Tuesday, March 8, 2016

March 7, 2016 - First Field Week in the bag

It's been a crazy first full week in the field, but it feels like I've been out here for several months. I feel like I've been dumped into it and told to learn. If the Spirit of the Lord was not real then I would never have been able to learn as fast as I have. Spanish is still difficult, but it just keeps getting better and better. I know that God is with me and helping me to learn all I need to.

There have been a lot of awesome experiences this week. It's been full of little miracles and some amazing ones as well. Just a quick little exciting experience. Last week while we were playing soccer after we had finished emailing, two Elders went for a header and ended up with stitches and some serious dental work. Elder Spackman was the one who ended up with stitches, which made my first field P-Day crazy, but I did get the chance to drive again because of it. 

 During the week we had planned to meet with a less active single mother and her family, and because of rules we aren't allowed to be with alone in the house with sisters unless we have another adult present, so we asked our Branch President to come along to the lesson. Well as we were sitting outside waiting for our Branch President to arrive for the lesson two ladies in a van drove up to us and told us that the less active member's daughter had just been murdered that morning, and that she was going to need a lot of support. About 2 or 3 minutes later, President Tucker showed up and he was able to help the family. I definitely believe that this was a miracle. God knew that she would be struggling and would need help so he arranged for President Tucker to be there. Things seem to be getting better, and the family was at church yesterday so that was awesome! 

We've also taught Elario again. He seems to be very interested and seems to be progressing really well, but the second half of the week we lost contact with them. Hopefully we can reconnect and keep teaching them. They are so amazing!! We've also been able to have a lot more lessons in general. We are starting to figure out the area and our teaching pool is beginning to grow. We've got probably 3 or 4 people that we can pretty consistently teach and a lot of potentials. One of our lessons we taught a guy named Joe. He seemed really interested, but his uncle was there and tried to bash with us. It was really hard to teach Joe because of his uncle, so in the end I just bore my testimony and we left. His uncle tried to tell us that you cannot know if something is true by feelings, it's only by knowledge. He was an interesting guy, he was pretty nice about everything, but kept telling us we needed to give up what we are doing. Haha. 

We met this guy named Inocencio later in the week who was super cool, and practically begged us to come to church, but he is a major drinker sadly. Anyways we had a member with us during one lesson and he told Inocencio that he would pick him up for church on Sunday. Sadly Inocencio drunk too much the night before and didn't want to come to church. We're gonna work with him some more this week and hopefully he can make it out to church. 

We also had our first Zone Training Meeting this week. It was super awesome and helped to answer a lot of questions about some of the struggles that I have been having. It was also super fun! We did some door approach scenarios in front of the whole zone, and it was super helpful and pretty funny. The main points of the meeting were to develop an attitude of finding, and to make sure you are not wasting any of the Lord's time. It was really cool to be able to meet as a zone and discuss Moses Lake and how the work is going. It was way fun.

A little funny experience this week - I was trying to do a Spanish door approach and I accidentally told the lady that I only spoke a little English. Whoops. Haha. I didn't even realize I had said that until my companion said something. It was good though. My Spanish is definitely improving though!!

I challenge everyone to look for the little miracles in life. Often times we expect to see great things, but some of the most amazing miracles are the smallest ones. I've been trying to notice the little miracles in my mission and it has helped me to recognize the hand of God in my life. 

Sorry I don't have any pictures this week!

I love you all!!
-- 
Elder Miles

Washington Yakima Mission

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