March 14th, 2016

Friends & Family!-

 

How are you doing? I love you and appreciate you all very much, thank you for your emails this week! This was a great week, Fiorela got baptized on saturday! It was a beautiful baptism. For the first time in my mission, nothing went wrong this baptism. The water went into the font and STAYED in the font this time. haha. Saturday was probably one of the happiest days of my mission and probably my life, lots of people came to the baptism and it was just a nice rewarding good feeling. I am so happy for Fiorela, she is such a cute, nice, sweet little 9 year old and I am glad that I could teach her.

 

Yesterday we went and visited the Garnier family, (they are the ones that we reactivated and now they have the goal to go to the temple) and it looks like we are going to be able to teach his daughter that came to church last week and maybe if she wants we will be able to baptism her, so we looking forward and praying for that!

 

Today for P-day we had our zone activity, we went to a cool musuem that had all these cool old communication machines, then we went to subway, and after we are done writing here we are going to go play basketball. Pretty fun day!

 

Lately I have been so happy thinking about all the things that have happened in my mission and especially in this area. I am so happy that I have been able to become so close with these people here and I am grateful for all that I have learned on the mission. I am so grateful for the life I have, I am grateful that 2000 years ago Jesus Christ suffered for my sins, making possible the gift of this life. Life has been so beautiful and I have learned to enjoy it. Everything is going great, I am super content here with Elder Grover! I hope you all have a great week,

 

Elder Miles

 

P.S. The computer that I am trying to email on isnt letting me upload photos, Ill try to send pictures a little later!

March 6th, 2016

Friends & Family!

Buen dia. Hows everyone doing? Thanks for your emails. We had a great week here, I am super happy with Elder Grover and all the good things that are happening in our area right now. Fiorela will be baptized this saturday!! Woohoo! We are super happy for this family. The kids are awesome, they come to church all by themselves in bus because their mom is sick a lot and cant go, and they just come all by themselves and sit by us. We announced Fiorela´s baptism and we made a bunch of invitations and gave them out at church. She is so sweet, I am glad that I have gotten the opportunity to teach her and be here to see her get baptized. As well this sunday Lucas and Andrés came. Lucas is a half member (he got baptized but never recieved the holy ghost) and Andrés is his neighbor that we are teaching. It was andrés´s second time coming to church, so if we can help him to overcome his obstacle of having to quit smoking, maybe we will be having his baptism too. All of these people live in a neighborhood called Barrio Don Santiago, and right now this part of our area is exploding. We are finding lots of people to teach and good things are happeneing. We are always really busy, which is good thing! I really really am enjoying myself right now, I love how Elder Grover and I are obedient, it makes me feel good. 

As well this week we had a zone leader conference and then the next day we had our zone meeting, it went great. We basically just took most of the time to talk about all the investigators in our zone individually, and as a zone we gave each other ideas on what they can teach them or what could help them progress. 

On Saturday night, a man named Hermano Fernandez accompanied us to some appointments that we had. This guy was a two time ex mission president, the 1st councelor of the Uruguay temple, a member of the seventy, stake president, and most recently he just got released as the president of the Buenos Aires temple. He now is "retired" from larger callings like that and is the adult sunday school teacher in our ward. He knows EVERYTHING. So as we drove to the appointment in his car I asked him a lot of questions about the temple and deep doctrine questions.. it was so awesome. He exploded my head with knowledge. And in the lesson he just brought so much spirit with his sincere testimony. It was a really cool experience for us to have him accompany us for a night!

Today for P day, Elder Grover and I went to this restaurant that we found called "The Pizza-Cone".. It was a basically like an ice cream cone but made of pizza.. The crust of the pizza was the cone and then inside the cone was cheese and on top were the pizza toppings. Pretty cool. And they gave us free slushies for being cool gringos. It was awesome! 

So this will hopefully be a good week for us with Fiorelas baptism. I give you all my sincere testimony that I know the work that I am in is true.. I know that God is a real being that loves us, and I know that this is his true church. The gospel is beautiful and I love the life style it brings me, I love the peace I feel inside me and the person it makes me. I hope you all have a great week! 

 

Love, Elder Miles

​La gran zona Resi 1

​The pizza cone

29th of Febuary, 2016

Amigitos-

How is everyone?! Thank you all indiviually for your emails, they mean a lot to me! This was a great week for us. I am loving being with Elder Grover, he is way cool and we are working super hard. We get along super good, he is a lot like me and we like a lot of the same stuff. He played football in high school, likes camping, hiking, etc. He wants to play college football after the mission. Cool guy! He helps me be obedient and I help him, I think this is probably the time in my mission where I have been the most obedient, which really makes me feel good inside and I feel like I am completeing my purpose here.. So things are going great. I love our zone. This week we focused on the Ramirez family a ton, the little girl (Fiorela) is excited to get baptized in two weeks and we are giving her all the lessons and she came to church again this sunday! So she just has to come one more sunday and we have to finish giving her the lessons and she is good to go! Even though she only is 9 years old I think it will be a very special baptism for me because it makes me remember how I got baptized when I was 9 or 10 years old and how the missionaries came to my house and taught me all the lessons. And how I did understand a dang thing that they said to me. haha. And its probably the same for her! But Fiorela truly wants to be baptized and gets excited and smiles everytime we talk to her about it. So I am super excited for her. As well I am becoming really good friends with the older brothers of the family too, they came and brought Fiorela to church because the mom was sick and couldnt come, and I thought it was really cool that they took the initiative to bring their little sister to church so she could get baptized on the right date. As well this week we found a couple other new people that we are teaching, things are going great, we are super busy. This coming week will be awesome, we are going to have the leader council and that means we will have a zone meeting, and then we are going to do divisions with Las Palmas on wednesday and thursday and on saturday the sister missionaries in our ward have a baptism! It should be way fun, im excited. 

The past couple of week I have been studying Doctrine and Covenants and I have been learning so much.. I dont have my scriptures with me right now so I cant tell you exactly where but in one of the sections it talks about how the holy ghost is the "Comforter" that teaches you "the quiet things of the kingdom". I am so grateful for the Holy Ghost in my life. I realize now that the powerful feelings that I had growing up that motivated me to go to church was from the spirit.. Its the same spirit that tells me now that I am in the path that I need to be. The Spirit will always testify to those who are looking.. Spiritual light will never come to those who sit in the dark and wait for the light to come to them, we have to get up out of the dark and find it. And when we do I know that those quiet feelings are more sweet and warming to the heart than anything else on this earth. When I think about the gospel it almost brings me to tears.. this past week I have seen a big change in my personal conversion and I dont know why. I am so grateful for the time I have had in the mission, they have been the hardest, most terrible two years of my life but definitely the most rewarding and I wouldnt change them for anything. 

I hope that you are all doing great and that you have a great week! Thanks for your emails and support. 

Elder Miles

​We went to a crappy musuem this morning, it was way fun

Febuary 23rd, 2016

Friends & Family-

Thank you all for your letters and support. Alright well, I am sad to announce that the reign of the 2 Miles has come to an end. Elder Miles got transfered to Santa Fe and I stayed here in Rio Negro! But I am happy to say that I am now with Elder Grover. He is from Blanding Utah. About six months ago when I first got to this zone, he was in the zone and I did divisions with him! So I already now him pretty well, he is a way cool kid, I am stoked to be with him. Elder Miles went to go be a zone leader in santa fe, so I will see him every month at the zone leader conference. 

So yesterday was the bus terminal transfer day. It went good this time! We managed to only have one missionary miss his bus. Thats a record!! haha. The rest of last week was really good! On wednesday I did divisions with Elder Teves. He is being trained in an area called Las Palmas in our zone. He only has 6 weeks in the mission but he is way cool, I loved doing divisions with him. He is from Buenos Aires. On thursday we had a multi zone conference, it was way fun. And on Friday we went to Family Canciano again! This time we were there he took us out in the wilderness and we extracted honey from some little bee hives that he is in charge of. The bees are little tiny and cant sting. It was a really fun experience! 

Sunday was really good, Noelia get confirmed this week. We also are trying to reactivate a less active family named the Ramirez Family, and this past sunday the mom came and brought all her kids!! One of the girls is 9 years old and hasnt been baptized yet so hopefully if we can keep working to reactive the family we could maybe baptize the little girl too! Her name is fionela. I am really good friends with Nico (the boy on my left side in the picture). He is 17 years old and likes talking to us a lot. They are a super awesome family. 

Well I hope you all have a great week!

Elder Miles

 

​Elder Teves and I

​Hermano Canciano and I in the wilderness. The machete is for fighting off all the raging crocidiles that come at us. (haha just kidding mom)

​The is the Ramirez Family. Fionela is the girl on the far left. Nico is the kid with the glasses by my left shoulder.

​Elder Grover and I. 

 

Febuary 15th, 2016

Friends & Family!

How are you guys all doing? This was a good week for us! Noelia got baptized on saturday! Its actually a pretty funny story.. On Friday night the assistants to the mission president filled up the baptismal font for us. On saturday morning Elder Miles and I went to the church to make sure that the font was filled and ready to go, and it was. The water was up to a high level and everything was perfect. We put up all the chairs for the baptism and everything was good, so we closed the doors to the baptismal font so no one could see in there. Then, that evening at 6 we had the baptism. We started the service with a hymn, prayer, a short talk, just like usual, eveyrhting was going great. Then we all moved from the sacrament room to the room where we do baptisms. Elder Miles was getting changed into his white clothes. Then, one of the guys that was going to be one of the witnesses (they guy that opens and closes the baptismal font doors and makes sure that the person getting baptized goes all the way under the water) comes up to us and tells us that there is no water in the font. I thought he was just joking with us. I go open the door to the font, and there is no water!!!!! It is completely dry. And on the other side of the doors, everyone is sitting there watching and waiting for Noelia to get baptized. haha. We dont know what happened!! Where did all the water go?! haha. We panicked. We started filling up the font again but we knew that it would take like 2-3 hours to fill. So we started getting big jugs of water and buckets and we were filling them up from every sink that we could find. All the members started helping us too! It was kind of funny actually. All the guys in the boys bathroom are just filling up buckets and and all the ladies in the girls bathroom are scrambling to fill up buckets. haha. It was super embarrassing and everyone blamed Elder Miles and I that there wasnt any water.. but in the end we managed to fill up the font in 40 minutes and she was able to get baptized with just a small delay! It was pretty funny. All in all it was a very beautiful baptism and she was super happy. The only bad thing is that she showed up late to church yesterday and she was able to get confirmed and recieve the holy ghost. Apparently they called a taxi to go pick them up from their house and it never came, so they got there late. But its okay, next week she will get confirmed for sure! Raul, the investigator of the sister missionaries that was suppose to get baptized as well, wasnt able to be baptized this week because he still has some problems with the word of wisdom. Maybe later on! 

As well this week we did divisions with the elders of La Leonesa. I was with Elder Diaz. I had already done divisions with him once but in Corrientes like 6 months ago. It was fun.

Next week will be transfers, so I will write on tuesday, not monday! Elder Miles and I are hoping that we still have one more transfer left together but its not likely, Elder Miles already has 5 transfers in this area. I guess we will see!

Thank you guys for your emails and support, I really appreciate it. Have a great week,

Elder Miles

Noelia and Nelson. Nelson was already a member, Noelia was his girlfriend that we have been teaching. They got married 2 weeks and yesterday she got baptized!

 

​The jugs of water that we had to fill up the font with! 

At last, we had enough water to baptize her

Febuary 8th, 2016

Hola hola!

How is everyone? This was a great week for us. The best news is that we put a baptismal date with Noelia and she is going to be baptizedthis saturday!! woohoo! Finally we are going to have a baptism in Rio Negro. That same day one of the investigators of the sister missionaries (Raul) will be baptized as well. So its going to be a great day. This coming week we are going to have 4 baptisms in the zone! So its going to be a great week for us. This last week the sister missionaries in Barrio 2 had a baptism, a man named Jose Luis, I did the baptismal interview for him, and he is  a super cool guy, I became good friends with him. He is an accountant and is making a small movie about a particular neighborhood in Resistencia, and he said he will give me a free copy. So we are hoping to have a great upcoming week. 

As well this past week an investigator that we have named Andrés came to church. He is good friends with a less active member that we just reactived named Lucas. Andrés is sincerely praying for an answer to see if this is the truth and he is reading the Book of Mormon.. so we are excited for him and we hope that he feels that he recieves an answer. A lot of the guys in the ward became friends with him and everything is going good. 

On friday we went to the Canciano family again. Remember them? They were the family of Toba indians that are members that we went and hiked out to the middle of nowhere to their house to visit them and all the streets were flooded with water and stuff. Well we went again, and this time it wasnt flooded! They are a super special family. One of the daughters of the family likes to do oragami, and she gave me this really pretty crane decoration thing that she made by herself. They dont have much, so her giving that to me was super special. And right before we left, they made this drink for us called azucar quemado (burnt sugar). What it is is they put a bunch of sugar in like a coffee mug, and then they put hot coals on the sugar and all the sugar burns up and steams as you stir it around with your spoon. Its so cool! And then after a few second of the hot coals in there, they put boiling water in there. And thats all there is to it. But it is SO GOOD!! It has a really good taste. They say that its a traditional drink from their tribe from since a long ago. So that was a way cool experience, I will have to show you guys how to make it when we are camping or something.

Everything is going great! This coming week should be good, we have consejo (zone leader counsel) tomorrow and then we will have our zone meeting as well. I have a super strong testimony that I know that I am serving God in his true church, I love the mission and I love all that I am learning. I know that its the true church because I feel it so strongly every time that I teach the restoration, I know the gospel has been restored and it makes me happy. Thanks for all your love and support, I hope that you have a great weeek!

Elder Miles

 ​This is the entrance to Resi, this sign is in my area

 ​This is the very very long road that goes to Canciano´s house! You have to wear boots for all the mud. (Look how pretty the argentine skies are!)

 ​This is the cool origami crane thing that she gave to me

Probably the only pretty thing about this wretched place. haha. 

Febuary 1st, 2016

Friends & Family!

How is everyone doing? Thank you for your emails and for your support, I really appreciate it. We had a great week over here! The best thing that happened is that our investigator Noelia (she has been an investigator for a reallly long time, even before I got to this area, she just hasnt gotten baptized yet because she needed to get married to her boyfriend Nelson, who is an inactive member in our ward) got married this week! She met Nelson and she moved in with him and then the missionaries started going over to teach her and she been truly converted to the restored gospel and is anxious to be baptized. So on Friday we went to her little wedding at a placed called Registro Civil and we watched them get married. It was fun and they were super glad that we were there. And now this week we have to talk to her and start planning out when she will be baptized! So thats something we are super looking forward to. 

As well this week on wednesday we had 2 elders stay in our apartment with us for a day because they had to come from far away (formosa) to do paper and visa work. One of them was Elder Flores, who is the best friend of Elder Toledo. Do you guys remember Elder Toledo? He was the missionary that I started to train like 7 months again that was a native indian from Paraguay that went home after 2 weeks. Elder Flores is one of the Nibacle that was able to stay here in the mission. So I did divisions with him all day and it was way cool for me to talk to him and see the progress that he has made since when they first got there. As well he told me that Elder Toledo is at home really happy and all is well. It was a  cool experience for me, I love Elder Flores, I respect him so much for being here and for staying in the mission. 

That night, I bought us all facturas to eat (a little yummy pastry thing). And I guess one of the ones that I ate made me SICKER THAN A DOG. And there are some pretty sick nasty dogs here in argentina. haha. I threw up lots and had a high fever. But thanks to my loving companion that took good care of me and feed me cookies as I was laying in bed I am completely healed and feeling great now. So everyone just calm yourselves down. 

It was also Elder Miles´s birthday last week on the 29th of January! I took him to Grido. Its our favorite local ice cream place. It was bucket loads of fun. 

We still are in an investigator drought, but we are trying everything we can and we feel good with our efforts even if they dont always end up in baptisms. Everything is going really good right now, I am loving the mission and I love serving my Lord. I love how the mission changes me and helps me to become a better person. I know that these that I am doing are true and for a good cause. 

Thanks for all your love and support! I hope you have a great week. 

 

 ​Elder Flores and I

 ​Noelia and Nelson at their wedding

​OH. MY. GOSH. Its been awhile.