Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Almost February


Well how’s things over there, or wherever you are reading this from?
I am loving it here as usual. Sorry that I am becoming a little bit of a broken record with that saying, but I wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t one hundred percent the truth.

The castle last preparation day was stupendous. The view from the tower was breathtaking; literally... you climb 151 stairs exactly to get to the top. Even with the insane amount of hills, stairs and walking we do here, it was enough to get my heart going a little.

I love this quote my grandma sent me from Pres. Eyring, "What is impossible for you is possible with God's help in His service. And even when you were very small and in the years since, He has with His power and His Spirit gone before your face and been on your left hand and on your right hand when you went in His service (see D & C 84:88) You can receive assurance that God will watch over you if you pray for it in FAITH." It is soooooo true. On that note, I thought I would comment a little about President Hinckley. I hope you all have had (or will have, I’m not sure when it is) the opportunity to see his funeral. I am sure it will be very uplifting and spiritual. I can’t remember a time without President Hinckley, and so this first conference is going to be a little weird.

We have had so many first experiences for Elder Peterson this week. It is pretty weird doing so many things for the first time with him. Sometimes I am helping him do something that I have only done once, and have to be the teacher. It is helping me grow immensely. We have been able to teach lessons, and contact, both of which Elder Peterson is participating in. He has the Sunday school lesson this Sunday, so we will be studying his lesson in our language studies leading up to the big day, game day. I am sure he will do just fine, but I will be there to help him if he needs a little help.

We taught a man named Alfredo and he has a son named NACHO, how cool is that. Mom why couldn’t you have named me Nacho Miller? Anyway it went amazing. It was relevant that he had had doubts in the previous lesson, and we helped him understand the things he was questioning. He has 4 kids and an awesome wife, all from Ecuador. We will see how things continue with there family.

We got to teach Victor, the window contact again, for the third time. We were able to use his cousin as a translator to help him understand better and for the whole family to understand. We will see how things go with him. He is awesome, and his family needs to learn more Spanish before they can really go anywhere in the church over here.

We did quite a bit of knocking this week. It seems that with some investigators they are too nice to tell us the truth, but don’t have a problem telling us that they are to busy or something came up. I feel like I am that kid that when I call, the person on the other line has there parents make up something they have to do so they don’t have to play with me. That’s only with some of them, but you can just kind of tell sometimes with people what they are really meaning and wanting. Oh well we will continue to work our hardest to teach and find more to teach and bring unto our Savior.

We had these two really old, really nice ladies invite us to eat lunch with them while knocking the other day. I have found people love you to comment on how good their food smells. I was super, super bummed out that we couldn’t go in because there wasn’t a man home. The food in this case really smelled absolutely wonderful, oh well.

At family night we had a lesson planned about baptism, and it turned out to be just the right one. Patricio told us that Kenneth, the 8 year old, wants me to baptize him on the 6th of April in Madrid. This was absolutely crazy, and I was so excited that we have a date for him to work toward. He is going to be the most funny deacon ever. Then in a couple years after, his brother Clayton is going to give him a run for his money to be the most funny deacon ever. As for Kelly, she is being super teenagerish and super hard to work with. So hopefully Kenneth will be a good example. It is hard because these kids were raised as Catholics by there grandparents, and that's all they know.

We found these awesome people named Saria, from Honduras, and her husband Rashid, from Morocco. We got in to meet them while knocking, and taught them the first lesson. We will be going back, and I am so excited to see how they progress. The work here is in the hands of the Lord, and he directs our paths.

Much love from over here in beautiful Segovia, and by the way Jesse, I would love to take you guys around and be your tour guide. That goes out to everyone after the mission. Thanks Jesse for the advice, and dad thanks for the advice as well. I love learning from older missionaries who are serving now, and that have returned home. I love this place and, I love the people here. I am so grateful to be serving here.

Love, Elder Miller

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Howdy! Part 2


Hey everyone how is your life going? I am doing great out here in Segovia. First, I think it would be awesome for everyone to look at the talk by Elder L.Tom Perry in the last conference talks about raising the bar. It is amazing and I am applying it to this work daily. I think it would also be an amazing talk for anyone to apply to their daily life - especially to anyone preparing for or considering a mission, young or old, boy or girl.

Last preparation day, Elder Jensen and I did a little bit of rebajas shopping, which is the after holiday discount sales. He bought a pair of socks and was planning on buying a suit but it didn’t happen. I didn’t buy anything, but we looked around. We were walking back and we passed Foster´s Hollywood Restaurant, and I don’t think there was any turning down the 9.10 euro medio dia special, which included an appetizer, an entree, a dessert, and a free refills drink. I hope you understand how good of a price this is, and I hope you understand how much I drink when there are free refills involved. So we ate a lot, a lot, a lot of delicious, not so healthy but no less delicious food. I drank 6 fanta lemon sodas.

Oh yeah, I forgot about our wonderful meal calendar we made last week. It was a good week for food and an even better week for exercise. We ate this week some delicious roast beef aju sandwiches, then beef enchiladas, and then bacon burgers and bbq baked beans, and then taco soup for 2 days. It was so delicious. We found out that when we buy our breakfast separate and combine on the medio dia meal for each day our money goes to better food and we don’t pay anymore than usual. So it was delicious.

Oh, and right after Foster’s last preparation day we saw 2 members - one from Madrid and one from California. They were a married couple living in Provo. They were visiting here in Spain to get her residency here. They were sight seeing in Segovia and they told how they were saying the elders here are in a tiny branch and don’t get fed very often by members. They decided they would feed us if they saw us. They offered but we had just walked out of Foster’s minutes earlier. They were super nice.

Anyway, I made peanut butter chocolate chunk oatmeal cookies for family home evening with the branch on Friday, and they were delicious. I halved the recipe, and we ate some dough, and then cooked 1 dozen. Then we had the dough in the fridge. The bowl fell out and broke into tons of pieces with our precious dough inside. What a tragedy.

Oh well. Oh yeah we teach Sunday school here every other week and I had it my first week here, and again for this lesson 4 of the New Year. It goes well and the members have a lot to say in comments. The first lesson was on the clave of our religion. So it used an arch as the example... I can’t think of a better example than our neighborhood 2000 year old Roman aqueduct. So it was a good example to use.

I am getting to be a shoe shining, ironing, sewer, launderer, chef, grocery shopping machine out here. I love the mission field. So anyway, we were standing under that very aqueduct, Elder Jensen and I. Our phone rang. It was President Farnsworth and I was called to train a missionary, wow, and he is right next to me. It was his first day in the mission field yesterday, and today is his first preparation day. I am going to take him to the castle and we are going to have a good old time. I am super sad to see my good buddy and companion Elder Jensen leave to Badajoz, the farthest away from the mission home. He is opening an area and is a senior companion. All I can say about this information is that there is no room for growth in a comfort zone, and there is no comfort in growth. I have lots of growth ahead of me, and I am sure Elder Jensen is feeling the same way.

Much love from Segovia,
Elder Miller

Oh yeah, my companion's name is Elder Peterson and he is from Cedar City, Utah.

Howdy! Part 1


Howdy!

First off, Grandma thanks for the wonderful quotes they gave me chills. Thanks Mike, I loved your email. I will write back as soon as humanly possible. Thanks Becky for the email, you are a more diligent writer than Evan for sure, and a little more consistent than my dad. Thanks also for the Christmas card. Thanks so much for the package mom. The chocolate chips, what a brilliant idea. Also, the jerky and the cds, and the Christmas cards, all just brilliant. Thanks a million. So yeah I got my mail this last Monday, and I picked up the mail for the district while we were in Madrid. Also I met Elder Matthews from Skyline, one of Eliza’s friends, and we had some fun conversations.

Anyway, back to why I was in Madrid, and why I met Elder Matthews who waited his first transfer in Georgia, by the way. Anyway, Elder Jensen and I were walking underneath the aqueduct, when President Farnsworth called, kind of a crazy thing when that happens. Elder Jensen answered the phone and was talking to him. He told him about our emergency transfer, and that he would be transferred to an area and be a senior companion. Here we were just co senior companions. He ended up going to Badajoz, really far away right by Portugal. So then President asked for me, and he told me I had been chosen to train a missionary...... well a pause..... and then I replied yes. This is a scary responsibility to start a missionary with all the right habits. I am only at like 6 months and 2 weeks or less. I was super nervous, super, super nervous. Elder Jensen said I looked like I saw a ghost. I don’t doubt it for one second. The most important part of this story is that now I am here in Segovia on his first preparation day, and yesterday we had his first day in the mission field. How crazy. I have answered a lot of questions, and it is a little different than I expected, but a lot the same. The Lord wants me here in Segovia with Elder Peterson, and I know that with out a doubt. So I will take these days one day at a time and be the best missionary every day, and try my best always.

Anyway, we got delicious Hermana Farnsworth lasagna at the meeting at the mission home. We did the same process as I did just 4 and a half months ago, but I was on the other end of the companionship then. So crazy! Anyway I am doing great here. I love you all tons and I hope the best for you.

Love,
Elder Miller

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Hello from Segovia!

Howdy partners! How’s the New Year treating you all?

The mail up here is pretty slow, and we haven’t gotten any for the 3 weeks I have been here. But unlike Elder Ott, I made it through the emergency transfer and the real transfer unscathed. I am still up here, and didn’t have to do the whole crappy moving packing thing. There is another emergency transfer this week coming up, so that makes it 5 transfers in a 9 week period. If that’s not crazy I don’t know what is.

I am loving this missionary work stuff. One interesting note about Segovia is that we find a ton of Bulgarians here. I don’t know why, but we find them at least 1 a day, and usually more than that. They are always blown away with our sixth month Spanish, but Bulgarians take to the Spanish language not very well -anyway, just a little weird side note.

Last week we made some delicious Oreo milkshakes in a bowl with a hand blender. They were scrumptious indeed. We have been eating really healthy and running daily, other than Sundays of course. I wasn’t being sarcastic about the healthy eating thing. I probably downed 20 apples this week, so although we made the exception of Oreo shakes one day, our diet is going well.

We had a day trip to Avila this last week, which has an awesome castle wall, but no castle, just a sweet cathedral. Castles and cathedrals from ancient times are a dime a dozen here. I love it. Anyway we went to Avila to visit the 5 members we have there that are inactive, and mostly are inactive because of the inconvenience a 1 hour bus ride to church is, and then another 1 hour back. We also found an awesome 12 year old Chilean member there in the Avila bus station that contacted us. He gave us his phone number, and told us that he moved here with his family and they couldn’t find a church so they stopped going. We will see if we just can’t get them to our capilla. We had 6 in the capilla including my companion and me 2 weeks ago, and this last week there were 11 of us. I made some rice crispy treats for family home evening with the ward, and they loved them. There were 12 of us there, including 3 of our investigators. It was awesome to share a message with the members’ testimonies to back us up. I love this rama and this area and this piso, and just about everything about this work!

We have seen snow 2 times now, as in it has snowed on us... how sweeeeet! Also, we made snow balls with some snow on a car one night that must have driven down from the mountains.

Anyway, we made this awesome contact this last week. We were walking up a super steep hill and we saw a family of a lot of people (turned out to be 9) watching tv on the couch. It was a site to see for a missionary, and our insides got warm with the chance it would be to teach a family of that size. Anyway, we rang all of the pisos on either side of the window and couldn’t get a hold of them. We weren’t going to give up, so my companion knocked on the window. We made a nice little window contact, in which we got their information and made an appointment for the next day. We went back and they were there, and we were able to teach them. It was awesome. They are all Bulgarians, and one speaks better than the rest so he kind of translates and helps us teach. It is awesome that the book of Mormon is in Bulgarian, but we don’t have any other pamphlets or church resources to work with the language barrier. Oh well, we will see what the Lord will help us do.

This last week we had an awesome fast to start out, and were guided to many new people to teach. We found 8 new children of our Heavenly Father to teach this week, and I am soooooo excited about the potential this city has for growth. We have been so blessed with understanding this language in the contacting and the speaking and teaching. I love this opportunity I have to be a servant our Savior and fight his battle on the front lines over here in Segovia. A super awesome scripture is in 2 Timothy 2:3 about being a good soldier for Christ. I just love the scriptures and the power they have added to our lessons as we have really focused on using them more and more. The spirit is amazing, and I love the opportunity to live so close to the spirit and to have that constant companionship. I know that if we live the right we can have the Holy Ghost as our companion to lead and guide us to do the right. Oh yeah and the Lord can’t do any emergency transfers with our companionship we have with the spirit, if we do his will. Zone conference was awesome as usual and I love this learning that we are able to do everyday in study

Love,

Elder Miller

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Hi from Segovia!


Hey everyone,

This week email was a mess with this program. Sorry for the shortness, but we had a great week. I hope to be able to get you all that happened next week. One awesome, very journal-worthy experience was on King’s Day, the 6th of Jan. This is bigger than Christmas for the kids. It helps to focus on Christ during Christmas, and then they get presents on King’s Day, not a bad concept.... anyway we made some brownies for the members and investigators. We thought we had all the ingredients. There was a lacking of butter, though. We barely had 1/4 cup butter. We needed 1 cup and 4 tbsp. of butter for my mom’s recipe. The good news is we got the butter, and the brownies were delicious. Everyone loved them. The funny news is that we had to knock on 4 neighbor’s doors, and borrow butter from 3 of them to get the butter we needed. They would let us have some butter and we would add to the collection until we finally had enough. It was hilarious, and humiliating at first, but it went just fine and we were able to serve our fellowman here in Segovia. I love this work!

Much love from Spain,
Elder Miller

Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Happy New Year!


Hey Happy New Year everyone! It is awesome in Segovia! I just love it here. It is such a cool place. It is truly amazing. The address to the piso is Carretera de Villacastin, 13, Segovia. It is on the outskirts of town at the beginning of the bus route.

I strongly suggest looking at some pictures of the castle or the cathedral or the aqueduct in Segovia online. All are absolutely jaw dropping in person, that I imagine a photo might not do them justice. But anyway, take a look at the awesome stuff that we get to do missionary work around. This is probably the coolest place I have ever been, and I am on my mission here so it is even cooler. I love this work!

The Segovia branch is in a little rama in a ground level building under pisos, called a bajo. Anyway, it is an awesome capilla and is super nice. There were 11 people at church last week, which included me and my companion, a family of 5, the branch president Galera and his wife, and 2 other women. Wow, it is a tiny rama here. On the member lists there is a whopping 35 total members I think, maybe 36 or 37. Well, lots of work to do here. The capilla is on a cool little side cobblestone street, but by street I mean walk-way between streets. There are lots of tiny cobblestone roads here just like I saw in Toledo.

The shower in the piso is awesome; it just blows me away... literally.

We have some good investigators and people to teach. We have a couple of investigators who have committed to baptism, and we just need to set a date and start working towards that. One's name is Valentin from Bulgaria; actually he honked at us as he drove past while we were walking here to email. Anyway, he has a believing heart and is very accepting, and has faith in what we teach him. He agreed to be baptized when we taught him on Sunday, I believe it was. Anyway, we will see how that goes. Also, the family of 5 in our rama is a mother and father from Ecuador who have been here for 5 years, and their kids just got here like 4 weeks ago. The parents were baptized 2 years ago or so, and now their kids are here and come to family home evenings on Friday and to church weekly. We are teaching these kids, Kelly 14,a girl, Kenneth 8, and Clayton 6. They are awesome. We just started teaching them the charlas since I have been here. They are going to start progressing towards baptism also, except Clayton will have to wait a couple years. Every Friday night is family home evening from 8:30 to 9:30 and then we get a ride home, in a car! Wow how cool! Anyway, church is Sunday at 11 until 2.

We have district meetings every Tuesday, except this one was on Monday because of New Year's Day messing up the bus schedule. It is a 2 hour bus ride to Valladolid... anyway we are in the district with Elders Lambert and Lundell from Valladolid, and then a married couple named the Dunfords who serve in Valladolid, and then the Salamanca Elders Bradshaw and Rigtrup. So anyway, this will be quite the adventure being up here, and we will have lots of travel time.

It has been super foggy and cold, but today it heated up a little and we can see the blue skies. Oh yeah, there are views of mountains with snow on them all around us here. How awesome is that? We just bundle up, and the cold doesn't really bother us. Thanks Hadley for the email this week, and Pete for the one last week. I will try to write you today. Anyway, till next week much, love from Spain.

Elder Miller