him when he was struggling. “Forget yourself and go to work”.

Love you lots.

Dad.

From Ben - Greener than a pickle

My dear family and friends. Oh boy.

This first week has been something special. So far, I've fallen asleep on the floor twice and have had not the slightest idea what to say on three different occasions. Gotta love it.

My first companion's name is Elder Sorenson. He's this legendary missionary that the mission president speaks highly of, everybody knows, and has hair like Clark Kent's. I love him. He's one of the last Americans on the mission and his favorite Marvel superhero is, you guessed it, Captain America.

Me and him are what they call "Bluewashing" an area. It's basically Whitewashing, but instead of replacing two elders, we are replacing two sisters (how they expect us to match the ability of sisters, I do not know) and so we're both doing our best to adjust to our area and try to be as cool as sisters, a near impossible task.

We're covering three branches: Trenton, Belleville, and Napanee. The demographic is mainly a whole bunch of wizened seniors; for which, I am grateful (the amount of food these loving grandparent types give is astounding.) We went to visit this one old guy named Ralph Boomhaour (everyone calls him Boomie,) when he opened the door, he had this eye patch on and a sly look in his one eye. When I told him I had only been out for a couple days he said

"So you're a greeny eh? We're going to have a fun time with you..."

What an absolute legend.

He made me a banana cream pie and Elder Sorenson a cream cheese raspberry pie - in a nut shell, I'll probably leave this area a rotund, fattened, happy missionary.

One of the coolest experiences of the week was meeting Elma.

She had requested a Book of Mormon online so we went to go deliver it. We pulled up to this sketchy apartment building with some dodgy graffiti and some interesting characters hanging around (Elder Sorenson is buff though, so I wasn't scared of getting mugged.)

A kind lady, who seemed amazingly out of place in this dodgy setting, let us in. The first thing Elma proclaimed when she opened the door was "I've got some questions for you!'

Long story short, she's on date to get Baptized on July 17th.

She had some concerns for a friend of hers who had recently passed away and wondered about the condition of his soul. We talked of Baptism and Baptisms for the dead. She wanted to work towards baptism so she could be the one who got to be baptized in his place for him. Cool stuff.

It's been a hoot!

There's so much to say, but this will have to do for now. Love you all!

- Elder Smith

1. Elder Sorenson dunking over me for a picture we needed to send into the Zone Leaders to let them know we made it to our apartment.