Gladys Knight is amazing!

First off, it has been a great week, mostly because of the Gladys Knight concert, but I'll talk about that in a bit. Thanks for the email and good news from home. Mom, I don't even want to talk about my camera, that's all I'll say. It's still good though. I'm glad you were able to help get Matt's bathroom finished and looking good. I'm excited to see the changes. And Dad you just blew my mind when you said Payton finished his mission next week. I cannot believe that! Time flys!
So the concert...We were asked to help usher along with a ton of other missionaries. We were at the church helping set up from about 11 am to 1. And then we were ushering from 3 to about 11:30 pm, when it got over with, looooong day! Don't worry, we all got permission to be out that late haha. President Ahlander was there as well. There were two shows; the first show Elder Parker and I were in the back of the church by all the choir members acting as security. Then the second show we were out in the hall by the chapel and we got to see the whole show. Gladys and her husband have very very strong testimonies and it was amazing to be there and witness how the people reacted to it. We also had a few investigators and less active members there so we were excited about that. Gladys wanted the crowd to be excited and clap and dance, so we (all the missionaries) got up and started dancing and getting the crowd going. It was like nothing you'll ever see in an LDS chapel and the amen's and hallelujahs praising out!  At the end there were a few people that came out of there so excited to hand us a referral card with their names on them. This one lady walked out shouting, "I'm joining this church!" If you ever get the opportunity to watch the Saints Unified Voices concert, I would highly recommend it haha. It was great. So now we are working hard trying to get more gift packages to our zone to give to all the referrals received. For all of Vegas there were about 200 referrals received from the concert, big success!
Things are going great here. We had a great Zone Training Meeting today and I was grateful to be part of it. I think the zone really enjoyed it. We are having a Turkey bowl football game on Thanksgiving so we have been practicing for that as well. Our zone doesn't have the most solid team, but we just got a new visa waiter that played football at Dixie state, so he will help us a lot haha. Oh and Dad, I was wondering if Bishop Westwood's nephews named is Elder Koval, he is from Idaho and he just came out, I saw him but haven't had the chance to talk to him yet. Anyways, I hope things are going well for everyone. Just so you know, because I've had a lot of questions about it, I DO NOT want any presents sent to me for Christmas. Any money that would be used on a gift for me, I want that to be used for someone else back home. Jordan and Brittany, Matthew and Ashlie, Janell and Bruce, the kids of course, etc. I would appreciate that a lot. Thanks. I love you all and hope you have a blessed week full of good spirit and love. Oh and good luck with Jordan and Brittany and the baby! I'm anxious to here all about it and how she is!! Love Elder Smith