Sincerely Sister Smith

Dear Loved Ones,  A couple days ago, my companion and I were coming  back from a walk when a car pulled into the Liberty Jail parking lot. I saw two men wearing masks inside and assumes they must be elders  because those are the only people we ever see. But they flagged us down,so we pulled on our masks, ran over to inspect, and found that they were visitors. One of them had felt in October that he needed to make a pilgrimage out to Missouri to visit church history sites. He recruited his friend to go along with him. Way way back in October, he prayed about the date he should come and received the answer that he should come from April 22nd to April 29th. To make the trip, he figured he needed two things: that week off work and $1200 to fund  their travel.  And then coronavirus shut down his work, and the government gave him $1200.  But it shut down the jail, too. Recently we've been told we can't even go inside. Which is illogical, really. If we're...

Dear Loved Ones, This will be the quickest email of my life because I want to hurry and go hang out at Jesse James's hometown with missionary friends before hanging out gets banned. We will be under quarantine until May 15th, making my total captivity about eight weeks.  I am grateful to have been called to an American mission. At first I thought that would be the ultimate form of validation, if i got sent abroad after being told that i couldn't serve for so long. Officially classed outside of the ranks of "too weak to serve foreign." But I love it here. I loved singing the national anthem at a Royals game last year, browsing Kansas City's World War I Museum, the pioneer heritage in random statues of oxen and second street signs below the normal one telling me I'm driving down what used to be the Santa Fe Trail. And most of all, I love Zion. Towards the beginning of my mission, I kept getting asked why we needed the Book of Mormon. Nobody cares that it...

Dear Loved Ones, I want the bulk of this email this week to focus on the Savior because it's Easter. I've been listing some Savior insights for a while, so here they are. I think it might have been on the Savior's mind, as he went about healing people, that he was alleviating pain he would one day feel. So whenever he saw a leper, he might have winced at the thought of someday suffering leprosy and wanted to take the pain away from the leper, and also from himself.  And no one ever atoned for his pain. There's no record of him ever having been sick, but probably he got injured at some point in his life. That pain was his alone and so was his crucifixion. A while back, I had carpal tunnel surgery on both hands. I don't recommend this. I was handless for two weeks. I was in a New Testament class at the time, and after I scheduled the surgery, my teacher spent a solid three days talking about the crucifixion process (and skipped over the resurrection entirely,...

Dear Loved Ones, Quarantine is rough, but I am still able to teach people and the great kinda-perk of my life is that I'm one of the only people with a key to Liberty Jail right now. Bet Joseph Smith wished he had a key to Liberty Jail. On this day, April 6, 1839, Joseph and his fellow prisoners left the jail for the hearing and were able to escape ten days later. I've been thinking about him a lot. I watched part of conference in the computer room in the jail basement. I counted two direct references to Liberty Jail and one quote about it. One of my goals I set when I first came to Missouri (one year ago this week) was to figure out Liberty Jail. I don't know that I'll ever be able to give tours there now with the jail currently being closed and the short time I have left, so I stand on the stairs in our house that put me next to the window with a view of the jail and think about him. Everyone always talks about how the experiences he suffered there-under lockdown...

April 3 As churches are temporarily shutting down due to coronavirus, I've heard of many other churches that are meeting online. While I'm grateful that believers around the world are still finding ways to gather together in this difficult time, I feel like they're missing the entire point of Sundays. Church isn't sermons or singing or sharing scriptures. We've always, always, been able to do that at home. The gospel library app has videos of talks from prophets and church leaders dating back 49 years. Thousands of them. If you want to bring preaching into your home, there's no shortage of content. But we met in person to take the sacrament. The broken bread and water stand for the body and blood of Jesus Christ. His sacrifice for us. The torn bread harkens back to covenants in Old Testament times, when animals were killed and divided as people make vows to each other. Two weeks ago, I drove from Grain Valley to Warresburg, Missouri, a round trip of about...

Dear Loved Ones, I lost another companion this week. Friday morning, we got a call telling Sister Coronado that she's being reassigned to Mexico. That meant I had to pack up all the stuff I could, leave other stuff behind, and move to Liberty in the boarding house for lost sisters. I could be here a while. I could be here for a week. I just want to be in Grain Valley again. But I can't go there until my fill-in companion and I (she also lost a companion to Mexico) both get new companions. This week did have a bright spot. My little brother Jacob submitted his mission papers three Thursdays ago, the very day church was canceled and the world fell apart. I couldn't believe the timing. It reminds me of my friend whose Japanese great-grandparents immigrated to the United States the same day Calvin Coolidge siged the Asian Exclusion Act. I felt like a character in a historical novel, connected with all the right kinds of people to give myself a front row seat of disaste...