Hey everyone how’s it going?Thanks to Mom, Dad, Grandma and Abbie for the emails this week. I was super sad to hear about Shandy, but I know she was way old. It will be weird to not have her around when I get home. I remember when she cuddled up to me in bed every night when we first got her, and I thought I was going to roll over on her. I will miss her.
About Dora and Quirico... Dora had to urgently fly home to the Dominican Republic to take care of financial problems, and Quirico is fighting a lot with his wife and has some doubts, so both are off track to baptism right now. Dora will get baptized when she gets back, and she will receive the lessons there.
Transfers happened and all of Barrio One changed, including bringing 4 amazing missionaries into that district, one of which is Elder Haynie, my last companion. He is companions with Elder Fairbanks. I was so happy to see him. He said Tak has finished the Book of Mormon now as well as Rei. As far as our district, it stayed the same and Castilla stayed the same except Salamanca turned into its own district. Elder Sewell was made the new District Leader and 2 other missionaries were sent up there, Elder Sansing and Elder Zamora from Chile. He is Elder Sewell’s new companion. The zone is stacked now with amazing missionaries.
Evan needs to say “Hi” to Brother Seastrand for me. He is so awesome and he served in Spain on his mission too. I visited him when I got my call. He was my seminary teacher when I was a senior. Well thanks for all the news. Its crazy how many things happen, and don’t really affect us at all in our missionary bubble here in Spain.
We had some great dinner appointments this week with Andres. We had lentil soup with shrimp and green olives, which by the way I buy from time to time to snack on, because I love them so much. I love when members have them for us to eat. I guess it get that from Grandpa. We also ate spinach soup at Andres´ last week, which was good, and tortilla de patata with pisto which is like a mild mild salsa that is really chunky, way good stuff. At a Filipino member’s last night, we had Canton pasta which had chicken in it. We also had rice. It was good. They are way super nice, and we took over our Ward Mission Leader Kenny Quintana, and his fiancé from Colorado. They came here to study for the last 2 years. There was the Filipino member family, and then 2 menos activo Filipinos. It was an awesome Spanish/English lesson on the Restoration. After, we asked for referrals like it says in Preach My Gospel. We got 6, and it was awesome. The sad part for us is they are all for other areas and the Hermanas. But that’s ok, it is normal in our area to send our people all over the mission.
Manuel Robledo came to church last week, and is doing great with everything as far as his vices. He has dropped them all but smoking, lots of energy drinks and sleeping pills. He had about every vice in the book, and so he has made a world of progress. He also has cut down from 2 packs to 1 in smoking.
Emilio the Spaniard, who had a baptismal date, doesn’t have it anymore. His family doesn’t want him to continue with us, even though he would love to be baptized, and came to a baptism on Saturday. Alcides, one of the investigators, left for Paraguay to pick up his wife who is waiting to get baptized until they are together. Their son was recently baptized in Paraguay. So that should be great when they get back in the end of February. On Friday we had 2 baptismal interviews for Barrio 1. Elder McBride interviewed an Ecuadorian named Wilson who is 21, and then I interviewed in English, a Nigerian named Christu (20). They were both awesome and ready for baptism, and then we took Emilio to their baptism on Saturday.
It is a great experience to do a baptismal interview and receive the spiritual confirmation of that person’s readiness to make the baptismal covenant with our Heavenly Father. What a privilege. I also got to do a baptismal interview in Mostoles for Alejandra from Fuenlabrada, and on in Ciudad Real for Ana from Alcazar. All 3 have been great experiences.
We had a crazy experience on Saturday when Elder Cutler from Holladay, Utah, called us from Barrio 4 to tell us a member’s friend from Essex, England was stranded here in Sol. We didn’t know what to do, but Elder Cutler told us he had given him our number and the English guy named Nick (29) would be calling us. A couple minutes later, he calls and we still don’t know what to do because no one can come into our apartments or pisos, except missionaries and the owners, no members or investigators, and especially not random lost people from England. So he rings the timbre down below, which is the calling board where you get in touch with all the people in the building. We let him up and he can’t come in our piso, so we decide that we will take him to the Joseph Smith movie and then hope he can find somewhere cheap to stay around the temple. So while we are making the plan, it is lunch time, during medio dia, or middle day. We have him outside the piso on a chair so he can rest his legs. He came to see a friend and she left, and so he was stuck without much money. Anyway, we took him to the Joseph Smith movie which is at the temple every other Saturday night in the CCM. Then we took him to a baptism in the Stake Center. We were able to hook Nick up with a Venezuelan member to stay the night with. It was pretty awesome, and then the member took Nick to church the next day. They hung out all Sunday and Monday. So crazy experience for Nick and for us, but he had some awesome experiences where he felt the spirit. I hope he acts on what he experienced.
So it’s been a good week, with lots of interesting things.
I love you all very much.
Love, Elder Miller
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