Monday, April 13, 2015

6th - 12th of April

Hola!

This week was great for us! I hope everyone had a good week too. I dont have too much to say, just the same old, day in day out! Solid week. This week we have had the opportunity to teach Roberto. He is a really cool guy about 35 years old that lived in the area of my zone leaders, but he recently has had family problems and he moved into our area in armenia 1! Woohoo! So he now belongs to us in our area, and we are the missionaries that are going to teach him and baptize him now. He has a baptismal date for Abril 25th!! So we are going to rob our zone leaders out of having a baptism :) haha. No, it really actually isnt anyone´s baptism, its the Lord´s baptism, but its just funny. We are super excited for his baptism in 2 weeks, all 4 of us, my companion and I and the zone leaders, are going to make it really special for him. The zone leaders have taught him for a while and they have worked really hard to prepare him. 

Also this week my companion got sick for a couple days, he had an allergic reaction to juice that he drank and got rashes on his skin. So we stayed in the apartment for one day. Other than that, we have been teaching Ruben and Antonella, and Omar all this week. And none of them attended church, which is frustrating. We have also been spending a lot of time knocking doors and looking for new investigators, as well as working on reactivating some less active members. I cant believe this transfer is already half over, the weeks have flown by. Everyday we leave the apartment and im always slightly nervous that we are going to run out of plans for the day or we arent going to know what to do, but somehow miraculously, the days always turn out good. We always have somewhere to be. The spirit always guides us somewhere or helps us remember someone. I have definitely seen the hand of the Lord helping us out this transfer! Its getting less hot.. Its starting to rain quite a bit! Its definitely a ton more comfortable, which probably is greatly contribuiting to my happiness. 

This week I read Our Heritage, Our search for Happiness, and True to the Faith, all in one week! They are gospel books basically about the Restoration through Joseph Smith, why the gospel is so important, etc. But really, after reading those 3 books this week, my testimony has become completely solid. I had a super spiritual experience this week where upon finishing Our Heritage, I felt the Spirit so strongly and in that moment, I knew that everything was true, without a doubt in my mind. I have always had my doubts about God and about the restoration growing up, and I never thought I would really ever have a complete 100% testimony like how many people say they have, but after this week I truly do feel like I can say that. I mean I always had a testimony before, but this week it truly just all clicked. Very cool. And so, my testimony really is that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is true. I know that Joseph Smith was a prophet, and I know that through him God has restored his church, the same church he established 2000 years ago. The power of the priesthood, or the power of God, is once again on the earth. And how beautiful is that? God speaks to us today. His church is on the earth today, that helps us to be happy.The atonement is real.

I wish you all a great week, thank you for your emails, they are very much appreciated! 

Elder Miles

Week Ending April 5th

HEYYYY!

Friends and family! I hope everyone is doing well, we had a super good week here. Conference was awesome, I sure loved it a lot. For conference here we all went to the district center (like a stake center, but for districts/branches) and they had the conference transmitted on a big screen. There was also a a room where they had a TV playing the conference in english, for us gringos. But I watched half the conference in spanish, half in english! And I understood both languages equally! Woohoo for spanish!

 This week we spent a lot of time working with our investigators Ruben and Antonella, which unfortunately didnt come to church (conference) this week. We are also working a lot with Omar, our investigator that is the grandson of one of our members here, who didnt come to church this week either. Dang. Other than that we have been contacting (door knocking) a lot and looking for new investigators! We havent been able to find very many other people to teach yet but we are not getting discouraged. The unity between my companion and I is still really good, we are really liking this transfer especially with our zone leaders! 

Conference was very spiritually energizing. I loved the talk of Gerald Caussé about how we should always try to have spiritual experiences every day. I feel like a lot of the time we get into routine prayers and quick scripture studies and we become a little bit spiritually numb. It happens to me a ton on the mission. But we have to remember to take the time and the effort to make every prayer and every scripture study meaningful and feel the spirit. I always really liked Uchtdorf´s talk about the atonement.

We found out this week that Elder Dallin H. Oaks is coming to our mission to talk to us at the end of April!! WOOO!! I am going to have the chance to listen to an apostle in real life and hopefully shake his hand! That is super exciting! 

Thats about all for this week, nothing very new happening! I hope you all have a great week!

Elder Miles