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

Nov 3

hola-

the exclamation point and the shift keys are broken on this keyboard that im using and they only sometimes work, so its going to sound im depressed and have really bad gramar. haha. But thats not true, im just depressed. haha. just kidding.

 this week was pretty alright! We moved apartments, we are now in the apartment right below our old one. We moved because now we will be able to install air conditioning in this one, im not sure why our last one couldnt have air conditioning, but were going to have it now! So last P day we spent all the day moving the furniture and everything, it took a really long time. I was greatful for my Red Door days though, because of my furniture moving experience, we managed to only break one bed frame. the new apartment is basically the same quality, some things worse, some things better.

I actually didnt do transfers this week with Elder Miles, but with Elder Coates, his companion, in my área. It was stressful to run our área without Elder Nava, but I managed to get through that day. my training is over in 2 weeks, which is when the next transfer is. Its not certain that I will get a new companion or move out from this área though, you never know. I might stay here another transfer with Elder Nava, or he will leave and another will fill his place, or vice versa, or we both might leave. I guess we will see when it comes! I would really love any kind of change. haha.

I also went on a Little mini división with Elder Anderson this week for like 4 hours one day, and while we were out he told me something that was really interesting. First of all, Elder Anderson is a stud missionary, and he is just over Little then a year. he told me that my ability to speak spanish right now is better than his ability when he had 9 months. Which is great, but thats not the point, im not trying to brag. he told my where im lacking right now isnt my ability to speak the language... its just that I dont have enough confidence in myself right now to talk to people. which is totally true!! I realized this week the reason why im not talking to people very much is just because I dont have confidence in myself.. Self confidence has always always been something really hard for me, and its even harder to have self confidence in foreign language, but ive been trying really hard this week just to oblígate myself to talk more, and the misión has been getting a Little better. im starting to see more progress. So my focus this week is just to be bold, have courage, ask people questions, and just talk more to people.

this week my relationship with Elder Nava got a lot better. ive been trying really hard to just talk and joke with him all the time, and our companionship has been getting better. We had a talk on thursday for about an hour in our free time that night, and he told me all about his family in mexico and how its really sad how poor they are and how they want to find Jobs and money but there really is just nothing there for them to do and they cant do anything about their situaion. Its was really sad, he started to cry. So that was better this week, we are starting to have more unity.

Other than that, nothing much else has changed. We are just trying to focus ourselves in finding new investigators this week by tracting all day, and when we arent tracting we are visiting our recent converts in this área. all is good here, im learning a lot everyday. Im really excited for transfers. Im just taking it day by day, hanging in there !

Im really happy for the time that I have here to serve the savior.. I know the Savior lives, and im so glad that I get the chance to sacrifice my time to serve him. I hope you guys are all doing great and you have a good week! Chau!

Love, Elder Miles

Oct 27

Hola Family!

This past week was better for me, I hope everyone is doing good too. It was basically just the same old as the other weeks, I just feel like we knock houses all day everyday and we arent really finding any lasting investigators. A lot of people will let us in for the first time and let us share something, but after that they dont want to let us come back and we dont really ever see them again! So we dont really have any real solid investigators right now, we only have the Aquino family, a big family which we have about consistenly 4 people listening to us, but nobody in the famly can read really and they want keep any commitments we leave them. Enrique, the person that we were going to baptise, has problems with the Word of Wisdom and he thinks that God is telling him that he should keep smoking marijuana. Haha. So we have to stop having lessons with him because he takes up a lot of our time and he doesnt want to quit smoking. So other than that, I just feel like we contact all day everyday and we arent having much success. Ive heard from a lot of people that this is one of the hardest missions in South America. The church isnt very established here, we dont get very much help from the members, and nobody really wants to talk to listen to us. The dont call it Resistencia for no reason! It means resistence in english, and its true, the people here are very resistent. 

I dont really have anything new to say, its super hard right now but im sure it will get better soon. A lot of the time I just feel super lost, walking around in Argentina all day with someone that doesnt speak english, and a lot of the time I dont feel like im progressing in the language, spiritually, or in any way or form. Its super discouraging and tough right now, but I know if I stick it out and keep trying my hardest everyday, the Lord will bless me. I know trials are for a reason. We need discomfort to be able to progress, its just the way of life, part of the Lords plan. Right now im super uncomfortable, so I sure hope that means that a lot of progress is on the way! Its like working out a muscle.. Yes, during the work out, you hate it, but in the end, it really is worth it and its the only way to have progress in strength building. Its the same way spiritually! Trails are good, im trusting so much in the Lord that he knows what he is doing and he is in control. Im still pretty homesick, but its getting better. 

Last night was Elder Navas one year mark, so I bought us hamburgers and our neighbors made us pizza and smoothies, and we partyed. Within missionary standards. It was very fun, our relationship is improving, im learning how to make him happy and how I can serve him, even if sometimes it is the last thing I want to do. Haha. We have more unity and its getting better!

Tomorrow im going to have transfers with Elder Miles, im so excited!!! We are really good friends and its going to be super nice to spend a day with him. The only hard thing will be that neither of us can speak spanish yet, so were going to be lost, all day. Its getting to be really hard, but really fun. Its really going to force me to take inciative and talk for a day, so im excited for it, I think it will help me a lot.

I hope everyone is doing good, im sorry my emails arent very happy and missionary like right now, I probably should give myself more credit for the progress I do make and the things that I am able to say and do, but its hard to focus on the positive sometimes when its all so hard! But I really am doing good, im pretty happy here! I hope you all have a good week, thank you for your emails, they help me a lot every week.

Love, 

Elder Miles