Happy Birthday Evan!

From: elder.miller@myldsmail

Happy Birthday on Friday Evan - the big 17, holy cow I can’t believe it!
Hey thanks Dad for the email and all you do for me, I am running into Colombians like crazy. They are all over the place here. Keep Evan in line and have fun on his 17th birthday Can you believe he is 17 and me almost 21? Its ridiculous how fast time flies!
Hey mom, first off can you thank Ruth Stevens for the email, and tell her they still have the English classes at the temple, and that Elder McBride is the teacher now that he is over there in the temple zone, so those people are in good hands. Also tell Kelly I was way glad to hear from her, and hope all goes well in their move. It will be sad not to be able to visit them in Virginia again. Tell her I got the post cards, like the Harry Potter School one and stuff and I loved them.
Elder McBride’s new companion is Elder Nicholl who Elder Brown knows because they are both from little towns in Arizona.
Manuel is doing way well on quitting smoking, and he is getting some pills from a doctor today to help him. We will see how the actual quitting goes. With the Thomas baptism, it has been a crazy roller coaster. Quirico’s wife didn’t like having Thomas there, but I think it’s just because she doesn’t like the church and stuff. She has never liked us, and is atheist. So she has always been a problem. They kicked Thomas out and back to the hostel after a little over 24 hours. So craziness on that, and then members have been looking on line for him, and Andres has been helping him find a situation that would work out. Then when we finally got one we felt good about yesterday, and he was going to move in today, and had the cash out and everything, the man with the habitation pulled out. So we are high and dry with the baptism on Saturday. It got moved because the ward mission leader has to work Friday, and so he wouldn’t be able to fill the baptismal font. So stay tuned till next week to see if the overly prepared Thomas is baptized this week or next. He is just an amazing man, and went to the temple to buy himself a triple combination because he wanted to have the Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price so bad. He has a testimony, the members have taken him in really well, he has been to church 3 times, he came to the Joseph Smith movie on Saturday and loved it, and he is keeping all of the commandments, and passed the baptism interview questions when we went over them with him. Andres will hopefully get him in to stay at the Red Cross today, which is the best hope. We will see what happens, but the Lord’s will be done is the most important thing.
This week was another great week at church with Thomas, Manuel, Augustin, Gisela, and Oliver all there. Carl accepted a baptismal date for the 18th of April. We hadn’t taught him in a little less than 3 weeks and then he just turned up at Miriam, a Filipino member’s house for our lesson with her and Thomas. It was awesome to hear Thomas and Miriam both bearing testimony to Carl and helping him in his decision. Also, Augustin and Gisela are praying about the 18th for their baptism as well, so we will see in our lesson on Friday how they feel, but they finally understand authority and the apostasy and the restoration. They have been to church 4 times as a family.
The conference yesterday was just amazing. Elder Gorts had medical problems just before the weekend and so the plan was changed to have Elder Paya come, who came to the mission while I was in the CCM. He is from France and was mission president here 20 years ago. He spoke to us in the CCM and talked for 4 hours about Zion. It was way good then, but I appreciated his help in the mission field more than I did as a CCM missionary. It was just great. Also, Elder Ott did a good job translating, I didn’t have a headset, but I could hear him because he kind of talks loud. So then also I got called out by Elder Paya to teach about commitments out of the blue. He just said, “And so now we are going to learn from Elder Miller a little about commitments for 5 minutes”. He asked me to answer 3 questions with my talk, but I was so nervous I don’t remember what the 3 questions were, but I have heard I answered them with what I said. It was in English, and just a really great experience to stand up and speak with nothing to say and have the script play out for me as I said each new word and sentence that came to me. It was scary but a good experience. It was weird though, because they didn’t call on any other missionaries to do anything else, other than answer questions and stuff. Tonight we have a Zone Leader meeting for 3 hours with Elder Paya and it should be just great. Today we are headed to Alcalá to see the sights over there with Elder Ott, Elder Monson, and the Alcalá elders. Elder Haynie and Elder Coley are the two you have heard of. So it should be way fun. We are going to eat some donor kebab as well.
Elder McBride and I ate cow tongue at Bernardo and Lorenza’s his last Sunday. I don’t know how it slipped my mind. It was way good, and I loved it until they told me when I was over half way done with it. Then I scraped off some of the sauce that was covering our beefy meal and saw little taste buds and discovered why I had been finding so many stinking blood vessels in my meat. Another weird food experiences in Spain, to add on to the cow stomach, intestine, pig ear and tail and mussels and all sea creatures, and just a whole list of things I would never touch with a 39 and a half foot pole before the mission.
The chocolates from Grandma arrived and they were delicious. I sent a copy of that article with Elder Sewell’s family over to him, how funny. I would love some Samoas and some Thin Mints if Grandma is willing to send them. Thanks so much, Grandpa, for having missionary experiences and sharing them with me. I hope she gets baptized. You should offer to call her a few times a week to help the missionaries maintain their daily contact with her, they should be way glad for your offer because it is hard to get members to do things like that.
Hey mom what is the deadline for sign ups at the U of U? I will talk to President Farnsworth and then get online to put together a plan as well, but if you could send me what I need to sign up for as in the general areas I still haven’t filled, and then the Science and Math I still need to fill it would be awesome. If you could coordinate an institute class with Elder Ott, that would be great. I will get with your report and try to see what I think we should sign up for and stuff. Then I will tell you and you could do the actual signing up and add and drop classes and stuff. That would probably be the least stressful on my end.
Tell Elder Brown that I am trying to get his emails responded to today on the train to Alcalá. We will see how it goes.
Thanks for everything you do. I love you all very much and hope the best for all of you.
Much love from Spain.
Love, Elder Miller