Hey y'all, Another great week flew by, seriously where did November go?!?
well at least I have evidence that it happened based off of these little weekly email things, but otherwise I'd hardly believe that 7 more days just passed by!!
check it out!
....
Morgan followed us over to the Dunn’s for a family home evening with their family. It was so fun, talked about humility, he was a little nervous at first, but it soon lightened up and he told us that his favorite part was playing apples to apples with them all at the end. We were a little nervous at the end when the Dunn’s started talking a lot about polygamy and such, but Morgan didn't skip a beat, he’d already researched that and learned about how it was needed for a time, and that God had commanded it. He’s so great!
We’d texted him about how he was feeling about the Dunn’s and his baptism and we almost died with every text he sent, I’m just going to type it word for word.
Morgan: I’m feeling good about it grandma (his grandma in Utah) and I discussed it some and she fully agrees with y’all that I shouldn't wait any longer. She also, like y’all told me that the doubt is the devil trying to convince me that I shouldn't go through with it. So hearing it from y’all and her, and based on how I feel as I've been progressing I feel fairly confident about doing it the 20th!! Sis Burbank and I were going nuts, he’s the best!! He sent a bunch more about how the gospel has been blessing his life, how he feels when he studies from the scriptures, how much he wants his family to accept this, and so much more:)
The Lincoln lesson was a blast, and I’m so glad Sis Harvey was there. You’d never know that she’s a newer missionary, which is how it should be. She had a member tell her once that she “looked” like a greenie, that you could tell her companion was a long time experienced and seasoned missionary, but that Sis Harvey looked “green”. I told her that wasn't true, and that being told you’re green is a compliment. I had a good friend give me the advice before I came out in the field to “stay green”. No matter how long you’ve been out stay that on fire, obedient, humble, submissive, always looking to improve green missionary.
But anyways with the Lincolns we taught the 10 commandments and had them break up in groups, learn about a few commandments and then present a mini lesson. At the end I taught them the hand signals to remember the 10 commandments with, then we did a game where I would call out a number, commandment or do the hand sign and they’d have to give which commandment was associated with it. I was able to give Gabbie my little picture I drew for her, along with the CTR earrings my mom gave me, and she loved them and put them in right away!
-went on 3 exchanges this week, with my favorite Sis Harvey from Kaysville, Sis Vaifanua from Cali (haha, nobody messes with her here, because she's Samoan, haha, but alot of people mistake her for being black), and Sis Mathias my favorite German sister!
Aw man! We went over to Elena’s for smores, and due to the fact that the fire kept EXPLODING, we got a little distracted and weren't able to include a lesson. That bothered me, but I’ll make sure to make it a priority next time. Her logs she had were wet, so when the water heated up the pressure would build then WHAMO! Explosion complete with plumes of sparks and flying coal. It was quite exciting, and made smore making a dangerous activity. It really was pretty scary though, eventually we backed away, not far enough though, I got hit in the head with a big chunk of wood, and Sis Burbank got burned when a small piece of coal fell down her shirt, it was so crazy! Haha, something really crazy for me was that she just made the fire on her back patio, didn’t clear the area, didn’t worry about the piles of dry leaves everywhere, it’s so humid they don’t have a real fear of wild fires starting up. I’m not in Utah anymore that’s for sure, haha, she kept laughing at Sis Burbank and I because we were nervous about not having a firepit, or about all of the dry leaves just hanging around, or the fact that the fire kept exploding and burning logs would fly all over the lawn, we even heard one fly up and hit the roof.
I'm, so grateful for everything! But that's a silly cop out, I've found a lot of joy as I pray more specifically. Today I'm especially grateful for my Heavenly Father's grand plan to help us learn how to make decisions. Yes he wants us to rely on him, but he duly wants us to become like him so that we may know in each situation what decision He would make.
Gee whiz there are some good days ahead!
hope y'all have some too!
LOVE,
Sister Smith
Love y'all!
Monday, November 24, 2014
Monday, November 17, 2014
I'm Dreamin' of a White Christmas the Missionary way
I'm dreaming of a white Christmas!..haha, but not like the ones I used to know in utah with snow and what-not. Well the snow would be nice, who knows maybe we'll get a little this year! But what I'm ever so excited about is the baptism that'll be happening dec 27 with morgan in his WHITE baptismal suit.
Sis burbank and I keep asking ourselves how have we been blessed with such an awesome, elect person to teach??
Morgan came with us to Bishop Walker’s home for an FHE lesson with the Walker family. It was so perfect, their family is amazing and it was cool to see Morgan participating in the lesson, and not being afraid to speak up. I was eavesdropping when bishop was talking with Morgan about going to institute, Morgan seemed pretty interested!
A few days earlier we'd committed Morgan to watch at least one talk by President Monson, the next day he texted us and said that he'd read 2 already. He told us how he could feel the power of the spirit when he spoke. He also made the connection that whenever he reads the Book of Mormon he feels good and peaceful and that he gets the exact same feeling when he'd study President Monson's talks! so cool!
I had such a joyful surprise, our first lesson of the exchange was with Becky! miracle moment!! I had taught Becky back when I was with Sis Willis, she’s the sister of a less active/recent convert in our ward (Paula). She’s the greatest, always has a fabulous analogy on hand to relate to what we’re teaching her. We even committed her to baptism, and then she moved back home and I hadn’t seen her since. Becky lives on the edge of the Walterboro sisters area so they’d only had a chance to meet with her once. She was surprised to see me standing behind Sis Allen. It was such a joyful reunion, similar to when the sons of mosiah are reunited after their missions, and our joy was even greater because she’s still interested in baptism and learning more. We went over the plan of salvation again, and she told us how it answered so many questions. I’m so grateful for the plan, and even more grateful that our Heavenly Father decided to let us in on the plan and gave us a few details about what’s happened, what’s happening and what will be happening in His planJ Becky committed to prepare for her baptism for Dec. 13th.
Sis Burbank and I were able to spend a whole whopping hour together, and then we swapped again and I headed out to James Island with the lovely Sis Kayla Stout. I was so glad to be with her, I came out with her and I’ve never really gotten to know her besides the few nights we stayed in a hotel together at the beginning of our mission.
We got to teach a man who may or may not have multiple personalities, but he's super intelligent and has a desire to learn.
Sunday was Sis Burbanks birthday! yup, the big 2-1!! we celebrated with a big breakfast with the other sisters and then running off to our regular Sunday meetings. It was SUCH a good day, we had Kitt, Alysa, Gerald, Alyssa (#2), the Haynes family, Elena and Morgan all at church!
Love y'all so much! How blessed are we to have the gospel of Jesus Christ in our lives, I know that it's through our savior that we can truly "lay hold upon every good thing". Through the enabling power of the atonement I'm able to have the strength to change and improve, and when I fall short I know that the redeeming power of the atonement is there to cleanse me.
It was a little disheartening to meet with a less active woman sunday, she'd been raised in the church, her parents were converts. She attended BYU-i, and byu hawaii, sealed in the temple, her husband converted. But because of the world, and some anti-material she's now fallen away, and not just from the church, but she no longer believes there's a Savior or a Heavenly Father who loves us and cares about every aspect of our lives. What a way to live?
Go out and spread the love y'all!!
signing out!
Sister Smith!!
Sis burbank and I keep asking ourselves how have we been blessed with such an awesome, elect person to teach??
Morgan came with us to Bishop Walker’s home for an FHE lesson with the Walker family. It was so perfect, their family is amazing and it was cool to see Morgan participating in the lesson, and not being afraid to speak up. I was eavesdropping when bishop was talking with Morgan about going to institute, Morgan seemed pretty interested!
A few days earlier we'd committed Morgan to watch at least one talk by President Monson, the next day he texted us and said that he'd read 2 already. He told us how he could feel the power of the spirit when he spoke. He also made the connection that whenever he reads the Book of Mormon he feels good and peaceful and that he gets the exact same feeling when he'd study President Monson's talks! so cool!
I had such a joyful surprise, our first lesson of the exchange was with Becky! miracle moment!! I had taught Becky back when I was with Sis Willis, she’s the sister of a less active/recent convert in our ward (Paula). She’s the greatest, always has a fabulous analogy on hand to relate to what we’re teaching her. We even committed her to baptism, and then she moved back home and I hadn’t seen her since. Becky lives on the edge of the Walterboro sisters area so they’d only had a chance to meet with her once. She was surprised to see me standing behind Sis Allen. It was such a joyful reunion, similar to when the sons of mosiah are reunited after their missions, and our joy was even greater because she’s still interested in baptism and learning more. We went over the plan of salvation again, and she told us how it answered so many questions. I’m so grateful for the plan, and even more grateful that our Heavenly Father decided to let us in on the plan and gave us a few details about what’s happened, what’s happening and what will be happening in His planJ Becky committed to prepare for her baptism for Dec. 13th.
Sis Burbank and I were able to spend a whole whopping hour together, and then we swapped again and I headed out to James Island with the lovely Sis Kayla Stout. I was so glad to be with her, I came out with her and I’ve never really gotten to know her besides the few nights we stayed in a hotel together at the beginning of our mission.
We got to teach a man who may or may not have multiple personalities, but he's super intelligent and has a desire to learn.
Sunday was Sis Burbanks birthday! yup, the big 2-1!! we celebrated with a big breakfast with the other sisters and then running off to our regular Sunday meetings. It was SUCH a good day, we had Kitt, Alysa, Gerald, Alyssa (#2), the Haynes family, Elena and Morgan all at church!
Love y'all so much! How blessed are we to have the gospel of Jesus Christ in our lives, I know that it's through our savior that we can truly "lay hold upon every good thing". Through the enabling power of the atonement I'm able to have the strength to change and improve, and when I fall short I know that the redeeming power of the atonement is there to cleanse me.
It was a little disheartening to meet with a less active woman sunday, she'd been raised in the church, her parents were converts. She attended BYU-i, and byu hawaii, sealed in the temple, her husband converted. But because of the world, and some anti-material she's now fallen away, and not just from the church, but she no longer believes there's a Savior or a Heavenly Father who loves us and cares about every aspect of our lives. What a way to live?
Go out and spread the love y'all!!
signing out!
Sister Smith!!
Monday, November 10, 2014
Our Church smells like popcorn
The quote of the day comes from a billboard we saw the other day, it read, “Our church smells like popcorn”. It was an advertisement for their church. While MY church may not smell like popcorn, I’m so grateful for the blessings and eternal happiness that it offers insteadJ
Well, it’s a beautiful fall day in Summerville, South Carolina, and once again, here we are, at our computers reading about sister smith’s week. Thanks for tuning in, and I hope and pray something I say will...
A. motivate you to come closer to our Savior
and/or
B. bring a wee bit of sunshineyness to your day!!
here's the week!...
We ran down to the Lincolns and got to sit in on their FHE. I felt like a proud parent watching them put on this awesome FHE lesson about rising higher than our trials, they made analogies to kites and how kites need wind to fly. Then we each made kites and enjoyed a little kite decorated cookies. So precious. Gabby, the 7 yr old showed us the mini Book of Mormon she had made for her doll-so awesome! Love this family:D
We drove our usual 2hrs to Columbia for MLC this morning, I LOVE MLC (mission leadership conference)!
The spirit was super strong, and we spoke all about how we can now implement becoming better planners and finders. There are a few new policies no longer are we saying, “Hi, we’re the missionaries from the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day saints…”, now we start by saying, “Hi, we’re your missionaries!”
Our usual Friday morning lesson with Morgan was just splendid! As alwaysJ He’s just finished 1 Nephi, and had all of these awesome questions for us about, “who are the gentiles? What’s the devils church? What’s the gathering of Israel, the house of Israel?” He’s big history buff, so he loved the chapters of when Nephi is shown a vision of the future by the angel. Morgan even recognized that when it’s talking about the Jews and Israel, how it connects with what’s happened in history. He readily accepted tithing and fasting, and said that he’d no doubt following it after he was baptized. He still has such a fire for it all, and he’s changed so much. Instead of being more reserved and not confident about the gospel, when there are pauses during the lesson he’ll chime up. We had just shared about the widows mite and he pipes in, “God doesn’t really care about how much we make, he wants us to give all that we have”. He’s feeling excited about his baptism, but asked us if he’s not ready when the time comes, will it be a big deal if he drops out? We told him, of course not, that this is his day, but that honestly he’s ready, and those feelings of doubt and uncertainty are only going to increase as the devil tries harder to dissuade him from doing this. No matter what though, Heavenly Father will be there through it all.
When Bro Lincoln came with us to teach the Haynes family, he shared a little more insight into his family, and it melted my heart!
We knew that a few weeks ago he and his wife had taken each of the girls aside to ask them how they were feeling about the missionary lessons and such. Isabella told him, “there’s no other option, this church is where we need to be”.
He also said that about a year ago, before we’d even started teaching, Gabby was at a Lutheran church with her mom and said, as a 6yr old at the time, “I don’t believe this, I want to go to church with Papi”
This church is true, and children are some of the most pure Christ like vessels for the spirit to work through!
Have a great day cause it's the most wonderful time of the year. Naw, regardless of the holiday season it's a beautiful time to be alive, it's the most wonderful time of this dispensation!
Love,
your missionary,
sis smith
Well, it’s a beautiful fall day in Summerville, South Carolina, and once again, here we are, at our computers reading about sister smith’s week. Thanks for tuning in, and I hope and pray something I say will...
A. motivate you to come closer to our Savior
and/or
B. bring a wee bit of sunshineyness to your day!!
here's the week!...
We ran down to the Lincolns and got to sit in on their FHE. I felt like a proud parent watching them put on this awesome FHE lesson about rising higher than our trials, they made analogies to kites and how kites need wind to fly. Then we each made kites and enjoyed a little kite decorated cookies. So precious. Gabby, the 7 yr old showed us the mini Book of Mormon she had made for her doll-so awesome! Love this family:D
We drove our usual 2hrs to Columbia for MLC this morning, I LOVE MLC (mission leadership conference)!
The spirit was super strong, and we spoke all about how we can now implement becoming better planners and finders. There are a few new policies no longer are we saying, “Hi, we’re the missionaries from the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day saints…”, now we start by saying, “Hi, we’re your missionaries!”
Our usual Friday morning lesson with Morgan was just splendid! As alwaysJ He’s just finished 1 Nephi, and had all of these awesome questions for us about, “who are the gentiles? What’s the devils church? What’s the gathering of Israel, the house of Israel?” He’s big history buff, so he loved the chapters of when Nephi is shown a vision of the future by the angel. Morgan even recognized that when it’s talking about the Jews and Israel, how it connects with what’s happened in history. He readily accepted tithing and fasting, and said that he’d no doubt following it after he was baptized. He still has such a fire for it all, and he’s changed so much. Instead of being more reserved and not confident about the gospel, when there are pauses during the lesson he’ll chime up. We had just shared about the widows mite and he pipes in, “God doesn’t really care about how much we make, he wants us to give all that we have”. He’s feeling excited about his baptism, but asked us if he’s not ready when the time comes, will it be a big deal if he drops out? We told him, of course not, that this is his day, but that honestly he’s ready, and those feelings of doubt and uncertainty are only going to increase as the devil tries harder to dissuade him from doing this. No matter what though, Heavenly Father will be there through it all.
When Bro Lincoln came with us to teach the Haynes family, he shared a little more insight into his family, and it melted my heart!
We knew that a few weeks ago he and his wife had taken each of the girls aside to ask them how they were feeling about the missionary lessons and such. Isabella told him, “there’s no other option, this church is where we need to be”.
He also said that about a year ago, before we’d even started teaching, Gabby was at a Lutheran church with her mom and said, as a 6yr old at the time, “I don’t believe this, I want to go to church with Papi”
This church is true, and children are some of the most pure Christ like vessels for the spirit to work through!
Have a great day cause it's the most wonderful time of the year. Naw, regardless of the holiday season it's a beautiful time to be alive, it's the most wonderful time of this dispensation!
Love,
your missionary,
sis smith
Monday, November 3, 2014
Halloween photo fun
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| Sister Burbank and Sister Smith Match---What |
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| What Sister Missionaries do when locked down for Halloween |
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| Where to take all the muffins????? |
Don't y'all go backsliding now:)
Southerners love to use the term backsliding. Such as....
"I went through a time of backsliding when I stopped going tuh church"
haha, and until I came across jeremiah 3:22, I never knew it was an actual biblical term! who knew? challenge of the week...Use the word backsliding in an everyday conversation! :D
This week contained no backsliding whatsoever. The Lord's work continues, and it's such a blessing to be in the front row watching and participating in it's hastening! so blessed:)
It was so neat in our lesson with Doris to see the influence of the spirit, and witness evidence of how the spirit can only testify of truth. We started our lesson, and she started talking about how she just wasn’t quite picking up on the Book of Mormon, it just wasn’t sitting right. As she was describing her understanding we could tell something was off. I interjected and started from the beginning and said that the Book of Mormon starts in 600 BC—and her eyes lit up! “oooooooooh” she says. “that makes sense”, she’d never understood that the Book of Mormon was occurring during the time of the Bible. She thought it was many years after the Bible had ended, and it wasn’t sitting well with her. As soon as we clarified and were able to teach of the truth about the Book of Mormon the spirit swept in, and she felt the truth of our message. She’s more interested than she ever had been before, and asked to have us come back in a couple days for another lesson. The Book of Mormon is so powerful!
Tonight we had a combined lesson with the Lincolns and the Blonquists, it was a fun full house! We had the Blonquist family of 7, the Lincolns family of 6 and Sis Burbank and I. We did a lesson on keeping the Sabbath day holy. We used ice cream sundaes for our object lesson. First we made a Sundae, and put things that are good, but don’t belong on a Sundae like, ketchup, hot sauce, ranch, artichoke hearts, etc. Just like some things are good, but we don’t do them on Sundays (shopping, sports, work, cleaning, etc). Then we scooped everyone a bowl of ice-cream and put things that DO belong on Sundaes; sprinkles (church), hot fudge (prayer), m&m’s (scripture study), etc. Haha, I even introduced everyone to putting frosted flakes on their ice cream and they really enjoyed it. A great part to see how the Lincolns progression was coming along was at the end. We played scripture charades with everyone! It was so neat to see Sis Lincoln and the girls participate and have fun. Bro Lincoln was one of MVP’s of team 2. It’s amazing to see how far Sis Lincoln has come! When I first started teaching her with Sis Willis she was so reserved, and each lesson I felt like I was walking on glass, trying to say EXACTLY the right thing. But now she loves us, and we joke around, it’s beautiful. She was telling us how Isabella was going on a little trip with some of her friends from her old church, and she said, “my church”, but then corrected herself and said, “well I guess they’re not my church anymore”. At first I was a little disappointed that they’d decided to wait until April to get baptized, when Gabby turns 8, but I feel really good about it. In the past with other investigators I’d felt inspired to encourage them to have their baptisms sooner, but it wasn’t the case with the Lincoln family. When Sis Burbank asked Bro Lincoln when Gabby’s baptism was, he said April 26th then turned to us and said, “looks like y’all are going to have to make a little trip out”. Um, YES! Sis Burbank and I are contemplating getting airplane tickets, or if a road trip would be cheaper after we get home from our missions:D:D
what else???
-we were on lockdown at 6pm so we enjoyed face painting, and other scripture related games of nonsense for a few hours with the 3rd ward sisters
-Some of the Elder’s from the 2nd ward have a less active member that makes bread deliveries, he had a BUNCH of extra mini-muffins and loafs of bread. They filled a room at the pig pickin’ and let members take as much as they wanted. At the end the bread was all gone, but there were still about 100 boxes of mini pumpkin muffins. We’d already taken 8 boxes to pass out to families and opted out of taking any more. While we were cleaning up Elder Smith asked if we had a Book of Mormon in our trunk they could have. We said of course and started to go grab one, he said he’d grab it and asked for our keys, I passed him the keys and we continued wiping down tables. He and his companion Elder Shawcroft took off a little too quick, and our brains quickly made the connection. When we called out after them they broke out into a run and all 8 elders of the various wards piled out of the muffin room carrying boxes and boxes of muffins and shoved them all in our trunk. Haha, it was so funny, there was nothing we could do. We gave out about 20 boxes that afternoon to various families and we still have about 30 more boxes in our trunk!
Christmas is a only a mere 52 days away!! haha, I love this time of the year, and I'm trying my best to be jolly about the time change since it gets dark around 6pm now. Oh well, life's great!
love y'all!!
sister smith:D:D
"I went through a time of backsliding when I stopped going tuh church"
haha, and until I came across jeremiah 3:22, I never knew it was an actual biblical term! who knew? challenge of the week...Use the word backsliding in an everyday conversation! :D
This week contained no backsliding whatsoever. The Lord's work continues, and it's such a blessing to be in the front row watching and participating in it's hastening! so blessed:)
It was so neat in our lesson with Doris to see the influence of the spirit, and witness evidence of how the spirit can only testify of truth. We started our lesson, and she started talking about how she just wasn’t quite picking up on the Book of Mormon, it just wasn’t sitting right. As she was describing her understanding we could tell something was off. I interjected and started from the beginning and said that the Book of Mormon starts in 600 BC—and her eyes lit up! “oooooooooh” she says. “that makes sense”, she’d never understood that the Book of Mormon was occurring during the time of the Bible. She thought it was many years after the Bible had ended, and it wasn’t sitting well with her. As soon as we clarified and were able to teach of the truth about the Book of Mormon the spirit swept in, and she felt the truth of our message. She’s more interested than she ever had been before, and asked to have us come back in a couple days for another lesson. The Book of Mormon is so powerful!
Tonight we had a combined lesson with the Lincolns and the Blonquists, it was a fun full house! We had the Blonquist family of 7, the Lincolns family of 6 and Sis Burbank and I. We did a lesson on keeping the Sabbath day holy. We used ice cream sundaes for our object lesson. First we made a Sundae, and put things that are good, but don’t belong on a Sundae like, ketchup, hot sauce, ranch, artichoke hearts, etc. Just like some things are good, but we don’t do them on Sundays (shopping, sports, work, cleaning, etc). Then we scooped everyone a bowl of ice-cream and put things that DO belong on Sundaes; sprinkles (church), hot fudge (prayer), m&m’s (scripture study), etc. Haha, I even introduced everyone to putting frosted flakes on their ice cream and they really enjoyed it. A great part to see how the Lincolns progression was coming along was at the end. We played scripture charades with everyone! It was so neat to see Sis Lincoln and the girls participate and have fun. Bro Lincoln was one of MVP’s of team 2. It’s amazing to see how far Sis Lincoln has come! When I first started teaching her with Sis Willis she was so reserved, and each lesson I felt like I was walking on glass, trying to say EXACTLY the right thing. But now she loves us, and we joke around, it’s beautiful. She was telling us how Isabella was going on a little trip with some of her friends from her old church, and she said, “my church”, but then corrected herself and said, “well I guess they’re not my church anymore”. At first I was a little disappointed that they’d decided to wait until April to get baptized, when Gabby turns 8, but I feel really good about it. In the past with other investigators I’d felt inspired to encourage them to have their baptisms sooner, but it wasn’t the case with the Lincoln family. When Sis Burbank asked Bro Lincoln when Gabby’s baptism was, he said April 26th then turned to us and said, “looks like y’all are going to have to make a little trip out”. Um, YES! Sis Burbank and I are contemplating getting airplane tickets, or if a road trip would be cheaper after we get home from our missions:D:D
what else???
-we were on lockdown at 6pm so we enjoyed face painting, and other scripture related games of nonsense for a few hours with the 3rd ward sisters
-Some of the Elder’s from the 2nd ward have a less active member that makes bread deliveries, he had a BUNCH of extra mini-muffins and loafs of bread. They filled a room at the pig pickin’ and let members take as much as they wanted. At the end the bread was all gone, but there were still about 100 boxes of mini pumpkin muffins. We’d already taken 8 boxes to pass out to families and opted out of taking any more. While we were cleaning up Elder Smith asked if we had a Book of Mormon in our trunk they could have. We said of course and started to go grab one, he said he’d grab it and asked for our keys, I passed him the keys and we continued wiping down tables. He and his companion Elder Shawcroft took off a little too quick, and our brains quickly made the connection. When we called out after them they broke out into a run and all 8 elders of the various wards piled out of the muffin room carrying boxes and boxes of muffins and shoved them all in our trunk. Haha, it was so funny, there was nothing we could do. We gave out about 20 boxes that afternoon to various families and we still have about 30 more boxes in our trunk!
Christmas is a only a mere 52 days away!! haha, I love this time of the year, and I'm trying my best to be jolly about the time change since it gets dark around 6pm now. Oh well, life's great!
love y'all!!
sister smith:D:D
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