Elder Ian James Smith

 April 25, 2025 Everyone we went to Costco! Here's what I got:  Krustez pancake mix  Tabasco sauce  Pants  24 diet Pepsi May be one of the greatest p-days of all time! Then of course the food court:  Pizza  chicken bake  soda.  Shout out Elder Palmer's Mom who gave him a Costco card.  We had zone conference this week which was awesome. But I got tricked by our APs. I'm sitting near the back in-between two Elders, then our mission President calls for two volunteer Elders to come up. Our APs told me that I should go up, so my young naive self raised my hand to go up to the front. That's when President and his tape happened. We were talking, trying to do a role play with 2 other missionaries and all the sudden our mouths gets taped up and so do we! I have a video on my google photo album of it it's a good time.  On a missionary note we were able to get 9 friends to church this last week that was an absolute miracle! And we have a bapti...

 April 21, 2025 By far the craziest week of my mission!!  I'll just take you from Tuesday to Thursday  Tuesday I called the cops. It was late and we just got done with a lesson with one of our friends (who is a little crazy). So we get done with this lesson and all of the sudden I see this guy sitting on the church entrance right outside. His hands were on his head and there was some blood on his knuckles and he was telling us all these crazy things. Anyway, our friend looks at me and says "it's a demon", so she puts her hand on his head and repeats something in her native language (Dutch). In the end, we didn't know what to do so we just called the emergency line and had some police officers take him to a psychiatric hospital. So that was my Tuesday. Wednesday we got lost trying to get home, then on Thursday we went to Institute (which is like a class for all the young adults in the Paris area). This drunk guy walks in and has some problem with the seminary direc...

 April 14, 2025 Bonjour à tous, Here are a couple of awesome (and slightly embarrassing) experiences from this week. I went on an exchange with a Chinese speaking elder. He told me that "Wa Fung Pila" meant "my name is". So, at the start of a Chinese class at the institute building, I confidently announced, "Wa Fung Pila," only to realize it actually means "I farted." So, I accidentally told the whole class I farted. On a brighter note, we had an incredible lesson with our friend Melissa, who is truly amazing! She has two children, and after an awesome discussion, we set her baptism date for the 27th! What's super cool is that Melissa is a highly skilled judo fighter, competing and winning at the international level. Also, this Saturday, we're going to the temple with Zeinab, and we’re all really looking forward to it. She received her temple recommend yesterday at church and is genuinely super excited. Zeinab also made the most incredibl...

 April 7, 2025 Hello Everyone, General conference! This is the second time it's happened on my mission and I was still in training the first time. I can definitely see my love and anticipation for General conference grow as I've been on my mission longer. I loved these last sessions.  One funny story happened this week for April fools and I was the recipient. I have a video that I will put in my google photos. Long story short: one member of my 4 man apartment figured out a way to take the wood support beams out from under my bed. I'm on the top bunk so he took them all out so my bed was just sitting there on top of 2 metal bars barely supported on each side. In order to get onto my bed you kinda have to jump up, so I finish doing my task and try and hop up onto my bed and I just fell straight through the bed frame! Props to Elder Lee, it had to take some commitment to do that.  As far as missionary work goes, the two notable things were Kenney and Joseph. We were able to...