I hope everyone is doing awesome back at home. I'm doing muy muy super mega bien. This week has been a little tougher than the others though, but that's probably just because it was the hump week. I only have 3 weeks left to go here! Woohoo! I'm super excited to get out there on my real mission soon. It's crazy to think about how much i've learned in these first 3 weeks, and i'm probably going to learn even more in these next 3 to come.
So for the first 2 weeks we were teaching an "investigator" named Daniel, and on wednesday, we walked into our classroom for class in the morning, and we found out that "Daniel" was our new teacher. WHAT. PLOT TWIST. I mean, we knew he wasn't a real investigator, but we didn't know that he was going to be our new teacher. As an investigator, it was super moopy and droopy and sad, but as a teacher, he is the best, most energetic, passionate about the gospel, all around the best teacher i've ever had. After every single spiritual lesson we have, I came out of it so inspired and uplifted everytime. He blows my mind with the gospel everyday. And he's really good at teaching spanish too. His name is Hermano Rockwood. Hermano means brother in spanish. He's a way cool, i'm liking it alot!
Elder Brown and I are getting a lot better at teaching by the Spirit, partly because we can actually sort of almost speak a little bit of spanish now, so we don't have to just read off our lesson plans, we can actually understand the investigators concerns and use our spanish to teach the gospel personally to how they need to be taught. It is really cool, the Spirit is amazing. To teach a lesson by the power of the Spirit is an incredible feeling, even if they are fake investigators. We are teaching 3 investigators at once. And we hardly ever have time to prepare lessons, so every single day it's a struggle and a scramble to try to throw lesson plans together. On top of that, we don't really know how to speak spanish very good yet. So the MTC is just an all around hard experience, but we need this to help immerse us and prepare us for the real world of Argentina!
Yesterday was our first time teaching a new investigator named Mariana in TRC. TRC is where they have real people come and they pretend to be an investigator for us. Most of them are members of the church and aren't real investigators, but there are a few that aren't members of the church and may be actually curious. Elder Brown and I think it's possible that Mariana isn't a real member of the church. She seems super super real. Anyway, yesterday was our first time teaching her. The lessons won't okay, nothing too grand. But, we didn't know at the time, that all the hermanas (sisters) in our district were watching us teach on a surveillance camera. We had no idea that there was a surveillance camera in there. What was cool was that after the lesson, our hermanas came up and told us that they were watching our lesson, and they said that my spanish during the lesson was incredible. Like they were amazed at the spanish that was coming out of my mouth, especially because I was the one in our district that came into the MTC with the least spanish experience out of us all. So that made me feel really really good! But I know it was the Spirit speaking through me, using the little spanish that I do know to communicate our message. It was a cool experience. We're really starting to understand what "teaching by the Spirit" means.
And then also last night, I had the opportunity to give my first comfort blessing ever to someone. I gave it to a hermana in our district that has been having some really hard personal stuff going on with her family back home. Just asked me to give it to her, and I was really nervous at first because I had never given one to anybody before, but as soon as I started giving the blessing, it was the most amazing feeling. It's not like the Spirit was talking for me, but the thoughts of what to say just came to my mind. I promise you guys that the Spirit is real, the power of the priesthood is real! It was one of the coolest experiences of my life. She said that it really meant a lot to her.
It was kinda tough to focus this week, I definitely could have done better in my focus. But i'm doing good! Days here feel like forever, but weeks go by really fast. Time is super strange here. I can't differentiate between days, I can't remember what days things happened, it's all one big day. Haha. We just do the same exact thing, all day everyday! Studying for 9 hours a day. Being really close to God and really spiritual all the time really makes me miss hiking. I think about hiking every single day haha. I can't wait to go hiking again when I get back. I also really really miss my music!
Spanish is coming along, i'm learning so much here. I've realized more importantly than learning spanish, i'm learning the language of the Spirit. The spiritual classes we have are way important to me than the spanish classes we have. I love being here, i'm super close to God. I love being a missionary!
"Mas cerca, a Dios, a ti, yo quiero ser"
I hope you guys are all doing awesome.
Love, Elder Miles
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