Elder Ian James Smith

April 28, 2026 Bonjour a tous! I hope you're doing great! This week was totally miraculous. We had some really cool experiences and honestly. It was an amazing week. I got counsel from my mission President to live for each and every moment, so that's what I'm trying to do, just soak up all the time that I have.  Today was super fun. We got to go to the temple. It's about the first time I've been to a temple session in a little over 16 months. Total spiritual refresh. Went to the same session with a goated missionary who helped explain some cool things about the temple that I missed before. Then we're finishing off today, by going to a member's house, the Castros are amazing members.  This week was filled with a lot of funny stories. On Sunday, we saw some miracles with our friends coming to church, and Anna was baptized. She was so prepared. Gonna be an awesome help for the missionaries.  On Wednesday, we went out finding and one person that Elder Jones and ...

April 21, 2026 This week was amazing. A lot of really cool things happened to us.  To start off, last Tuesday, we went and played volleyball with a bunch of other missionaries in Paris. It was so fun. Definitely should start practicing a little bit more. I hadn't played volleyball in a minute but it was so fun. We ended up having to run back to the bus after volleyball, but I entered in the wrong door and I got controlled, luckily, the guy was really nice and so I didn't have to pay a fine hallelujah. It was my second to last zone conference. Probably one of my most memorable. The formations that were given were super memorable. One involved my mission son coming through the window as an angel. I got a video on my google photos if you want to watch. We finished Wednesday off with some awesome lessons.  On Thursday we had a pretty normal day we just had to go make sure one of our members had not died but she's all good  Friday we had a temple tour with our friend Carlingto...

April 14, 2026 Saint-Ouen this week was pretty standard. I'm just having a blast with my companion in Paris. Honestly, my life feels like a movie. And there's always new seasons coming out every single hour! This ward here is absolutely amazing. There's so much faith, there's also a lot of members. We fill up the entire chapel each Sunday. And some people have to sit outside the chapel. We have some really cool miracles with some of our friends coming back. This last Sunday, we had a friend named Carlington come out of the blue. He's a super funny guy from Zimbabwe. He's very short and he has a ton of energy. It's really fun to be around him. He introduces himself to every member of the ward, even though he doesn't speak any French. We're going to the temple with him this Friday. Can't wait to see his reaction to the temple.  On Wednesday, we called a reference. And you can tell that she was genuinely looking for the truth. So we did a 2 hour les...

  We back !!!!! We made it back to Paris. This will probably be my last area on my mission and it's an absolutely awesome place called Saint-Ouen. The ward here is absolutely amazing. They have a ton of faith and a good amount of young adults in the ward, so it's really easy to integrate our friends. I'm super pumped to work in Saint-Ouen for the next couple weeks. I wanted to share with you about our friends in Brussels. This was an absolute miracle and one of the biggest faith inspiring moments of my mission. Their names are Jackson and Olga they are new here in from Africa. But their living conditions are not good whatsoever. They are still trying to figure everything out.  We do in person lessons at their house. It is a 10 foot by 10 foot room where the bed is most of the room, they also have a 3 year old daughter. So we gave our message to them it was super powerful all about the gospel of Christ. We fixed a baptismal date! Well as we were leaving these people who have...