Christmas

MERRY CHRISTMAS!! I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!! Mine was
pretty swell!
This week not much really much happened because I was stuck in our
Piso due some migraines but I at least was able to go Caroling twice
throughout the week and celebrate Christmas!
My district went caroling and it was wonderful to spread some good ol'
Christmas Cheer! In the words of Buddy the Elf, "The best way to
spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear". We were able
to carol to some members of our ward and lots of them were very
touched and it was a very sweet experience to see these people's
reactions. There was one lady that invited us in to her little Piso
and as we sang she couldn't hold back her tears. That's what Christmas
is all about and I hope that you all were able to take part in making
someone's Christmas just a little bit more special! Love you all so
much! And happy late Christmas😄
-Love,
Elder Miller

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Christmas week

Hey everyone! ¿Cómo estamos? This week has been great as always but a
little uneventful haha. I have been stuck in Piso for a lot of this
week with my sick companion! And let me say one thing, staying in piso
is not fun when you can't watch movies or listen to music, missionary
life is ALOT more fun when you are out working!
So to start off this week my companion couldn't get a doctors
appointment before our Zone Conference on Thursday so after we emailed
last week we went to the Hospital to get him checked out. We waited
for a while and got in the doctors and after waiting for like 2 hours
they say he's just got a normal respiratory flu, hahaha. But they tell
him he has to stay in Piso till Saturday! So we spent lots of time
reading the scriptures, sleeping, eating, sleeping and then eating
some more. Luckily my District Leader let me go on splits with the
other trainee in my District and that's always fun!! We were able to
teach some members, get lost and try to teach one of my investigators,
but he is pretty old and mumbles super bad so I couldn't really
understand anything he said, so we left him with a folleto and set up
another appointment.
Gosh missionary life is so great! Plus I got 6 packages!! And I know
you said not to open them, but one of them was already open and I saw
what it was! A GUITAR!! The Ayudantes (Assistants to the President)
were flipping out and so many people! So I got super excited and just
opened it, SORRY! It's sooooo nice, THANK YOU SOOO MUCH!
Hope everyone is getting excited for Christmas! I know I am and don't
forget to remember what this whole season is all really about.
Yesterday our District went Caroling to some members of our ward and
while we were singing "Noche de Luz" or Silent Night I was thinking of
my experience with Elizabethan Dinner and how much that song meant to
me then, but yesterday when we were singing it I realized that those
things are great but the service I was doing right then (and everyday
on my Mission) is what it's really about. Everything we have is thanks
to God and our loving Savior, I invite you all to think of how you can
give back to our Savior (see Matthew 25:40)in this time celebrating
his birth. Love you all! Hope you all have an AMAZING Christmas!!!
¡Espero que tengáis un feliz Navidad! ¡Os quiero mucho!!!
-Con amor,
Elder Miller

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Caroling 

Richid from Morocco has a baptism date.

Week 5 Dec. 14, 2015

¡Hola todos! Wooohooo Christmas is coming up! How was ED(Elizabethan
Dinner)????? I want updates from anyone who was there or in choir!
This week was pretty jam packed! We had transfers on Tuesday and I'm
still in Barç 3 for the next 8 week transfer!! My companion was sick
this week and so from Wednesday-Saturday I was either going on
exchanges with one of the other Elders in my District who is being
trained too and yeah....that's been so fun! We have been covering both
of our areas, probably like a 3rd of Barcelona and it's been nuts!
Everything from missed trains, to getting yelled at in lessons by
Africans and setting baptismal dates! We honestly had so many miracles
just in the past few days, and I'm really starting to fall in love
with the work and missionary life.
This week we got a new district leader and he is super fired up and
ready to work! He challenged everyday for the next month to challenge
one person to baptism and to find one new investigator. Crazy huh? I'm
super pumped and Elder Winsor(the other trainee) and I have had the
opportunity to commit two people to baptism!!
One was the man who beso'ed me (by the way he's not gay, he was just
being friendly, the gay guy was the contact after that!) and he seems
very excited. He is a Catholic, Moroccan....a little strange haha. We
committed him on Saturday and then he came to our ward Christmas party
that night, he is loving the Book of Mormon and reading his copy in
Arabic.
Another one was a lady I invited at 9:57PM(we have to be in our
apartment at 10). We realized we had not invited to invite anyone to
be baptized that day and so we stopped right by the exit of the Metro
and tried to make contacts so we could invite someone to be baptized.
I tried like 5x but I just kept chickening out, finally Elder Winsor
said this is the last one and I contact her and ask her if she's
religious and she says "I don't understand you!" Then I ask her if she
has faith in Jesus Christ and she says very enthusiastically "Yes!"
So then I invite her to follow the example of Jesus Christ and be
baptized under proper priesthood authority and she says "Yes!" Or
"¡Sí!". I try to set a date with her and turns out she's going to back
to her home in Cuba but she said she would love to meet with us when
she gets back next month. MIRACLES!!!
I know that goal of one invitation to be baptized a day seems a little
number heavy, but when you think of what our purpose is as
missionaries is to "Invite others to come unto Christ" and the key
word in that is Invite! If we are not inviting others to act on their
faith we are not doing our job as missionaries. We are not there to
condemn or change people or convert, missionaries are there to invite!
I hope you all are getting excited for Christmas! I love you all so
much and I'll talk to you soon!
Con amor,
Elder Miller

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Elder Miller

Hola amigos y familia! This week was definitely a INTERESTING week........haha but really really good! We have got the best numbers we have ever gotten this week, we found lots of investigators and taught about 30 lessons, 15-20 is a good week regularly. We worked hard and I really felt impressed that we needed to make the goal of finding 2 investigators a day and we just about got it! We worked our butts off to find people who are prepared, help them start progressing and ready for baptism!! During our Zone Focus this week the Zone Leaders challenged us to get one Baptismal Date by the end of this week (which we did!) and the mission wants a WHITE CHRISTMAS this month (as in each companionship in the mission gets one baptism in the month of December)! And we are pumped to help someone enter into the waters of baptism!!! 

My Spanish is really starting to come along and I feel I'm getting close to being fluent! Sunday I was able to have full on conversations with members of the ward by myself and generally understand everything they said. The Gift of Tongues is totally real and I can feel such a huge difference in my Spanish when I have it and when I don't. Sometimes it gets frustrating but I've only been in the mission for about a month now so I'm getting better at not being too hard on myself about it. 

So this week I had a pretty interesting experience with contacting. Well long story short, my trainer completely lost his voice and we had 3 hours of street contacting planned for the rest of our night, which meant I had to make all the contacts myself haha, so as you can see it was perfect storm of circumstances for a pretty great mission story haha. So we are contacting, well I am, and EVERYONE is shutting me down left and right, then some Arabic guy speaking in broken Spanish comes up to us and starting talking to us! He was super animated and actually invited us to his Catholic Church services, then he set up his OWN appointment with us before I could even ask him! As we said goodbye, he gave us awkwardly long and strong hugs, then he grabbed my face and kissed me!!! (It's Spanish tradition to greet people-typically a man and a woman or woman and a woman-with a kiss on each cheek) It was the traditional cheek kisses, but still it's weird when to be kissed by a man.....then I accidentally tracked to an old gay man. Who actually was hitting on us, that I TOTALLY misread the situation until he slowly said "ME GUSTA LOS HOMBRES!"  And he said he liked me and my companion, once I realized what was going on I got out of that conversation SO FAST! My trainer got a good laugh out of that, because it turns out the first thing he said to us was that he was gay and he thought we were sexy....so yeah, perfect timing for my companion to lose his voice but it was still funny! 

I love this work and really feel like I'm starting to get into the swing of things. Waking up and exercising right away is a little tough, but it's really so great. Time just FLYS by out here! And I really am learning to love the members and people here. Hope all is well and hope all of you can check out the church Christmas website! ITS THE BOMB!! 

I challenge all of you to think about what the world would be like without a Savior. There are lots of people who do not have the blessings of the Gospel or even the knowledge of our Savior, Jesus Christ, I hope all of you can find one person to share your testimony of the Savior with this Christmas season and your love for the Savior will grow so much! Love you all and hope all is well! ¡Os quiero muchísimo!  

-Sinceramente,