Elder Ian James Smith

 September 29, 2025 God is good, everybody! This week was. Absolutely. Insane.  Our ward got changed into a branch. The reason for it is because we don't have any married couples who haven't already been the Bishop in the past. We have a lot of old married families. But they just changed our ward into a branch, so some of the young single adults can be the Branch Presidents. For some context, we did not have a bishopric for my first 8 weeks here in Charleroi. But now we do, so that feels awesome.  The 2 miracles that I'd like to share are with 2 friends. One of them has had the fastest progression I've ever seen in my entire life. We met him outside the gar (train station) just a week and a 1/2 ago, he has now had every single lesson that a missionary can give, including chastity and the word of wisdom. He also is really good at field hockey, we found out recently. Keep him in your prayers. His baptism is on October 25th, we're excited. His name is Julian. Another m...

September 22, 2025 This week was lit, the work here is growing at an incredible rate. We had the opportunity to set four baptismal dates this week! We also were able to see a couple of our friends come to church. One of them was an absolute miracle because we weren't able to get a hold of him until Sunday morning when we called him at like 8:30. Church starts at nine. We also had a surprise guest. There is an elder who came home from his mission for a week to take care of some health problems. But he was able to join us, he was awesome. His name is Elder Cockx. He's going back to his mission this Wednesday. He currently is serving in the Vancouver, Canada mission. But yeah, for the last 4 days we have been a trio in Charleroi. He also has a car which has made it really, really nice to go and visit all these members. We also saw an inactive family come back to church this last Sunday, which was super cool. Yesterday we have a super cool family in the world. And they invited all ...

 September 15, 2025 I'm not gonna lie, all last night there was somebody screaming right outside our apartment. So I am super tired, but I'm gonna hit you guys with what I did this week! It was a super good week. Found a good amount of friends. We had 6 people come to church, which was awesome. We found out that a missionary is coming home who lives in our Charleroi ward. So we're super excited about him, hopefully he'll help us out with all these friends we have to teach now.  Yesterday night was fun. We had a pizza party with a member and 2 of our friends and it was a great time. My companion fell down trying to sit in his chair which was super funny for us all. Then during the pizza party, we had a very good discussion about the temple.  Yesterday was crazy. We missed our bus then we tried to hit a metro, but that got canceled on us. So we decided to walk.Church started in 10 minutes and we were 40 minutes away. I was feeling really down because we were gonna be late...

 September 8, 2025 Hello everyone. Hope your week has been good. I did a lot of things this week, starting out transfers happened. I am now with a new companion named Elder Jones. He is super cool and goofy. We're gonna have a lot of fun together. I can already tell.  And big news from my family, my little sister got her mission call to Mexico, Pachuca! Megan will be an amazing missionary. We went to transfers in Paris. It was fun to see all the other missionaries again! I got my tite de sejour, which means I'm now legal in France. And to cap it all off, we got to eat at 5 Guys sooooooo good! An old friend from the mission sent me a wedding invitation. He's trying to kill me. Charleroi has been awesome. There are so many people to find and teach. Just this last week we had the opportunity to put one of our friends on baptismal date. His name is Benjamin. The baptism is on the 11th of October and we're super excited. He is super cool. He came to church yesterday. He told...

 September 1, 2025 Hello! (And goodbye to Elder Gambe).  This week was crazy. We had a ton of stuff happen to us. One important thing was transfer news. My current companion is now leaving and I am receiving a new companion named Elder Jones.  I love Charleroi so much. There's no other place in the mission where we have so many stories. The members here are super cool. This last Sunday, we were blessed to have 6 friends come to church. And on top of that, a family from Germany came that I translated for. I did not realize how difficult it was to translate from French to English. I have not done it in a while, ever since I left Paris but wow! It was tough especially when the talks were about genealogy and family history work.  For the second hour at church, we had a class with our friends. One thing that really touched our friend. Elodie, was when our member shared a powerful testimony about 3 Nephi 17. It was amazing and you could see the spirit truly touching the he...