Week 4

Week 4 of MTC

Hey everyone! Things are going great out here. It´s pretty much been pretty similar to last week, haha well the MTC is all pretty much the same everyday. Study, comp study, grammar lesson, study, teach a lesson, eat, study, grammar, study, sports (which we played American football this week!!! And it was sooo fun!), shower, eat, study, teach a lesson, study, sleep, and then repeat! But somehow it´s one of the most amazing things I´ve done in my life. If this wasn´t His work I would be going crazy, there´s great strength in knowing that! We also find ways to have fun, and it´s funny how small of things MTC missionaries find to be so entertaining. I bought a ball at one of the little stores near by and I could swear no ball has been enjoyed as much as it has been in all of Spain. We play games during language study so we can take somewhat of a mental game, like we each have to say a different adjective in Spanish when the ball is passed to us and we try to do it really fast or other things like that to stay sane. 

The Park this week was AMAZING, I got paired up with my zone leader, Elder Baron who is from Tustin, CA and we handed out 7 Book of Mormons!! A personal best for me and for him, actually I think it´s the highest out of everyone in the MTC for our group, which is cool but the part that I´m most happy about were the quality of the lesson or discusions we had. We taught a lot of students from America this week (some from Chicago and one from Texas). We could just see that they could feel the Spirit when we testified about the Book of Mormon, and that is one of the most amazing feelings ever to know that you just helped them feel the Spirit. In reality the Spirit is the teacher and we are just trying to help people feel it and recognize what it is and what it means when they feel it. Missionary work is the most satisfying thing I´ve done in my entire life. 

So I´ve learned some tricks procyliting during my stay here and I wanna share these simple things I´ve learned that made all the difference in my Saturday Procylting experiences:

1. You sit down on the Metro(subway) and whenever someone comes on, you give them your seat then talk to them. People can really tell that you´re sincere when you are willing to serve them.

2. Let people know how the gospel applies in their life and how it can help them. (Spaniard´s tipically don´t like religion) But when you tell them that they can be more happy in life or live with their family, they are totally willing to listen! The Gospel is AMAZING and it can help ANY person

3. Talk to them and get to know them! We teach people not lessons and they can tell when we do. Every soul is worth SO much to our heavenly father we can´t even comprehend. He knows everyone personally, the least we can do as missionaries is know the people we teach or talk to personally and by name.

4. Love everyone and praise them if they already have a religion! Our message isn´t to disprove anything, it is to help others to come unto Christ and the way we do that is faith in Jesus, baptism, recieving the Holy Ghost and enduring to the end. If they already have a relationship with God that´s great!!! And we need to let them know that.

5. Lastly, just talk to EVERYONE. The worst thing we can do it shut our mouth, when you think about how Satan tried to stop Joseph Smith in the Sacred Grove, he tried to shut his mouth. Satan wants us to shut our mouth, DON´T  do it yourself!!! There are soooo many people that are waiting to hear this Gospel and are missing blessings and a better life everyday because we won´t open our mouths. Don´t be afraid, the worst they can say is no!

I love you all so much and hope all is well. God loves you and I can feel it just writing this email. I´m SOOOO pumped to be able to head out to the field pretty soon! I only have one week left in the MTC and I´ve been out a month now! Crazy huh? 

Les Quiero MUCHO

Week 3 I love proselyting

 

¡HOLA! ¿Qué tal familía?

This week has been great!! It feels like I was just emailing you guys yesterday. Things are really starting to speed up around here, I finally understand the phrase "Days are weeks and weeks are days". We have had some crazy long days that have been physically and mentally tiring (more mentally from the endless classes) but they have been amazing! I´ve learned soo much and felt the spirit so strong. I actually got to go Proceliting in the Park this week and I LOVE PROCELITING!!!!!!! This week I got paired up with an Elder from England (Elder Robertson) and an elder from Ukraine (Elder Hryshanov), they´re bothing going to the Moscow Mission and currently are leaning Russian. We handed out 4 Book of Mormons, got 4 Referals for other missionaries to go and teach them (Most people don´t get any and the lucky ones get only one maybe 2), and made a bunch of contacts (an MTC contact is when we stop and talk to someone). I was able to talk to and teach TONS of people from all over the world. Some of the countries people were from that I taught were: Ecuador, Peru, Romania, Ukraine, Portugal, New Zealand and one Spanish lady on the train back. One of the people I talked to and taught was Susana María from Santo Domingo, Ecuador. We ran into her when we first walked into the park. She said it was a mirracle we came up to her and started talking to her because she had just started reading her bible maybe a minute or two before we walked over. She said it was a sign from God and she was super interested! We ended up having a 20 minute conversation(Which somehow I miraculously understood everything she said) and I was able to give her a Libro de Mormon and share Moroni´s promise in Moroni 10:4-5 with her. Missionary work is AMAZING!!! 

 

This week I spoke in our MTC Sacrament meeting in Spanish! So in the Spain MTC we have a Sacrament meeting with the entire MTC (A whopping 60 missionaries) and throughout the whole week we are given a certain topic to write talks on. Everyone writes a talk and then after Sacrament the MTC President calls up 6 people to speak, so Sacrament meeting is always a pretty tense experience for the missionaries learning languages (we give the talks in the language we are learning). When we got to the meeting and somehow I knew that I was speaking, so it was no surprise when I got called up to Speak. The talk went really well (it was about Repentance) and I spoke about how repentance helps us become better day by day. Literally  when I got up to speak my heart was beating out of my chest but I did well and got lots of compliments on my talk and my Spanish, so I felt pretty good! We´ll have to see how I´m feeling about my Spanish in a couple weeks when I´m out in the field LOL

 

All is well here in España though! I´m back to 100% health, I´m sleeping well (which my district hates me for because they say my snoring is so loud) and my practice "investigators" are doing well. I´ve taught about 20+ lessons now in Spanish and me and my companion are starting to get into the swing of things.

 

This week I´ve really come to find out that this is truly a labor of love. We are all here because our Heavenly Father loves us and missionary work is fueled by love. If this love didn´t exist nothing would really matter and our lives would be pointless. Love needs to be at the center of everything we do and most importantly our love needs to be centered on our Savior Jesus Christ. When we love as he did our problems seem to fade away, our relationships with other become much more meaningful and life just seems to work out so much better! He is in every step of this work and he loves each one of you more than you could ever imagine! I know that he does and I love you all soooo much!!!

Con MUCHO amor, 

Elder Miller

Week 2 letter

Hey everyone!! Well I made it another week out here in Spain! Literally Spain is probably the most amazing place in the world. The weather is PERFECT and the part of Madrid I toured last week was stunning! The MTC is really great and it´s right on temple grounds so I love being able to see the temple so much. We spend ALOT of time in the classroom but my distict (group I´m in) is really starting to focus and get down to business!! Here in the Madird CCM (MTC in Spanish) we teach "investigators"(our teacher pretending to be someone) throughtout the whole time and the people only speak spanish! By now I´ve taught somewhere around 8 lessons in Spanish and now I can teach without having to read straight from a pamphlet or book and it´s nice to be able to say what I wanna say for the most part lol. I got sick this weekend and didn´t get to go to the park, BUT I got to sleep and I have to say it was the GREATEST thing ever. One thing missionaries do not ever get enough of is sleep, I literally slept for 5ish hours during the day, after a semi-full night of sleep and then I slept the whole night after that haha! I can never get enough of that! Well looks like my time is up, but Í´m excited to write yo all next week!

Con mucho amor,

Elder Miller

Week 2 pictures

Those pictures from top to bottom are:

Puerta del Sol (Madrid´s time square)

Top of Cibeles

Selfie at the bottom of cibeles

bANCO De españa

Pictures

The view from the MTC in Spain

Pictures

Austin preaching the gospel in the park with two Russian Elders

First letter from Spain MTC

Hola Todos! ¿Cómo estáis?

All is well here in the MTC or CCM! The days are long and nights are short but it´s great! We have about 10-11 hours of classes everyday and my district gets a little restless sometimes but we have fun and learn too! My companion is Elder Nye from Salt Lake and we get along great! My district has 6 guys including me and they´re a bunch of goofballs! Spain is amazing and all the building look exactly the same haha(There´s a picture of all the surrounding buildings below), well except for the temple! The whole MTC goes out proseliting to El Retiro Parque in Madrid and it´s pretty much the Central Park of Madrid! We also get paired up in random companionships for it and I got put with two Russian speaking Elders! Elder Voronin  and Elder Kharullin (they are actually teaching me russian!) we talked to a TON of people, handed out 5 Book of Mormons (one of which was a Russian one that they were able to teach)! The Lord is here in this work and we are literally getting thrown into the deep end of the pool to either sink or swim haha! But I´m not on my own out here! I´ve actually come to get Grandpa Ishii´s sleeping skills, my District says I fall asleep in a matter of 30 seconds to 2 minutes at night! We are about to go on a tour of Madrid so I gotta go I´ll write more next week! 

Con mucho amor,

Elder Miller