Hartsville, South Carolina

This is Lindsay favorite Street in Hartsville

This is at Jame's house an investigator everyone seems to have a dog in SC.  Linz said a lot of pit bulls, so they teach on the porches.  One time it was raining and because of a pit bull in the house they taught in the back of a van.  Anything to spread the gospel message.

It's True-August 26, 2013

It's true, thanks to UV rays that damage my skin, I now have a lovely tan-line from my lamanite sandals...at first I though it was just dirt but when I applied scrubbin' WHAMO it didn't come off. Kinda like being converted to the gospel, if we expose ourselves enough to the Sun/Son (Christ and his teachings) eventually our testimonies won't be scrubbed away by the temptations and trials that afflict us. anywho...here's how this week went:D

We had an apt out at McBee (which they pronounce Mac-bee) and it went super great. The girl (who was formerly excommunicated because she wouldn’t marry her boyfriend) really wants to come back, and her new boyfriend seemed pretty open to it all, especially after learning he could relate to Joseph Smith. On our way back, we stopped at Mcleods (pronounced McClouds). It’s a famous place that sells baked goods and produce. Outside taking a picture with a giant peach and strawberry we started talking to a young couple. When he asked “do y’all have a little time” little did we know what his intentions were. In a nice way he started using obscure LDS doctrine along with BOM scriptures and Bible scriptures to prove where the Mormon church went wrong. He tried all sorts of tactics, but me n Makin didn’t sweat it, we responded with simple answers from our doctrine along with references from the BOM and Bible to back up what we said, but they wouldn’t be persuaded. After bearing testimony multiple times and after about 30min of trying to help them understand, I knew there wouldn’t be much progression here. Highlight of the conversation was when he asked if we’ve even read the Bible, to which we honestly responded “yes”, Sis Makin threw it back in his direction asking about the BOM to which he (of course) answered “no”. So there we stood, with the invitation to read the BOM and then pray to God if it was true, he told us he would, but instead of saying he’d pray about it he said he’d compare it with the bible *FACE PALM* silly silly people. I just hope he reads it and has his heart softened. BUT-I was excited to walk away with my first experience of someone who wanted to bible bash, and I’m very grateful for the kind and open minded people of Hartsville that we’re teaching now. OH YEAH! I also got to try boiled peanuts from Mcleods-they’re not half bad. I wouldn’t CRAVE them, but I’d willingly eat them again.

 Tammy is my favorite! When we went over to teach her today-her excitement from church had just grown! She kept telling us about how much she loved church because it gave her such a good feeling. She went on about how she did the reading we gave her and wanted to do more, and felt bad about reading anything else, and how she just couldn’t wait for our appointment today, she said she was looking out the window anxiously waiting for us to come. During the lesson she kept going back to how happy she is, and she’s never felt this feeling before. We taught her the word of wisdom, and she drinks tea and has smoked since she was 12 but straight up told us “but I’ve always wanted to stop, yeah I can do it”. She told us we’re like her little angels helping her out telling her what to do, and how she wants to make it up to our level. I’ll have to try and explain it to her how it’s not us, it’s entirely the spirit and we’re just blessed enough for God to allow us to teach you through us. She’s seriously one of those typical missionary stories you hear about. 

This week went by so fast! seriously can't believe that my first transfer is almost over. 

Love y'all tons, and something I'm learning from the southerners isssss, that if you have an old couch/chair/desk don't throw it away just make a big bonfire in your backyard and burn it. Seriously though, people do it all the time here. 

LOVE LOVE LOVE!!
Sister Lindsay Mae Smith

I love being a missionary :)

Sister Smith's mission home in Hartville

Sister Smith's  Attic Adventure checking out home attic  ??Big Spiders 

Aug. 19 Missions can be so awkward

Missions can be super awkward...but I have come to love the awkward moments. Like when you're at a door and person is just staring at you because they're too nice to say "I'm not interested" BUT-awkward stares or not we will not be deterred! I just know that they don't know that they're interested yet. So S.Makin and I keep teaching and asking questions until they're forced to either reject our message or allow us to come back again sometime-and that's all we can do, plead in our hearts (and sometimes outloud) for them to read the BOM and find out for themselves because the Gospel of Jesus Christ can change EVERYONE'S life for the better, and if you haven't figured that out yet-Imma gonna invite y'all to do just that:D






Missions are full of new experiences but one thing I never imagined doing on my mission was having a lesson in the back of a minivan. We went to visit Debbie, with Sis Solomon (member of the ward) and it was raining, ridiculous right? Therefore we couldn’t meet on her front porch, and since 50% of Hartsville citizens own pitbulls, including Debbie, we opted to pray, study and teach in Sis Solomon’s minivan. I have a testimony of minivans, Debbie told us she felt the chills-aka SPIRIT! And we told her to come to church and she told us the typical response of…I’ll try, but I won’t make y’all any promises.


Discovered a few new things today (august 13th). #1 Our neighbors have apparently seen a bunch of copperhead snakes around which they informed us were aggressive poisonous snakes that just…lie around, swell. #2 Tammy decided that it’s worth it to buy new church clothes, despite the fact that she’s gained weight and she’s coming to the missionary fireside tomorrow! #3 we found Eddie! (the ASL guy) and it turns out he just forgot about church on Sunday and we’re planning to meet him at the library onSaturday and hopefully show him some of the ASL stuff the church’s website has. #4 instead of putting BOGO for “buy one get one” they put B1G1, I’d been reading this sign outside of the Bi-Lo store and I finally read it outloud at bigi, Sis Makin laughed and then explained. #5 Suckers don’t really stay hard here, I guess it’s the humidity, but we have a whole bunch of blowpops from a food drive the ward did for the missionaries and they’re kinda chewy…it’s weird.


They came, they came, they came!!! Just like she promised Tammy was there, she actually beat us there, which I feel really bad about, but we were running late because we were helping Maggie arise, shine and get her girls ready. We got there right after they had started and crammed in on a pew with Tammy joining us. It was squishy, and the speakers and teachers in the lessons kept using words and references that I was afraid they wouldn’t understand BUT Tammy said she loved it and was definitely coming back next week. After church we had Bro Krein (the ward mission leader) and the elders give Maggie a blessing and it was just what she needed. She was crying by the end and her little 3 yr old (Isabelle, or Izzy) asked why she was crying and Maggie said it was because she felt good. She said she’ll come next week as long as she isn’t working-YAY! :)


*sigh* missions are real nice, real real nice:)


hope y'all have the best day ever!


Love, Sister Lindsay Smith

First pictures from South Carolina

After arriving in South Carolina Sister Smith's Mission president took them
into a grove of trees and had a fireside then they were to go off by themselves
for pondering and praying and was told took just walk forward out
of the trees when done.  When they exited the trees
they were right by the South Carolina Temple.
Lindsay said the spirit was very strong that day.

 Lindsay found Smith Street

Sister Smith's  first area Hartsville, South Carolina
Population 7,500
Her companion is Sister Makin from American Fork, UT.  Lindsay said they get along well and its
scary how they think the same thing and sometimes even accidentally match.

So many miracles

There have been so many miracles this week! Sister Makin and I actually came to teh conclusion that more faith=more miracles. WHYYYYY? because there's not necessarily more miracles you just learn to recognize miracles in your life better. we tend to make little things into a bid deal/problem, therefore shouldn't we make little blessings into BIG miracles?? chew on that one:D

Maggie committed to baptism! I'm so excited for her! It was our first lesson with her, we talked about where our church came from, I testified of Joseph Smith, she said she felt the chills. Inside my head I was like "IT'S THE HOLY GHOST!!" but on the outside I was like, "that's so neat" then sadly the subject changed and the spirit was gone. But we got it back and we talked about baptism and I asked her to commit to baptism as she found the Book of Mormon to be true, and she said YES! and promised to pray about the Book of Mormon! So excited:D:D She's living in a tough situation right now so it'll be hard for her to find th time to receive the lessons and to come to church, but I just pray that she doesn't lose that desire to "come unto God" like she told us about.

Aug.6-We went out street contacting today trying to talk to just anybody wandering around their equivalent of a main street. We came across a couple crazies, but the winner was rahmen. He's a muslim, from Pakistan who had talked to sister missionaries before. I never knew much about muslims but as we talked it turns out that alot of our standards were right in line with his his beliefs. For instance he commended us on our modesty, we discussed how the media is getting worse and worse and how there must be prophets today because there were prophets before Christ. He said he would be coming to church and would bring his family. Only downside to all of this is we found out that he and his family are in the Elder's area.meh.they get all the fun. But his shop is in our area (on "main" street) so maybe we'll be allowed to tag team this one. 

Aug.9- This is kinda a big deal, I don't think me and sis makin have seen a cockroach dead or alive in our house for the past 2 days!...oh and Deangelo committed to be baptized-WOOT-Sooo Deangelo, he's about 20-ish, and whenever we teach him he tells us how much he just wants to marry a good mormon girl, we were considering dropping him because we thought he was letting us teach him for the wrong reasons, but so far he seems really serious about following Christ. The big test will be when we try to get him to come to church on Sunday. He's very devoted to his current church already, he's like the stage manager for the band or something.

I can't believe it's already P-day again! I'm already halfway through my first transfer annnd I'm over 1 month old on my mission-crazy!!

I'm loving it! and couldn't be happier! 

Have a swelllllll day:D

Love, Sister Smith

PS: WILLIE WOKE UP!! yup he's gotten so much better, they took him off the ventilator and when he woke up he couldn't stop talking about how much he still wants to get baptized and become a member. 

Hey ya all- August 5th

Hey y'all (I don't ever think I'm going to give up that word!)

So funny! when we were knocking at the apartments we knocked on this one door and this teenage boy (maybe like 13yrs) opens up, and we can see right into their apartment. He asks his mom what he shoulc do she yells "I don't wanna hear nuthin from them", so he yells back "well what do I do?" she responds (ever so lovingly ;) "just shut the door!" "okay" he yells back right as the door shuts in front of us...did they not realize we could hear the whole thing? So we're at the next door about to knock and this old lady comes out of the same apt (part of me was like "YES! she wants to hear from us", we keep quiet and just waits as she peers down the stairway and yells at some guy asking about 2 girls. Meanwhile we're about 7yds away. We knock on the door (assuming she'd hear us and look o
ur way) but she just keeps looking down the stairway for us. Finally she gives up to go back inside-sees us and gets mad at us for selling stuff here, we told her we were selling anything, (we're giving it away for free!) and that we're proselyting. Buuut she grouchily sends us on our way. Sister Makin gets up the nerve to leave a pass along card wedged in her door as we leave. A few minutes later we're going back up to the same apartment building to write down a room number of a possible appt. and we see her walking up and down the opposite stairs looking for us! We quietly skulked down a few steps out of view until she left and then had ourselves a good laugh about it all. We decided that she's just going to have an awesome missionary story to tell one day when she's ready to accept the gospel. 

Sister Makin and I were super excited for today (august 2) because we were finally going to get to do some service. We had arranged to help a family move. We scheduled time to change and drive all the way out there only to realize that they had company over and we'd just have to come back some other time. I was a little bummed wondering why Heavenly Father had us take up all that time driving, changing into our service clothes in the Wendy's bathroom and trying to meet up with them. We decided to go and try to meet up with an investigator nearby. While walking we met up with Deangelo (who we hadn't talked to in a while) and set up and appt, we also had Carolynn drive up and talk to us saying we should come over sometime. Then when we were told that the investigator we were originally going to find wasn't home we got into an hour long discussion with Dearl and Steve who were hanging out on the balcony of the apartments. Dearl (pronounced Darryl) was super interested and we're going back to see himtomorrow! This really is the Lord's work, and I'm so grateful for how he directs our paths when we are living righteously.

Oh yeah-and earlier this week I got the chance to try my best at teaching this deaf guy we knocked into! It was so great-he seemed super interested and took a BOM and some pamphlets, later we visited him at his house and I bore testimony in ASL (sadly 1 yr in high school isn't as helpful as you'd think it'd be) and he told us he wanted to come to our church. Buuuut, Sunday rolled around and he never showed...bummer. But we will no give up! the work goes on and Eddie deserves to get the fulness in his life:D

Have a great day!!

Love, Sister Smith