I've been in the same square mile for 37 days.

 CRAZY WEEK 

So a ton of missionaries got reassigned temporarily to state missions because their visas haven't come through yet. An elder in my zone got reassigned to Nashville, so to all my tennesseans, if you see an Elder Prusse tell him Sister Smoot says "yeehaw". No worries though because everyone I know going into my mission got their visas! Seriously a miracle. My roommate Tenille who has been reassigned to SLC for the past three transfers got her visa as well and is going to be joining me in the field!!! I miss that girl. Tender mercy for sure.

I'm still in shock it's already pday. These upcoming days are gonna fly by! On Wednesday all the filipino missionaries are leaving to manila that have their visas and it is sooo unreal!! I am definitely not ready but I know that Heavenly Father is gonna be right by my side the whole journey. 

We had two birthdays in our district, so for Elder Wilson's bday we ate 100 chicken tenders as a district (i literally had 4) and then today is Elder Ingram's bday and this morning for breakfast we did the tower challenge. The tower challenge is when you eat all of the cereal out of the dispenser haha it was so awkward because so much attention was drawn towards us and the manager even came out to tell us that we were using too many cups?? okay??? We finished in like 30 minutes lmao. Each person was supposed to have 3 cups each but i literally had 1 1/2 and made the elders pick up my slack. They love me ;) but on a real note, I'm going to miss my district sooo much. I think the hardest part of me having to leave the mtc is no doubt gonna be having to leave all of them. okay lang, theyre all gonna thrive in the ppines.

It's crazy to think that I've only been here for like 5 weeks. I have learned sooo much spiritually in the amount of time being here. One of my favorite things about the MTC is in the new buildings they have huge murals with a scripture by them. I'll attach my favorite mural below. SOBRANG MAGANDA. 

Since this week was wild with the new reassignments and everyone checking everyday to see if their visa had come, our teacher shared a general conference talk 'Called to the Work' by Elder Bednar. I have been pondering a lot about how he said that "you are called to the work. you were not 'called' to the place. you are assigned to the place." read it. its mabuti

alam ko nang totoo ang ebanghelyo

oh also, one of the elders in my district falls asleep just as much, if not, more than me. Who would've thought it was possible? not me. I am not a lost cause. 

& its week 6 here, yet I still accidentally call Sister Robertson, Riley. What can ya do

tell everyone you love them, palagi pumili ng tama (lmao idek grammar ppines is gonna be lit @jed @ty)  

MAHAL KITA magbabasa Mosiah 17

xoxo Sister Smooty

-wings

- the gang this mornin breakin records lol

-district hangin in the rain for 2 hours here at the PCP

-we made fun of sis rob for wearing a night gown so her mom gave us some and sis rob forced us to wear them ;)

-maganda

- my tunes put her to sleep. everyday.

I've been in the same square mile for 37 days.

CRAZY WEEK

So a ton of missionaries got reassigned temporarily to state missions because their visas haven't come through yet. An elder in my zone got reassigned to Nashville, so to all my tennesseans, if you see an Elder Prusse tell him Sister Smoot says "yeehaw". No worries though because everyone I know going into my mission got their visas! Seriously a miracle. My roommate Tenille who has been reassigned to SLC for the past three transfers got her visa as well and is going to be joining me in the field!!! I miss that girl. Tender mercy for sure.

I'm still in shock it's already pday. These upcoming days are gonna fly by! On Wednesday all the filipino missionaries are leaving to manila that have their visas and it is sooo unreal!! I am definitely not ready but I know that Heavenly Father is gonna be right by my side the whole journey. 

We had two birthdays in our district, so for Elder Wilson's bday we ate 100 chicken tenders as a district (i literally had 4) and then today is Elder Ingram's bday and this morning for breakfast we did the tower challenge. The tower challenge is when you eat all of the cereal out of the dispenser haha it was so awkward because so much attention was drawn towards us and the manager even came out to tell us that we were using too many cups?? okay??? We finished in like 30 minutes lmao. Each person was supposed to have 3 cups each but i literally had 1 1/2 and made the elders pick up my slack. They love me ;) but on a real note, I'm going to miss my district sooo much. I think the hardest part of me having to leave the mtc is no doubt gonna be having to leave all of them. okay lang, theyre all gonna thrive in the ppines.

It's crazy to think that I've only been here for like 5 weeks. I have learned sooo much spiritually in the amount of time being here. One of my favorite things about the MTC is in the new buildings they have huge murals with a scripture by them. I'll attach my favorite mural below. SOBRANG MAGANDA. 

Since this week was wild with the new reassignments and everyone checking everyday to see if their visa had come, our teacher shared a general conference talk 'Called to the Work' by Elder Bednar. I have been pondering a lot about how he said that "you are called to the work. you were not 'called' to the place. you are assigned to the place." read it. its mabuti

alam ko nang totoo ang ebanghelyo

oh also, one of the elders in my district falls asleep just as much, if not, more than me. Who would've thought it was possible? not me. I am not a lost cause. 

& its week 6 here, yet I still accidentally call Sister Robertson, Riley. What can ya do

tell everyone you love them, palagi pumili ng tama (lmao idek grammar ppines is gonna be lit @jed @ty)  

MAHAL KITA magbabasa Mosiah 17

xoxo Sister Smooty

-wings

- the gang this mornin breakin records lol

-district hangin in the rain for 2 hours here at the PCP

-we made fun of sis rob for wearing a night gown so her mom gave us some and sis rob forced us to wear them ;)

-maganda

- my tunes put her to sleep. everyday.

one month anniversary yeehaw

Kamusta po!! 

I seriously cant believe its already pday. This week flew. I also might be getting my flight itinerary today, hopefully. SO NUTS. Lowkey freaking out, but this week has made me sooo excited to actually get to the Philippines. 

On Sunday, we were extremely lucky to have President Ballard come and speak to us for our devotional. I guess it's pretty rare that any general authority comes and speaks since July is their vacation month, but Pres Ballard kept telling us how he felt prompted to share a message. He even used the teleprompter to make sure he wouldn't leave anything out because it was so important! 

He spoke a lot about Joseph & Hyrum Smith. MY FAVORITE. 

Oh, also guess what dad? I sang in the choir too lol. Don't get too stoked though because so did 850 other missionaries. The choir director, Brother Egit, is AMAZING. Half the time we aren't even singing because he just shares some super cool spiritual stories. He talked about a family of ducks he saw trying to jump some curb, and all of them succeeded except one duckling. That little guy just kept on jumping and jumping for like 10 min straight, and then eventually got up. (Note that the mom didn't help at all, or else the chick wouldn't be able to know how to do things on it's own) He compared us to that chick and the momma duck to God. One thing he said that Ive been thinking a lot about this week was that "Sometimes God will be there to pick you up, and sometimes he just knows you can do it. Whatever hardship you're going through or will go through, will change your life. He is there, but sometimes He just lets you jump. He knows when you can, and when you can't, and how much help to give you. Just keep praying." hit me real good. 

We are skyping people from the philippines tonight and teaching a lesson so wish me luck because sis rob is mabuti in the language and I am medio lmao. joke lang but not really.

love you all 

pray, ctr, & if you see Indie give him some love for me 

-Momma, you're gonna be proud because I finally made some filipino gfs. The one on the right is just like me. White and uncultured lol. the one on the left is sassy haha. Full filipino & sobrang funny. 

-one week left with the district and im gonna miss the cute little elders 

utah sunsets are so pretty ah i love the west

Love you and dad so so much

Hey so I'm in a workshop class right now able to email and they asked us who we've been thinking about that we could help, and since you emailed me last pday about Brady, I was thinking a lot about his question "If the Lord needed me to be on my mission, why does it feel like he's left me?" Or something like that. And so I sent you a letter in the mail that I feel like would help you since I know you care a lot about him. It helped me answer that question and the spirit was pretty overwhelming when I w as learning about it. It was about Joseph Smith in liberty jail. When I was reading and talking about it with my district, I thought a lot about Brady because I seriously cant imagine what he's going through. Missions are sooo hard. I gtg times up, so Imk if it helped at all when you get the letter. I love you!!!

half way mark baby

kamusta pamylia

It is CRAZY that it is already pday. Seriously. I feel like I was just emailing yesterday. Not much has happened really. We have classes everyday, exercise everyday, pray everyday, i fall asleep every where everyday, you know. 

Its really amazing here, and the language is coming along I think. Definitely not fluent, but gift of tongues will come. We are learning about the grammar and i literally feel like im in chemistry class because of the way our teacher is teaching it to us haha. Tagalog has less letters than english, and so ALL THE WORDS SOUND THE SAME. Its fine though. 

Yesterday we were learning about Joseph Smith and how he translated The Book of Mormon,  & wow I LOVE Joseph Smith history. Its so intriguing to me and seriously sooo fascinating. I love how Joseph Smith's faith was so strong. Why would people have so much hatred toward some teenager?  He got tarred and feathered, had to move, went through tons of persecution, SOBRANG MARAMING (A LOT!!)  of trials in his life for this church. Eventually, he gave his life for this gospel as well. Even the three witnesses, while most of them weren't lifelong members, NEVER denied their witnesses and they knew that the things that Joseph had taught were true. It is so flabbergasting to me I just can't even imagine all the faith that was required for that task. 

Ang Aklat ni Mormon is true everyone

Also, when we came to the MTC our zone was all newbies, and so this eek we finally got some new missionaries going to the philippines as well! I definitely need to kick it up a notch on my SYL (speaking your language) because i am struggling lol the field is gonna be rough 

oh my branch president was an FBI undercover cop so thats lit

love u all choose the right and pray always, 

sister shmoot (one of the elders thought this was my name for 2 weeks)

- the zone

-​​weekly district pic

- I MISSED UTAH SUNSETS 

- stay hydrated

- this is where kasama ko & I listen to holy music bc we are deprived here at the mtc

Hello you guys never reply

 

	Fri, Jul 6, 2018, 5:36 PM

I just wanted to share a cool experience with you guys. So last week was our last time going to the temple and I fell asleep during the session ( whats new ) anyways, not the point. I was in the Celestial Room praying and telling Heavenly Father how I need help for this next week. I asked him to help me not be as frustrated with the language and that I needed help to feel like I am adequate enough for this. I was just sitting there thinking about if the other sisters wanted to leave the room or not, and was like "ehh should I pick up the Book of Mormon? i always do.. nahh." and then a guy put one down and i was like "shoot, full send" so I picked it up and coincidentally (not coincidentally) opened up to D&C 3. Oh my goodness i got shivers throughout my whole body. It says how frustration is not of God and it is of man. Read the rest before bed one night or something because I dont remember everything it says, but it was a HUGE strength and comfort to me. Answer to my prayers!

I have another experience that happened. Last night I was writing in my journal and it was 9:30PM. I had a thought to go to Katies room to get some food and was like "what the. no megan, its so late youre not eating before bed." and the thought kept occurring but i was stubborn and didnt want to feel fat haha. Then a few min later katie came into my room crying. She had a really hard day and needed someone and I was too selfish to go to her room!! I felt so bad for not listening to the spirit and even apologized to katie. Always listen to the spirit and dont hesitate!! 

I love you guys. Email me back or ill be sad. Give Indie a kiss for me. 

Charmaine Smoot <charmaine.smoot@gmail.com>	Fri, Jul 6, 2018, 5:51 PM
to Megan

Those are such cool stories!! I'm so happy you're having all these neat experiences. That makes me sad that Katie was having a rough day. Give her a hug for me!!!!

kamusta po pamilia

Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 11:15 AM

whattup pamilia. idek if the subject was the right way of saying "hello family" hahaha good luck on the drive home. Give the poochies a kiss for me, but please dont kill indie. Give him some AC in the car or he will die because hes going through a lot right now since im gone. ;) hindi joke lang (not joking) okay send pics and write me on dear elder. I need some love.

Megan Smoot <smoot.megan@myldsmail.net>	Jul 6, 2018, 9:51 AM
to me, Dad, Morgan, Braden, Ammon, Ethan

hello fam. so apparently isis is getting into other countries by using religion visas and so its harder to get your visa now. and theres sooooo many philippine missionaries so the chances of me getting temporarily reassigned are very high. there are some who got reassigned who were supposed to leave this week and 4/12 of their district are going straight to the philippines. another elder has been here for SIX MONTHS. 6 MONTHS?!?"!?!? id literally die. so yeah guess we will see

These are my favorite elders in our district. They call themselves the twins. They literally remind me of ammon and ethan because one is the sweetest boy on earth and the other one is sweet, but doesnt let others know and acts like hes a tough guy haha I LOVE THEM theyre so funny

elder winder and elder ingram. theyre the only elders in our district that have girlfriends hahaha

ELDER GOODRICH IS SO SWEET. Hes my third fav elder. He is such a good guy. WHenever the elders are doing something stupid he will be like " uh you guys probably shouldnt be doing that" hes so cute. Reminds me of braden when he was innocent. and it takes forever to write okay??? 

ARE YOU TRANSLATING FOR HER?

Megan Smoot

  Attachments 

Fri, Jul 6, 2018, 4:50 PM 

 Whattup whattup friends and fam?? Hope you all had a great 4th of July. Here at the MTC we got to stay up past 10:30PM. :) livin the life :) For real, it was mediocre. They served nasty food though & that was definitely a bummer but the best part was that we were able to see all of the fireworks going off through out the whole valley and front row to stadium of fire fireworks so that was sick. Sunday we watched a devotional by Elder Holland on "Missions are Forever" and SANTOS (holy) COW it was amazing. Listening to that talk honestly helped my week run more smoothly. He put a lot of different things into perspective about our attitudes toward our missions and literally the whole talk I just needed to hear, so Heavenly Father definitely answered my prayers on that one. One thing that I absolutely LOVED was when he was explaining why missions are so hard. He said that he has asked that question for years, and doesn't know the right answer, but shared with us an answer that satisfied him. He said that the reason is because "Salvation is not a cheap experience"... woah... he then added on saying "Why would it be easy for us, when it was never easy for Him?" (referring to Jesus Christ & His Atonement) I WAS SHOOK. Elder Holland is such an amazing speaker ahh I wish I could write down everything he said. I know that this is going to be the hardest thing I have ever done, but it is going to be SO worth it. We had TRC's on Monday which is when we teach a lesson in 100% tagalog to members that volunteered to be taught by us. We had to teach two 20 min lessons. Sis Rob and I were a little nervous because we had only been in the MTC for about a week and a half so our tagalog is very rough lol. The first member we taught was an older filipina woman. I made a mistake by telling her that my mom was filipino, making me half. Sis Rob and I had a whole lesson planned and got to probably our first two bullet points. The woman was laughing. so. hard. She reminded me of my family and honestly, im not even joking when I say that we were all in tears from laughing so hard. She thought that the way we said things was so funny. And then Sis Rob was teaching, and I wasn't following what she said so i whispered in english "what did you just say" and she told me then the member stopped and said "wait... did she just translate for you? you're half filipino and SHE translated for YOU?? Im just imagining your mom sitting right here laughing with us!!" me: haha... my mom doesnt know that much either.. haha.. im half filipino and so when i get to the philippines theyre gonna think im fluent. RIP. im just a basic white girl who is actually brown :/ (or as dad would say, a coconut lmao) All in all the lessons went well. Well, the best a lesson could go for knowing 5% of Tagalog. We also taught our teacher who pretends to be a "person we teach" (PMG changed things so we no longer call them investigators) and he goes by Jesse Bueno. I SWEAR this is probably our teachers favorite part of his job. I think he loves being Jesse Bueno more than he loves being himself. he is sooo serious and never breaks character. We planned a lesson on Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon and he asked us so many questions that our vocab could not answer. It was supposed to be a 20 min lesson but he was throwing us so many curve balls that we were in there for 45 min legit digging holes for ourselves. He was asking us why The Book of Mormon testifies that Joseph Smith was a prophet and I knew exactly what to say in English, but I dont even know how to say " i am a missionary" in tagalog, let alone the word "translated" hahaha we literally walked out of the room laughing so hard. But honestly, if we gave that lesson last week I would've been bawling right after feeling discouraged. Now, we just laugh about it and try to realize that it doesnt matter if we are fluent or not, the real teacher is the Holy Ghost. I have received so much comfort from friends and fam at home. And I definitely feel all your guys' prayers. Thank you SO MUCH i love all of you and am truly blessed. oh also... I broke the news to the elders. I told them I was narcoleptic.There was no reaction. haha surprising right?? joke lang. Then, one of the elders told our teacher out of random and bro higgins didnt know what it was?? him: talaga? (really?) odd. Thats all. No one was surprised lol. its gotten bad so ive had to come up with some ideas to keep me awake-- pic provided below Hope you all have a good week! 

Miss all of you.

 Pray always xoxo Sis Smoot 1. LOL

2. Class all day every day yeehaw 

3. just tryin to get our vocab in so we can tell jesse how joseph smith received the golden plates amirite 4. tatts for the fourth lmao

Re: Insta Comment

 I posted a little quote from your email with pics today.

MOM: It's so cute!! And I have gotten a lot of people asking how you're doing in the ward. Even Jason Beaird said that he really enjoys reading your emails. They're funny and spiritual. :)

Megan:hahaha oh good i try to give the people what they want ;)