He explained exactly how I felt without me saying a word

Nov 3, 2014

Hey there Family!

Usually I start out every letter talking about the date and how time just flies by but today we are not even going there today. i am in denial.

This week has probably been the most memorable week of my mission, and my life. I wish I could explain exactly why, but i can't. But I'll get to that.

Well Monday we had special exchanges because Tuesday morning we had a special training for all the district leaders. The other district leader came here to work with me in Casa Blanca. I learned that his companion, Elder Pearson played water polo for Kearns so that was cool and he also did ODP. Anyway I was super grateful for that training because I learned so much and I had a lot of prayers answered. 

This week I have really tried to be very motivated and it has really payed off! I've seen so many blessing, and we are finding so much! But there have been a lot of hard things. T

here was an incident that went down on Thursday. One of the missionaries in my district is going through a very hard time and I have been aware of it for some time now, but this week it has been particularly worse. Let's just say I have never had to make so many calls to the President in one week! It has seriously been a very odd experience. Well I don't really know what else to say about it but we've all just been super uncertain about what is going to happen next. On Friday, Halloween, I had to visit the house of the zone leaders, because of what went down and we couldn't go home because we all had to be indoors after 6 cause I guess Halloween is super dangerous here or something like that. Well Elder Aleman and I had to stay the night in the zone leaders house. So there's my only Halloween on the mission for ya. 


With everything that has been going on, I've just felt really distracted. I feel like these problems are taking my focus away from the work. We also had interviews with the Presidente this week. That was something that I really needed. To my amazement he was able to explain exactly how I felt without me saying a word. He helped me realize how these experiences would help me grow and will be a blessing for me and this missionary. He made some pretty awesome promises to me. I left feeling even more motivated. Well that's what's gone down. Sorry if I left you all with a lot of questions but oh well. 

The only picture that I have made me laugh because everybody pronounces my name wrong. Because of the double L, they pronounce smiley haha but I don't complain! I like being the Elder Smiley!

Love you all so much!

Elder Smalley

shoutout to Spencer! congrats on getting your Eagle!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!