Week 49- Kalėdų Sezonas (Christmas Season)

 

Hello Everyone,

Short Version: Another week of cold wet days. It's not as cold as I was expecting but still cold enough that you don't want to forget your gloves at home. We've been working with Darius and Ieva and they're continuing to progress. We also had a zone conference which was literally just 6 hours of games with everyone and then eating a Christmas-y lunch together. The roads are really icy and I will be surprised if nobody breaks a bone from slipping soon.

Long Version: It's been a harder week than most. The Christmas cheer eases a lot of the hardness, but it's not fun to be away from family and friends during the holidays. It's a really unique experience not really celebrating the way I'm used to, but I'll savor it while I'm here because I have the rest of my life to enjoy being with family and friends. 

      We went caroling as a zone since everyone was here for zone conference. Everyone was thrown off why a big group of Americans were singing Christmas songs but they liked it. We sang in English which was a bummer, Lithuanian is way more fun to sing than English.

       They got Domino's Pizza in Lithuania. It tastes WAY better than American Domino's pizza but it comes at a cost of about 15 USD for one regular pizza. I was extremely disappointed to see the prices because the cheese they use tastes amazing and the crust is better. It's probably good that it's so expensive or else I would eat too much pizza, more than I already do.

         Speaking of fine cheeses, I started buying brie cheese from the store so I guess you could say I'm a true European now. My taste palette has remarkably improved, all from just eating some cheese. When you see me after the mission wearing a French beret and sipping on a glass of red, non-alcoholic wine, you'll understand why. 

         Danielius, one of two young men in the branch, has actually started talking to me just because he wants to. Usually he'll come to activities and play games or watch tv on his phone but he was really talkative the last activity and we had a regular conversation and it was really nice. He's not talkative most of the time so it's awesome whenever he decides he wants to chat. The other young man in the branch, Arturas was the only one at church yesterday for the second hour of church in the young men's quorum. I feel bad because his dad is branch president which means he's the young men's leader so the young men's meeting was Arturas, his dad, and they invited us to spice things up. I'm glad that I wasn't the only young man in the ward back at home. Church with friends is so much better.

       If any of you saw on my facebook, the most recent Facebook live I posted, I hope you didn't read the caption. For some reason, the word for prayer in Lithuanian "malda" got automatically translated to a very bad English swear word. If you saw that, I'm sorry. I have edited the post by now so it's no longer there. 

        Our friend Turalcik keeps coming to church online because he lives in Alytus. He's a funny guy, always shows up to church shirtless at the zoom meeting. I don't know if he doesn't realize his camera is on or if he just doesn't care but the branch president has started referring to him as our "naked friend." Turalcik is struggling with some health problems so if you wouldn't mind praying for him, that'd be awesome. 

      

Here's a great BYU Speech I loved reading again this week, it's called "Be 100% Responsible." It's a classic, useful for gospel living and daily life. Applicable and helpful for all.

"Being 100 percent responsible is accepting yourself as the person in control of your life. If others are at fault and need to change before further progress is made, then you are at their mercy and they are in control over the positive outcomes or desired results in your life. Agency and responsibility are inseparably connected. You cannot avoid responsibility without also diminishing agency. Mercy and justice are also inseparable. You cannot deny the Lord’s justice without also impeding His mercy. Oh, how Satan loves to divide complementary principles and laugh at the resulting devastation!

I invite each one of you to eliminate the anti-responsibility or anti-faith list from your life, even when you are right! It is an anti-happy and an anti-success list even when you are right. It is not a list for the valiant sons and daughters of God who are seeking to become more like Him. It is one of Satan’s foremost tools in controlling and destroying lives. The day a person eliminates the list from their life is the day they regain control over positive outcomes from that point on, and they begin moving forward in the light at an accelerated pace" -Lynn G Robbins

Have a great week,

Elder Smith