Week of March 24-30th

HEY!!

We had a pretty solid week! I hope that everyone is doing great. So this first week went really well, at first I was a little stressed with the additional responsibility of M1 (senior companion) but planning the days out and directing the area turned out to be not too hard, I actually really liked it. It helps a lot too that my companion is already a great missionary and knows how to plan and do everything perfectly. This week we were able to have a few lessons with our investigators Ruben and Antonella. They are progressing pretty good, but unfortunately they didnt attend church this sunday. We are also teaching a nineteen year old boy named Omar, is the grandson of one of the members in our area. He is progressing really well too, reading the Book of Mormon and praying, but he didnt come to church this week. So we had 3 investigators super committed to attending church this sunday, which was going to be super awesome for our first week of the transfer here, but none of them came. So we were a little sad on sunday. Whats hard in argentina is that when it rains everyone has the custom to stay in their house all day because the roads are really muddy and they are hard to navigate through. And it rained on sunday, so that was an obstacle for our investigators this week. But we are going to keep teaching them this week and hopefully they will be able to come to general conference this sunday! Woo! I am STOKED for general conference!! We are also going to take a lot of time this week to knock doors and ask for references and helpful find more investigators so that we also have a steady base of people to teach! 

My new companion, Elder Herrera, Peru, is pretty cool! He likes to do motorcross, BMX, play playstation, play soccer. He is really smart and is studying to be an architect. This week was pretty fun, I LOVE having our zone leaders above us, we always have so much fun. 

Well, I dont really have anything else to say! I learned a lot this week about not being scared about the future.. I have also been really scared about being M1 because I didnt think I would know what to do with our time, but this week I trusted in the Lord that he would help me and qualify me for the task. He has blessed us with progressing investigators and somehow we always have somewhere to be and people to teach. I really love the lyrics to I believe in Christ.. "I Believe in Christ.. So come what may". I have learned to not fear rather trust that by having Christ close to me in my life by obeying his commandments and praying to him daily, he will always give me the strength I need to do things that I dont think I can do, to learn and grow more than I ever could without him. If you may not have a close relationship with the savior, I promise you that it will help you so much and give you the comfort in this life. 

I hope you all have the opportunity to watch conference this week! I am going to love it for sure. I cant believe 6 months have already past since my last conference in the mission! I hope you all have a great week, thank you for your emails!

Love, Elder Miles

Week ending March 21st

Hooooollaaa!!

How is everyone? We had a pretty great week here! This week we were able to contact (knock doors) all week.. and in the end we had success! We found a great family this week. Golden. Their names are Ruben and Antonella, they both are like 30 years old and they recently just got married. They have friends that go to the church and they have been wanting to go to church and see what its like for awhile now. This sunday they didnt come because we had District Conference, (Its like Stake Conference, but since I am in a branch, not a ward, we have District Conference) so it wasnt in our church, it was in a church far away. But today after P day we are going to go over and commit them to go to church for sure this sunday! They are great. I sure hope they progress. 

The biggest news of the week- There were transfers yesterday and Elder Morales left and I am now with Elder Herrera, from Peru!! He has just barely 4 months in the mission, he just finished his training. So I am now the senior companion! Which means basically that I have the resonsibility to plan out the days, direct the area, decide where we are going to go, etc. It will be my first time as senior companion (M1, Missionary 1, we call it on our mission), so I am pretty nervous but I know that it is what the Lord wants me to do. We are a pretty young companionship, and we are in a pretty hard area! So I know It will be difficult at times but I know that we are going to work super hard, be super obedient, and find a ton of Corrintinos to baptize. My new companion is super obedient and really smart. I think I will hit my year mark without ever having an american companion, which is pretty awesome, I love having a ton of companions from diverse countries. I know the accents of a lot of south american countries, so that will be helpful someday! I am pretty happy to be here in this area with my new companion. Nervous but ready and willing to work. Elder Morales is going to leave to his new area tomorrow, he is going to be a trainer. I am going to miss him A TON!! We have had such a good transfer, it was so much fun!! But the zone leaders, Elder Pacheco and Morrin are both staying, so we will still have a blast with them. 

This week we had a multi-zone conference in Resistencia, and Elder Nuñez, (Quorum of the Seventy, in charge of public relations in Chile) came and spoke to us. It was truly amazing, he is an amazing man. He talked a lot about how we need to create spiritual experiences. He talked about how the world lacks spirituality, and we have to create spiritually edifying experiences. The people we teach havent been baptized and dont have the gift of the holy ghost, but we as missionaries and members do. If we can bring the spirit into their home and help them feel the influence of the holy ghost and help them recognize it, that person is going to understand the necesity of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We also talked a ton about the Book of Mormon, the way that the Book of Mormon testifies of Christ and how spiritually uplifting it is. The messages are so powerful and so direct to guide us in our lives.

BIG NEWS. Summer officially ended this last week!!! WOOOOO!!! On March 21st summer in Argentina offically came to an end, and we have now started fall here. It makes me want to cry, I am so happy. On March 20, Elder Morales, the zone leaders and I had an End of Summer Party at night before we went to bed. We bought an ice cream cake and ate it as we shared stories about the hottest days that we went through this summer. It was hilarous, I loved it. Unfortunately I still have one more summer to go, they have all finished their second summer. In the mornings we wake up early and jog for an hour, and it is starting to get a little cold in the mornings! Its nice and breezy in the afternoon. So I am just so happy about that!! 

Attached are a few pictures:

One of them is Elder Morales, Elder Morrin and I at the multi zone conference. Our ties are the colors in order of the Ecuador flag, because Elder Morales is from Ecuador. Then there are two pictures of us with our ice cream cake in our end of summer party. And then we have a picture with my new companion and I! 

So I am pretty happy and excited to get working! I could really use all your prayers these first few weeks of this transfer in order to find prepared people to baptize! I hope you all have a great week!

Love, Elder Miles

Week ending March 15th

Hello!

How is everyone? I had a stellar week! Just the same old, we were able to contact and tract a lot this week and meet a lot of new people, but we still dont have any progressing investigators for baptism. This week was a really sad week, one of our sister missionaries here past away this week while in the mission. The whole mission was really sad, especially president Franco. I think I heard that there was an article about it in Deseret News. But besides that the week was great, I did divisiones with Elder Morrin, my zone leader utah friend. I learned a lot from him. We had a lot of fun this week, I am doing really well and I am really liking where I am at right now. We found out this week that in April an apostole is going to come to our mission and talk to us! Woo! How exciting. Today for P day, all the Elders from our zone went to the costanera, which is the place in Corrientes where the huge bridge is and there are really pretty beaches there. Its not like an ocean beach, its just a river beach, but it was still really fun. We played frisbee.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!!!! WOOOOO!!! I cant believe you are already 30. Time has gone by so fast on the mission. I hope you have a great day. 

Thats about all for this week, not very much new. THis is the last week of this transfer, I am pretty excited for transfers to come. I have learned a lot from Elder Morales. I love getting new companions and learning from them because you can always take away the good from every companion and apply it to your mission work and your life, and learn from the bad as well.

This transfer I finished the Book of Mormon in spanish for the first time, I read the New Testament, I read the first five books of the Old Testament (the five books of Moses), and The Pearl of Great Price, all in one transfer! Woo. It was amazing to read them all in such a short period of time, to see them all come together and work as the complete restored gospel of Jesus Christ. It was great to read the Old Testament, to see where it all began with the creation and with Moses, and then read of the promised Christ in the New Testament. It was also great to read the amazing truths that come with the Pearl of Great Price through the prophet of Joseph Smith. 

My testimony of Jesus Christ has grown so much this transfer, I truly can say that I know that he suffered for me. I know that by living the gospel, we can show our gratitude towards Jesus Christ for what he did for us, and by so doing we can gain the mercy that we need to be forgiven of our sins. The atonement is for us in this life, and for the life that comes. In this life we recieve the peace and strength that comes from using the divine power of the atonement. Really if we pray, and we set ourselves straight with God, have a relationship with him and work our best towards living his gospel, I promise you that the atonement can give us power and strength to live a happy life. Not only that, one day we will be able to return to live with God again, which is the greatest of all gifts. Reading and studying the scriptures a ton this transfer has really changed my life, I wish I could somehow show you all the vision I have about the gospel of Jesus Christ. But it takes time to learn. I didnt understand before the mission at all. But the basics are Faith, Repentance, Baptism, recieve the Holy Ghost, and endure to the end. My favorite part about the Gospel is Repentance. A lot of people think that repentence is a scary word that means you have to go through hard things. But repentence truly is beautiful. Repentence is setting youself straight with God. It is a life process, a process of being a little better everyday. Praying to him and talking to him, living every day with more excitement and hope for the future, having a life devoted to a higher purpose. It is truly beautiful.

As well I would like to testify of the calling of Joseph Smith as a prophet in these latter days. I read a talk that I really lived called Profile of A Prophet, I would recommend it to everyone. It takes a lot about why it makes perfect sense that God has called a prophet today. It makes perfect sense that God still takes to man today. All through the Old Testament. Abraham, Noah, Moses, they were all prophets. God talking to man didnt stop in the New Testament, rather it reached its peak with God talking to Jesus Christ. After the death of Jesus Christ, Jesus himself appeared to his apostoles and talked to the personally. So when exactly, did God suposively stop talking to man? Did God lose his power to be able to talk to man? Of course not, God is God and cant lose his power. Is it then that he doesnt love us anymore? Of couse not, God loves us and we are his children. So why couldnt he talk to man today? I testify truly with all my heart that I know Joseph Smith was a prophet and restored the gospel. He, like all the prophets before him, met up to all the standards to be a prophet.  The Book of Mormon is evidence of that. No man could ever write such a powerful book, with all the hundreds of references it has to the bible, all the history and stories, somebody truly couldnt write a book like that. Its true, but the way you guys can know is reading it and praying about it. I also testify that Jesus is the Christ, he suffered for everyone one of us because he loves us. And if we do everything we can in this life to serve him and keep his commandments out of the love and gratitude we have towards him, he will forgive us by his mercy and grace.

I hope you all have a great week! Thank you for all your emails!

Love,

Elder Miles

March 2nd - 8th 2015

Hola! 

How is everyone? I am doing really well! We had a good week. We still dont have any progressing investigators but we truly worked really hard this week and I feel like we are doing all that we can, so I am not too disappointed. All we did this week was basically knock doors and visit a few less active members! We found a few new investigators but they didnt attend church this week. Even though we arent having a ton of success, I loved this past week because we had a ton of fun and we had good attitudes. I loving having our zone leaders above us, every night before we go to bed we get together and we cook dinner and play around for a little bit, it is a blast. I love it because I am learning how to cook A TON because they are all really good cooks and they teach me everynight. This week, Elder Morales taught me how to cook a traditional food from Ecuader called Patacon. It is made from platanos, which are basically bananas but not. And we fry them in oil, they are kind of like potato-banana chips. THEY ARE SO GOOD. I am definitely going to make them when I get back home! 

Funny story from the week! On tuesday night, we had a HUGE rainstorm. We took shelter in the home of a member until it was like 9 o clock at night, and even though it was still pouring, we had to walk like a mile back to our apartment. Every street was flooded knee high, and the power had gone out. So we were trekking back to our apartment in knee high water, and we couldnt see anything because it was pitch black. Haha. So there is a thing called a zanga in Argentina, which is the Argentine sewer system, and it is a little moat that every house has like 7 feet from the house that circles all the way around the house, and all the sewage and water from the house flows into the moat (zanga) and then the water and stuff just dries into the earth or evaporates. So every house has a little moat like 5 feet deep of sewage water. So back to the story, we were walking in the darkness in knee deep water making our way back to the apartment, and I took a step and all of the sudden I was completely sumerged in water... I had stepped into a zangja (Which is sewer gross water!!) Nooo!!! I feel in up until my chest!! I didnt see it coming because it was dark and the ground was covered in water. It was the worst! haha. And then after that we made it back to our apartment fine, but what a day. 

This week at church and at choir practice I meet a ton of new people and I made a ton of friends. I am really starting to like the mission, I love meeting and talking with people all day and I like that it is making me become more social. I am really enjoying life, I am trying my best to make everyday fun and make everyday an adventure and making the mission memorable. In the church every Thursday night at 7 we teach english classes, and this thursday I got promoted to the teacher! So I now teach english classes. We have like 8ish people come everyweek, its pretty cool. 

Well thats basically all that happened this week! We are just searching hard for new investigators and enjoying the ride. I would like to invite you all to always think deeply about the meaning of life and why we are here. Even if you arent like LDS or go to church or anything, I just think everyone should really take breaks every now and then and think about what is happening all around us. As my humanities teacher would always say, if you dont think about stuff, you are an idiot. We spend all our time studying how to become a doctor, or a lawyer, or a teacher, and we dont spend enough time searching for the very reason we are here in this earth! I really love the scripture that is in 2 nephi 9, around verse 50 or 51 (I dont have my scriptures right now). It takes about how the very most important thing in life is the spiritual part. All of our money and nice things will all be gone away when we die, but our spirits will not. We will carry with us our experiences and knowledge with us. So how important is it that we focus in the spiritual aspects of this life and not the physical? As a missionary, I have found that the Holy Ghost can truly speak to the heart and teaches us the mysteries of God.. There are no coincidences in the God´s plan and we have to try to take advantage and learn from every opportunity that we can. 

I hope you all have a great week, thank you for your emails!!

Love,

Elder Miles

Feb 23rd - Mar 1st 2015

HEEYYYY!

Familia! ¿Que tal mis amigazos? I hope everyone is doing good, I had a pretty good week here! Nothing really too new to report. We spent this week knocking doors and searching for new people to teach, and unfortunately we didnt have very much success this week. Corrientes is a rough place! It is the Catholic capital of Argentina. So we didnt have any investigators come to church this week and we dont really have any progressing investigators right now. It was a pretty tough week to be honest. There were huge rain storms every day this week and all the streets in my area flooded. During one of the rainstorms, somehow our air conditioning broke. So all this week we have just been dying of heat at night and we can hardly sleep because its so hot! The highlight of this week would have to be that I did divisions with Elder Pacheco, our Zone Leader that lives upstairs from us. His area is super jungly and way cool, and he is a super good missionary and it was a really good experience to learn a lot of new things. This week we focused on using the Book of Mormon when we contact people. (Knock doors, talk to people in the street, etc.) There is such great power in the Book of Mormon. I am still loving being with Elder Morales, I know that we are going to be really good friends for life. Other than that, this week has been the same old, its been rough but we are hanging in there. We are going to keep working hard and find new corrintinos that want to get baptized! 

This morning I had the opportunity to finish reading the New Testament in spanish. It has been really spiritual for me to read about the life of the Savior. Really the biggest event that has ever happened for each one of us personally was the Atonement of Jesucristo. When we start to really understand that Christ paid the great price of our sins for us, we realize how eternally indebted we are that he has truly given us the gift of life, he has saved us. Everything that we have and experience in this life is all thanks to him. And for that he will always be our Savior. It is a priviledge for me to be able to be a representative for him for these 2 years. 

Attached is a photo with me and Elder Pacheco in our argentina jerseys, which we found and purchased this week. They are sweet. 

I hope you all have a great week! Thank you for your emails! 

Love,

Elder Miles

Feb 23 2015

Hola Hola!

How is everything going in your hemisphere? I hope everyone is doing good! We had a solid week here in Corrientes. This month, febuary, is the month of Carnival here in South America, and Argentina goes CRAZY for Carnival, especially in Corrientes. I dont even really know what it is, I just know everyone gets together and the dance and party and a lot of bad stuff happens. This week was like the main week of Carnival, so we had to return to the apartment early everday of the week, and a couple days we didnt leave the pension hardly at all. So we couldnt really do much this week but it was still a fun week! 

I forget to explain to you guys what Corrientes is like. ITS NUTS. So Corrientes is the providence accrossed from Chaco, Resistencia. You have to cross a big bridge to got over the Paraná River. Corrientes is a pretty big city, its a lot more cityish than my old area. Its still pretty jungle in the more suburb parts, but where I am at is a big city. In my area, Armenia, we have a big huge mall center, one of the biggest college campus´s in Argentina, a TV channel broadcasting station, a TON of boliches, which are like places where people go to dance and drink, and a lot more crazy stuff. Its kind of a hard place to be a missionary because it is really cityish. Im going to attach a picture of Corrientes from the bridge!

The highlights of this week is that we had a multi-zone meeting this week in Chaco, and I really learned a ton from President Franco. He is an amazing mission president and I am super grateful that we have him. That was a really good day. Elder Morales, Elder Morrin, Elder Pacheco and I (Picture attached) are all super good friends and I love being in the same apartment as them. On Wednesday night, a really member of the church named Rodrgo came over and we made asado, which is basically Argentine barbeque. We ate a ton of meat and it was super super good. 

This sunday none of our investigators came to church and we think that all of the baptisms we were going to have are going to fall through, so we are a little bit sad about that but we are just going to work hard and find new investigators to teach! 

Nothing else too exciting happened this week due to how much time we had to stay in the apartment, but we had a fun week! I am really liking this time I have to be with Elder Morales, he is a really funny guy and we enjoy our time together. Corrientes is a little bit of a rough place but I am still happy to be here and excited to start finding new investigators to teach. I hope you all have a great week and I am going to try my hardest to write you all individually! 

Elder Miles

Jan 19th - 25th 2015 (Late post)

Hola todos!

Hope everyone is doing great. I had another really awesome week this week. We had the baptisms of Lidia and Ana this friday, everything went perfect! It for sure was one of the most happy days of the mission so far. They both have such strong testimonies. Before we found them and started teaching them, they both had been praying to God to find more hope in life, and to find the truth, and thats when we showed up at their door. So they both have huge testimonies that God answered their prayers and that the Church of Jesus Christ is the true church. They are both going to be great members for life, I couldnt be happier for them. 

This week we had a couple of unexpected things happen. It rained a lot this week and the streets where extremely muddy (as usual), and on wednesday while we were walking towards the house of one of our investigators, a car purposefully got to close to us and sprayed mud all over for us, from head to toe, in our nice church clothes. Haha. At first we were mad, but we managed to laugh it off. We are going to find them, and we will preach repentence to them.

On thursday, we were in the church trying to get the baptismal clothing out of the closet for Lidia and Ana, and the key get jammed in the keyhole and we couldnt get it out. We tried to get the key out for 2 hours until we finally managed to budge it out and we were able to get the clothing. But man, I was stressed out. If we hadnt gotten the clothing out that day, Ana and Lidia wouldnt have been able to get baptized! haha. 

Huge shout to my momma! HAPPY BIRTHDAY on Wednesday!!!! (I remembered before you told me, I promise! :) 

This week my faith in Jesus Christ was strengthened a ton! As a representative of Him, I am so happy to be able to tell everyone that I met that I know he lives, and knowing that gives me a hope for a better life, better tomorrow, and a better world. Having Christ as the anchor of my soul, I will forever be able to face any challenge that comes my way. When I get a lack of self confidence and a lack of courage, I think about all the savior did for me, and all that I owe him in return, and it gives me strength everyday. I promise every one of you can recieve that strength every day too. 

Well, im going to attach some pictures! I hope everyone has a great week!

Jan 12th-18th 2015 (Late post)

Hola  todos!

I had another super good! I hope you are all doing well. We are still having lessons with Lidia and Ana and they are going to get baptized this friday, the 23rd! Woohoo! So happy. This week went spent a ton of time knocking doors and finding new investigators, and we had a lot of success. I am still loving being with Elder Mudrovich, I am learning so much. I am super blessed by the Lord to have this time to learn from him! He goes him in 2 transfers. 

This week I hit my six month mark, January 16th! WOOOOOOO! Time has FLOWN BY! And sometimes its really slow! I feel like I´ve been camping for half a year. I really have learned so much and I am so grateful for all the experiences that I have already had on my mission and all that I have learned. I accomplished learning the language, I learned how to teach effectively, and I learned how to run an area. Its been a really great past 6 months. 

On my sixth month day, I actually was on divisions with Elder Peña. He is from El Salvador. He is super cool, I loved divisions. Unfortunately, we didnt do anything for my sixth month mark. We actually spent the entire day doing service for a widowed woman. We cut the grass of her entire yard using machetes. It was insane. It was blazing hot and cutting grass with a machete is tough! But it was really fun with Elder Peña. I managed to cut only one pipe of her sprinkling system. 

We have been working with an active family these past couple of weeks, trying to reactive the parents and baptize the kids that they have. We have had to family home evenings with them, where we teach them doctrine and then we play fun games that the kids like. This week we are going to try to place a baptismal date for the kids!

Well, thats about all! Its really hot. 

Love, Elder Miles

P.S. I am going to sernd pictures in a different email!

Jan 5th - 11th 2015 (Late post)

Dear family!

How is everyone doing? Thank you for the emails! I had another pretty good week this week! I am loving my time with Elder Mudrovich. I love that he lets me take control of the area so that I can learn how to do everything I need to know and be ready for whatever comes next! We have a ton of unity in our companionship. We are always joking and laughing, it is the greatest. What I like the most is that I feel like I have an equal part in the process of helping our investigators convert. It feels really good to see peoples lifes change for the effort we make to be a tool in the Lords hands. Ive learned to have a lot more confidence in myself this past two makes and I am truly grateful for the time I have right now with Elder Mudrovich. Unfortunately I still dont have any pictures of us, but I will send some next week! This sunday, only Ana came to church. Lidia had health problems and couldnt come. But they both still have a baptismal date for the 24th, so I am super excited for that. Well, summer here is in full swing. IT IS SO HOT. Ive heard that it is comparable to an Arizona summer, but here we have A TON of humidity. I think I drink a gallon and sweat a gallon everyday. I never thought the mission would be so physically hard. But other than that, just a normal week! All is well! I hope you all have a great week!

P.S. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ALL MY FAMILY THAT SENT ME BIRTHDAY AND CHRISTMAS CARDS!! That meant so much to me, thank you!!!

Love, Elder Miles