December 29th, 2015

Feliz Navidad y año nuevo!!

I hope that everyone had a very merry Christmas! For me over here in Argentina we had a great time. It was great skyping you family. It has been awhile since we have been able to write and have a normal P day, so I will let you know of all thats happened for the last little while!

On the 22nd the sister missionaries in my zone made me a birthday  cake, so that was awesome. The sisters in my zone are awesome. They also all wrote me a nice card. On the 23rd a family called the Garnier family from Colonia Benitez (the little village like 30 minutes away from Resistencia) invited us over for dinner for my birthday and we ate a ton of empanadas and it was way fun. The 24th was just a regular day other than we just had to go into the apartment early, so Elder Miles and I took advantage of the extra time and we built an ultimate fort. Yep. A fort. Like the kind you make as a kid, with chairs and blankets and everything. And then we slept in it that night! Haha. It was so much fun. We built the fort so that the christmas tree hanging on the wall was incorporated into the fort. So all night we had the christmas tree lights on and Elder Miles and I watched the christmas videos (a Savior is Born, He is the Gift, etc.) and we talked and what not, and then we woke up on the 25th and we opened the packages that our families gave us! Thanks family! As well Elder Miles and I we bought each other gifts, I bought him a cool shirt he wanted and a mate cup that says "Los 2 Miles", and he bought me a cool book in spanish to read for after the mission. And then we had our Christmas zone activity, we all went to the church and we played volleyball, with all the elders and the sisters together. Even President Franco and Hermana Franco came out to play with us! It was way fun. Our zone is awesome. And then we had a zone lunch, Hna Allred and Hna Gull made Cafe Rio pork burritos and Hna Puente and Hna Greenwood made a ton of cookies and mexican sweets. IT WAS SO YUMMY. And then I skyped the family! It was great. And then we went back to our apartment and the elders from La Leonesa stayed with us and we watched 17 miracles and then went to bed. (Thanks so much Nat and Dad for the movie!!) It was a sweet Christmas. 

I think what I liked more than anything about this Christmas is that this year I truly could focus on the true meaning of Christmas. I love the christmas videos that the church made, they helped me understand the importance of a savior. As well during the month of December I read all 4 gospels that talk about the saviors life. I loved testifying to everyone I saw about the reality that a Savior came to this earth, and thanks to him we can be happy and have peace and comfort in this life. 

Yesterday we had interviews with President Franco! It was great. I am so grateful for an example like President Franco in my life. He is the most holy man that I know. 

I am going to take more time this week to write people individually! So I hope that you all have a happy new year, thank you to everyone that sent me birthday or christmas wishes, I really appreciate everyone of you and all your love and support. 

Love, Elder Miles

My friend

The fort. It was cooler than it looks. It had a tunnel system.

December 14th, 2015

Hola a todos!!

I hope that everyone had a good week. This week was great for us! We have an investigator named Magalí that we have been teaching for like 2 weeks and this past sunday she came to church!! Woo!! And she liked it! Woohoo!! All the members did a really good job at being her friend and she said that she wants to go next week. She has a baptismal date for 3 weeks in the future! I sure hope that she makes it. She is super special, she really understands everything that we say to her and she wants to see if its true for herself. She is a single mom of 2 kids. As well this sunday I gave a talk in sacrament meeting! It went really well. I talked about how the Book of Mormon increases our faith and how we can have a true testimony of Jesus Christ if we read it. I talked about all the things that I learned and felt while I was reading it in the month of November. There is nothing better if we want to know if God and Jesus Christ exist and love us than read the Book of Mormon.. Throughout the book it makes more than 4200 references to God and Jesus Christ.. I counted :) An average of 7 times per page it says "God" or "Jesus Christ" or "the Lord" etc. So I talked about all that, I feel like my talk went well. 

This week we went and explored a new part of our area called Colonia Benitez. It is like a little town 30 minutes outside of Resistencia. IT IS AWESOME. The houses there are actually really nice! Its a nice change for us to go there sometimes. There are a few members that live there.. We want and visited the Garnier family and they asked us to give there house a blessing. So I gave my first blessing to a house, it was pretty neat. As well while we were in Colonia Benitez we visited Brother Fernandez. He was a mission president twice and he served as temple president of the Uruguay temple and the Buenos Aires temple. So he is kind of a big deal. HE KNOWS SO MUCH. Elder Miles and I went there and we just asked him deep doctrine questions and we just had our notebooks out and we wrote down everything that he said. He is a holy man. It was so cool to talk to him. As well in Colonia Benitez I saw monkeys in the trees. Its kind of jungle, its cool. 

Everything is going great here, we are super happy right now! Elder Miles and I started what is called, "The purification challenge". Its a 40 day fast. haha. Its where you pick 10 behaviors that you would like to stop doing (for example, sleeping in 5 minutes late, expressing frustration towards your companion, being scared to talk to everyone, etc.) and for 40 days, you "fast" from those behaviors. And throughout the 40 days, you try your very best not to do any of those things that you put on your list. And after the forty days, we will have the spirit more and we will be able to teach better. So we are really trying to consecrate ourselves right now! I am so happy here with Elder Miles, he is great. 

FAMILY: I know that I made you guys come up with a skype time for me and I appreciate that you did that very much, but this week Elder Miles and I realized that we think it would be best if we could do the skype call at like 1:00 p.m. Argentine time, which would be like 9:00 am Utah time. How would that work for you guys? Because we are going to have a zone activity on Christmas day and we have to be back in the apartment at 7:00 pm and its going to be kind of stressful for us and we would like to kind of get the skype call done with more earlier in the day. What do you guys think about that? Let me know if thats okay with you guys! Its fine if you are at grandpa gary´s house, I just want dont want all the beesleys being too loud and I want to mainly talk to Mom, Matt, Syd, Carrie, Dad and Nat! So let me know if thats okay with you guys!

Well, thats about it. I hope that you all have a great week, thank you for your love and support!

Elder Miles

December 7th

Hola!

I hope that everyone is doing good. This was a pretty good week for us, a little stressful. We had consejo on wednesday (the meeting of zone leaders where President Franco gives a training presentation, and then the next day we give the same training presentation to our zones). It was super super good, I loved it. We talked about the two new videos that the church came out with about Christmas. EVERYONE, if you havent seen the the videos "A Savior is Born" and "Why we need a Savior" stop what you´re doing and watch it right now! You can find them on youtube. They are both only 2 minutes long but they bring a powerful message. The are both super cool, I like the second video better actually. It truly brings Christmas spirit and helps us to remember why we celebrate Christmas. As well, if you would like to see the Christmas video from last year you can watch "He is the Gift". I hope that you can all take time this Christmas to truly think about the meaning of Christmas!.. All december we are going to be showing everyone that we talk to these 2 videos. So they are really important to me right now. We have already shown them to probably at least 20 people. I love Christmas! Its so much fun. Its a great time as a missionary because Christmas opens the door to share great messages with people. So then on saturday we had a zone meeting, it went okay. We had so many difficulties. We had to get a TV out of a room so that we could show our zone these new videos, but we got the key jammed in the lock and we couldnt open the door and we trying to get it open and praying for like an hour. In the end we just hired someone to come open the dang door. And then the videos wouldnt work on the TV! It was all very stressful but it all worked out in the end. As well, this week we went to take our clothes over to the member that washes our clothes, but he wasnt there, so we left them with his neighbor so that she could give to him our clothes when she saw him. Well, we went back a week later and the clothes were still with her neighbor. The member had moved houses and we didnt know about it, so our clothes were still with that lady all week. So we took our dirty clothes back to our apartment to wash them ourselves by hand, and we open up our bags, AND... Our clothes had a bunch of maggot looking moth worms in them. So gross. We had to kill them all and soak all our clothes in bleach before they reproduced. haha. 

FAMILY! IMPORTANT: What time would you like to do skype on Christmas day? Us as zone leaders we have to plan out when every companionship is going to go to the church to skype with their families. We cant skype at members houses anymore. So we have to decide on a time! Here, argentina time, I will be able to skype anywhere from 1-6 pm, so that would be basically 9:00 am - 2:00 pm Utah time. So converse amongst youselves and come up with a time, or if it doesnt matter to you guys a specific time then I will just pìck a time and tell it to you guys next week. This year we can only talk for 45 minutes. 

Well thats about it! I hope that you all are doing great and that you have a great week. THanks for your support!

​Our zone!! Woo! President and Sister Franco gave us these little "12 days of Christmas" red packet things, where everyday it has like a challenge for us. Like one day we have to give someone a bottle of water and teach them how Christ is "living water", or another day we have to sing a christmas carol to 5 people, stuff like that, its fun. 

Our apartment owner/neighbor and us

December 1st, 2015

Friends, Family!-

This was a sweet week for us! Not too much happened in our area, we didnt really find anyone knew and all the investigators that we had (Romina, Eduardo, Fernando) have all stopped progressing and now this new transfer we will just be starting from ground zero, we really dont have any investigators. Which reminds me to tell you guys, ELDER MILES AND I ARE STAYING IN RIO NEGRO TOGETHER!! Woo!! We are so happy and stoked for one more transfer, thats what I wanted more than anything. We will be together for Christmas, its going to be so much fun. Our apartment owner, her name´s Griselda, the one that decorated our apartment door with Halloween decorations, she brough us a Christmas tree to hang on our wall! Its just like a little tinsel christmas tree, but its better than nothing!! She is so nice, we love her. She is like our mom away from home. So thats super exciting, Elder Miles and I we are going to be each other a few little gifts and stuff. So there were a few little changes in our zone, now La Leonesa and Las Palmas got united to be one big area (because the amount of missionaries that we have in our mission is getting smaller,so some areas are getting put together we other areas so we can cover more ground in the mission). So Elder Johnson and Elder Christensen left. As well one of our sister missionaries left and another one came. But other than that, our zone is all the same. 

I finished the Book of Mormon challenge yesterday that our mission did! We read the whole B.O.M. in the month of November. I loved it, I learned so much. It was cool because I got to see all the concepts that are all throughout the book in such a short amount of time. My testimony in Jesus Christ and the Restoration have definitely both increased a ton. I think my favorite thing that I learned is that if I always have a grateful heart for the all the blessings and mercies that the Lord has given me, I will always obey the commandments and live happily. I love the Book of Mormon. 

Yesterday we were in the bus station all day helping missionaries get on their buses. It went better this time, everyone got where they needed to! Its a stressful day but I love seeing all the missionaries and helping them. 

On thanksgiving we ate lunch with Ammon and Laura, that recently young married couple in our ward that help us out a lot. It wasnt like a thanksgiving lunch, we didnt eat turkey or anything like that, but we actually HAD lunch with a member for the first time in the whole transfer. So that was a thanksgiving miracle to us. They are so awesome. 

Well thats about it, I am so excited for this transfer!! I hopè you are all doing great, thanks for your love and support!

Elder Miles

​I love this guy

​Ammon and Laura

​Our apartment owner Griselda with the Christmas tree she gave us.