Sincerely Sister Smith

Before email: My companion and I were involved in a car crash Saturday night (we were not driving) where neither of us was really hurt. It hit on my companion's side, the airbags deployed, the car was pretty crunched up, but all of us got out okay. My BYU roommate Elyse was in a very bad car crash six days into her mission with lasting damage, and I think about that a lot. We could have died or been paralyzed or had other lifelong or long-term injuries, but we were not. I know God protected me and her. Being an angel must suck. They have to go around wedging their bodies between cars and stuff.  Mostly I'm just annoyed about all the mission bureaucracy in the aftermath. Annoyed that my instinct was to text my mission president before I texted my dad. Annoyed that our roommates, who picked us up afterwards, told their district leader about the crash because they felt, even in a moment of crisis, like they needed to tell an authority figure they'd be home late. Annoyed t...

Dear Loved Ones, First off, shout out to the Kansas City Chiefs for winning the playoff game last night and heading to the Super Bowl! I hope they win and they throw a parade and I somehow get to go. All of Kansas City is obsessed with the Chiefs, but I'm serving in the Arrowhead Stadium First Ward and take the brunt of it. One time I had to drive past the stadium and the crowd of red to get to a pre-set appointment only for us to get there and hear them say, "The game's on." Once their door shut, we had to knock around their complex and face every other Chiefs fan with some better way to spend a Sunday afternoon than talking to us. I better not have to knock doors during the Super Bowl. Quarterback Pat Mahomes is from Whitehouse, Texas and so is my companion. They're probably the only two Whitehouse people in Kansas City right now. She was a freshman when he was a senior so she didn't personally know him, but that connection was enough to garner favor ...

Dear Loved Ones, This Tuesday, in the middle of our visitors' center shift, my usually uptight boss let all the sisters run across the street to tour the community of Christ temple. I toured it when I came to Independence in 2016 and my impressions of it haven't changed much. Very beautiful. Very globally-focused. There's a plaza with tiles shaped like a map of the world and artwork throughout the building pulls from different cultures. Their hymn books have African-American spirituals and foreign language hymns. Piling so many songs together makes them fat as Bibles. Now, it's not a temple. It's an architectural marvel with art along the corridors and an organ in the middle. It's not for ordinances. But they've still made it a sanctuary for worship. They hold a daily prayer for peace in their sanctuary (pictures of the sanctuary will be attached in a separate email) where they pray for a country of the day by name. The country that day was Jordan. ...

Dear Loved Ones, This week, I want to diverge from my usual week in review and talk about missionaries working with members.  It never ceases to amaze me how members of the church can simultaneously hero-worship missionaries and don't want to do missionary work.  We had a correlation meeting with our ward mission leader and he told us that the Prophet is placing renewed emphasis on missionary work this year. He told us and the members assembled at this meeting that he trusted that "God is preparing" people to meet with us. I interrupted. "Can I put a caveat on that? God doesn't prepare people to meet with us. You do."  Barring near-death experiences, your friends aren't going to come up with the desire to find religion on their own. You must prepare them.   A lot of my readership on this email is from the Tithing Hill Ward in Riverton, Utah. If you think there is no work to be done in our ward, let me give two evidences to the contrary: 1. Sy...