Week ending Dec 7, 201

Hola todos

The exclamation key is broken on this keyboard, so I sound not very enthusiased but i really am, we had an awesome week. It was Elder Navas birthday this week, so we went to a bakery that we really like and the lady gave us a free cake. WOO. And the neighbors upstairs from our apartment brought us a cake and a firework too, it was really fun.

The best thing that happened this week was the ENRIQUES BAUTISM. YEAHHH haha. He was baptized on saturday and confirmed on sunday. I got the opportunity to do the actual baptism, so that was really really neat experience for me. We got there about an early to the church to make sure everything was going to run smoothly, and we came to find that the baptismal fonts water pump was BROKEN. So we rounded up all the Elders in the area and we all grabbed buckets and ran in and out of the church to the water well, fill up the buckets with water at the well, and run back into the church and dump them out to fill up the buckets. Elder Coates of our district stood in the water well and hoisted our buckets up to us. He was covered in mud after. haha. We all scrambled to fill up the font but eventually we were able to get enough water in there. Haha. It was an experience I will not forget. And then the baptism for Enrique went really smoothly, and after he was baptized we all sung Mas Cerca de Dios, A Ti, which in english is Nearer My God to Me, which is my favorite. So that baptism was perfect, I loved it. In that moment I realized that I have had my first success in what ive been trying to do for the last six months, and I realized how far I have come. It was an amazing day, I was super happy.

Another crazy thing that happened is that I was part of a super gnarly bus crash this week. We had just finished a zone conference and we were headed back to our area with Elder Batt and Pena in a bus. For the bus system in Argentina they just try to cram as many people as they can on one bus. One school bus sized bus the squeeze like  people in, and about half the people have to stand up because there arent enough seats. So there we were driving a long in the bus, all four of us were standing up, and all of the sudden we felt a little bump and we were on top of the curb, and then we went straight into a huge brick wall of the Argentina army base. We went through a brick wall and hit a tree. All of the people that were standing up on the bus launched like 5  feet forward and right smack into the ground. Haha. I had never seen anything like it, it was like a sea of bodies. haha. I describe it really morbidly but it was crazy. Everyone standing up was just scattered. I didnt actually fall very much, I just fell back on someone else, but the other elders fell pretty good. We still dont know what happened, we just know that the bus driver lost control somehow and crashed into the wall. We went from like 60 miles per hour to 0 in like not even a second. Turns out that only 2 people went to the hospital, im not sure what for. The front of the bus was destroyed. WE WENT THROGH A BRICK WALL. I have to believe that angels were protecting the mormon missionaries in that bus. haha. After we crashed we got off the bus, looked around for a minute, and we went and got on another bus and we were on our way. haha. I will not forget it.

This month being december, the church is using this christmas season to find ways to get the message of the restoration out to the world. I dont know if you guys have heard about or seen anything lately. In spanish, its called El es La Dadiva, which means, He is the gift. I guess the church bought some pages on youtube and stuff, and as missionaries we have little cards we hand out while we are knocking doors that have a picture of Mary and baby Jesus. Is a way to show that Mormons do believe in Christ, and we are trying to help people have a Christ centered chrismas this here. I really love it a lot, its exactly the way Christmas should be. If you havent seen the He is the Gift video yet, watch it. It is awesome.

I had the chance to do divisions this week with Elder Batt, it was really really good for me. Divisions is where the district leader comes to my area for a full day and Elder Nava leaves with his companion, we switch for a day. But, he let me take a lot of control, and I got to try to do everything basically by myself, and it went really well. We found a lot of new investigators that day and had a lot of really good lessons. I felt pretty good that I was able to direct the area.

We got to do two service projects this week. For one sister in our area, we painted the front of her house for her. It was pretty fun. And for the other, we helped a family move a big pile of rocks from their front yard to their back yard. haha. It was really nice to have a break from knocking doors for a little bit.

This coming saturday, we are going to have a huge activity in our church where choirs from all different churchs are going to come and sing in our church building. Choirs from catholic churchss, evangelist churchs, even a group of grandmas from Paraguay that sing a different language. And the Elders in my district are going to sing two songs as well. So that is going to be really fun and cool.

Well thats about all, I had a really super good, very fun, crazy week this week. Im learning a ton of new things every day. The mission is really hard but very rewarding. Thats the way life works. Im very excited to help more people come unto Christ. It was amazing to see Enrique enter into the most important path that he will ever walk.. I love being a missionary and sharing the message of the Restoration. I am not going to have any time to write anybody individually this week since this email was so long, but I hope you all have a good week and are enjoying the coming christmas season. Remember to think about Christ, all that he has done for you. Love you all

Elder Miles

Week ending Dec 14th

Hola hola

I have the computer that cant do exclamation points or question marks again. BUT, I am VERY happy to be here and I had a killer week.

Actually, nothing too big at all happened this week. We knocked a ton of doors and found some pretty good new investigators. We had an older lady come to church this past sunday named Irene, and she brought her 6 year old grandson, and the grandson didnt want to go into primary and he was just throwing a huge fit, and he ended up running away and we all had to go search and find him. It was a stressful, dramatic sunday but Irene said she liked the church and she wants to come again. She has a baptismal date for thrid of january. We are still teaching Carlos, we got him to commit to quit smoking, so he should be set for his baptism on the 27th of december. WOOO. SO EXCITED

We had a huge activity in our church this week where a ton of different choirs came from different churches and they all sang. It was really cool, we watched the He is the Gift video and we all super felt the Spirit. The other choirs we really good.

Elder Nava and I really grow a TON stronger together this past week. We really are pretty good friends even though our differences every now and then. We have a great friendship now... It makes the mission a lot lot easier when you love your companion.

Enrique, our baptism from last week is still doing awesome, I will never ever forget him, he is aweesome. It wouldnt surprise me to see him in the bishopric in a few years. haha.

Well thats about all for this week, nothing too exciting. I hope you are all doing great and are enjoying the Christmas season. Remember to think about Christ and everything he has done for us. Thank you all for your emails

Love, Elder Miles

Week ending Nov 24, 2014

Hola!

Well, transfers happened, but im staying here in Barranqueras 2 another transfer with Elder Nava. No problem, im just going to work harder to be a better companion and really take advantage of this time I have with Elder Nava to learn how to start taking more inciative in lessons and becoming more able to be independent on my own to run an area! So I willl be here with Elder Nava all the way until the end of december, so we will celebrate Navidad (Christmas) here with Elder Batt and Elder Pena. It will be fun!

With that being said, I dont have very much to report this week! We focused a lot on contacting this week, finding new investigators. So we knocked doors and walked all the days this week! Other than that, we are stilll having lessons with Enrique and he is stilll doing great, golden for his baptism on the 6th of december. All of the other investigators that we have had previously have all fallen through. 

Sometimes I stress myself out really bad that im not progressing and what not but I just have to remember to try my best in every opportunity and make my best effort to complete my personal goals.. and all will be okay! This transfer I really want to develop the ability to talk with everyone really easily.. Its the attribute that I want to develop most as a missionary, talking with everyone. So im really trying hard with that!

Well not much else for this week, I hope you all have a great thanksgiving. Thank you all for your emails and everything you do for me!

Elder Miles

Nov. 24th- Nov. 30th

Family! hello!

hope everyone is doing well! Just another week here. The only thing really worth noting that happened was this sunday, Enrique and Carlos both came to church. all of the lessons we had during church and the sacrament talks were all really really good and they both felt the Spirit a lot. Enrique is golden for his baptism this saturday.. I am super excited!! Its really going to happen this to time. haha. and Carlos hasnt committed to baptism yet but he is progressing really well. he believes that we were are teaching him is true and he is reading the Book of Mormon. Both Enrique and Carlos are super smart humans, the have a huge knowledge of the Bible. Now that Enrique has read a lot of the Book of Mormon I think he knows more about the gospel than I do. haha. They both are super perfect!!!

I tried super hard this week to have unity with Elder Nava and it was a lot better this week. We laughed and joked a lot and we really are becoming better friends. Im learning how to take control more.. he is giving more oportunites to lead the lessons and plan the days and stuff. I am pretty happy right now, its all going smoothly. I am learning a lot about the importance of always smiling when I talk and creating an environment where the investigators feel comfortable and happy. 

Its already december, how crazy. Contrary to many christmas classics, I actually will not be home for christmas. BUT, I only have to miss one more christmas away from home. I still get homesick a lot of the time but its getting better!

Well, same old, hope everyone is doing alright! Enjoy your snow. 

Love, Elder Miles

Pic

That is a picture of us hanging out with the other Elders in our area.. That is Elder Pena from El Salvador, and Elder Bott from California. We have been spending some time with them on our p days recently, they are super funny.

Week ending Nov 16, 2014

Hola todos!

Hope everyone is doing good! I had a pretty good, really hard week. I am really looking forward to transfers.. We found out what is going to happen tomorrow night. This week was just a lot of the same old.. Knocking doors all day, visiting recent converts, etc. A lot of our investigators that we had have all fallen through.. But, something really awesome did happen. We had a lesson with Enrique after about 4 weeks of not having lessons with him, and told us that he is ready to give up marijuana and he wants to get baptized! So he throw away all his pot on tuesday night, and he is doing great. His baptism is for the 6th of December, we really think that it will happen. So that is really exciting!

This week the other Elder Miles and I had to take a trip to Corrientes to do more visa stuff and it was super fun, Corrientes is way way cool. We crossed a huge huge bridge, and Corrientes has huge catholic churches everywhere and it has really pretty beaches. It was a cool experience. So I got to be with Elder Miles that whole day, it was really nice. There is a McDonalds in Corrientes, and we ate there. haha. I got a triple Big Mac, I was in heaven. I didnt think to bring my camera, I wish I would have!!! 

Ive been thinking a lot about the Atonement of Jesus Christ this week, and how it relates to missionary work. Preach my Gospel says that the more we understand the atonement, the stronger our desire grows to share the gospel and the love the people. So Ive really been trying to spend a lot of time thinking about the atonement this week, and I had some really good personal experiences this week. It really is amazing to think that someone suffered every single pain that we will ever experience, we will always have someone by our side that knows exactly how we are feeling. Through the atonement, we can do things we didnt think we could, become better people, change lives, anything. The fact that we are here in earth is due to the atonement. We are forever in debt. 

Seeing and living in the poverty here has really changed my life and way of thinking, I cant even explain some of the things you see here! We have lunch with a family that is so poor but they are so humble and lovingly except us and make us really good lunches. They are so grateful that we come into their home and share the gospel with them. 

Well, I want to take more time to write individually, but there is nothing really new this week! It was kind of setback from last week... Lets just say im super super ready for transfers. 

I love you all so much and I hope you have a good week!

Love, Elder Miles

Week ending Nov 10, 2014

Hello family!

 I dont have a lot of time at the ciber because the computers here are really slow, so I have to be short. This week was actually pretty good! Maybe it will start slowly getting better from here on out. Or who knows, probably not, I guess well just have to see what the new transfer brings. Sometimes I hope that I get put with another gringo that doesnt speak very well spanish so I have to be obligated to learn how to talk.. And sometimes I think I would love to stay with Elder Nava and slowly ease into learning how to talk to people better. Whatever the Lord gives me, I really do trust that he knows exactly what he is diong and he will provide the best for me.This week we found a lot of new investigators that are progressing. We have an investigator names Raul, who is a friend of one of the members here, and he has asisted church twice now and if he asists next week too we will be able to baptize him as long as he continues to progress. He is about 60 and lives alone. He likes what we teach him, and he likes how the church is. So hopefully that keeps going smoothly. We also found a new investigator this week names Valazgues, he is about 60 too and lives with his kids. He is really really nice to us and thigns are going good with him, but he didnt asist church this week, we dont know why. And we are still teaching two women from the family Aquino, but they dont ever keep their commitments and they didnt asist church this week either. BUT. I did talk to people a lot more, and Im feeling a lot better now. I just want to keep building that attribute of feeling free and easy to talk anyone and be really kind and friendly. 

I had a couple really good experiences this week. The first is that we had a multi zone conference with tons of missionaries, and as part of the introduction into the lesson, I was asked to share a short 5 minutes message of something from preach my gospel. I shared about the Book of Mormon and it worked out really nicely. And after the conference was over, I had a lot of people tell me how impressed they were with how quickly my spanish has come. Even a lot of the natives gave me compliments It made me feel really good and it gave me a lot of confidence. 

Also on that note, on tuesday night my companion says that I was sleeping talking all night.. IN SPANISH. YESSSS! haha. I usually dont ever remember any dreams I have, so I wouldnt know if I dream in spanish or not yet. But I sleep talk in spanish!!! WOOOO! He said all night I was saying, Eso es una pabada. Eso es una pabada! Over and over again, which means, That is so dumb! That is so dumb! haha. And a lot of other things but that is all that he could remember. So thats pretty cool! It really is getting hard for me to talk in english, my brain is starting to think in spanish. On thursday night we had a lesson with the family Aquino, and they all wanted to hear my speak in english, so I said the opening prayer in english, and I almost couldnt do it. I kept saying spanish words on accident and I had to tallk really slow. So the spanish is slowly starting to become not so much as an obstacle. For instance, I during that lesson with the family Aquino, we were talking to them about baptism, and for the first time, I dont really have to think about talking in spanish... I was just able to talk to them without thinking about the language. And it felt really really good to testify to them as a representative of Jesus Christ as we taught them the Doctrine of Christ. The live on the outskirts of town, on the edge of a great big lagoon, which is beautiful with a sunset and all the fireflies on the surface of the lake. They are poor poor poor, more pore than you can imagine, and it was just a really cool experience to see how far I have come. That was a really good day. And then later that night we had  a lesson with Valazgues, and that as well was a really cool lesson for me that we gave about the Plan of Salvation where I was just able to talk and testify to him without really having the language as an obstacle. After the lesson, he thanked us profusely and he said, Thank you, I feel really really good when you guys come over. So yeah, ive had a pretty alright week actually! There are also really hard days, but for the most part this week was pretty alright.

I hope everything is going alright with everyone, I dont have a lot of time to write individually this week. I hope you all have an amazing week, I know Christ lives and loves every one of us.

Love, Elder Miles