November 19

Meanwhile in Gospel Principles class.. 
Tanner (teacher): Today we are going to talk about family responsibilities. What positive examples have you seen of mothers raising their children?
America (member): My mom is everything to me because my dad was never really in the picture.
Tyrell (our friend): Yeah, cuz like, in a sense, you can have a lot of different dads but only one mom.
*pause
Daquan/ Nyquan (our friend. He prefers to be called Nyquan because he likes to turn the lights out on people): Yeah, cuz she gave birth to you mhmm. 
Thank you, Nyquan. Thank you. 

Elder. Bennett (of the 70) came to our mission this week!!! Much inspiration he brought to us. One of the main themes I took away was 'this is the harvest!!' I think far too often thus far on my mission i've used "planting seeds" as an excuse not to try harder to listen or understand some people, especially in contacts. But the truth of it is, there have been seeds planted in the heart of my mission since the church was restored almost 200 years ago. God needs missionaries that will make the extra sacrifices to nurture the seeds and HARVEST! No excuses or justifications! AH! 

Snow!! It snowed! 😁 I may or may not have shed a tear. So happy. 

Walking around Crystal City one evening (Amazon chose Crystal City as 1/2 of their east coast headquarters, along with Queens N.Y., & it's the talk of the town.) We met this girl from Jordan. She only spoke Arabic but we were able to help her download gospel library and switch the language to Arabic so she could read the Book of Mormon. She was so excited! I LOVE LIVING IN 2018. 

Picture this: It's the evening of a snowy day in old town Alexandria. Our lessons fell through for the night (& our dinner) so we knock down the line ready to share the best message in the entire universe. No one  cares to listen the whole night. Our toes are about to fall off from the cold. BUT we are literally the happiest little beans you've ever seen. Skipping from door to door. WHY? HOW? If this was a temporal deal that would've been an awful night. Our power doesn't come from this world!! We are walking with angels! THE CHURCH IS SO TRUE.

It's the assumption that everyone here is foreign & I've been mistaken for being Russian more than once. Interesting. 

Virginia has every possible walk of life (okay not really but it feels that way sometimes) our 7-11 on the corner has been doing free drinks before they start their remodel (getting fancy for Amazon) it's been funny to watch because all the homeless friends, all the political friends, all the Pentagon friends, all the foreign uber driver friends #theamericandream (etc) all enjoy free drinks, of course! It seems 7-11 is bringing the world together faster than the missionaries. ;)

Love you all & hope you all have a fantabulous Thanksgiving! 
I am so thankful for the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ in my life. It's everything. God loves you all so SO much! 

Much Love: Sister. Izzy Smith 

   Winter!.mp4

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