August 15, 2016 - El Traslado

Well, this last Saturday we had transfer calls and I was a little nervous. We were pretty sure Elder Harman was leaving but we weren't sure to where, and I had no idea what to expect, but I'll get to that in a sec. I wanna tell you about the rest of my week first. 

So on Monday we had another Noche de Hogar (Night of Home, or Family Home Evening). It went super well. Originally the Branch President had planned to give the lesson but we had to call an audible because we had an activity to prepare for on Saturday. On Saturday we were going tracting as a branch, so on Monday we taught the whole branch how to make contacts and how to knock doors. At first we were a little nervous with how it would go but we got set up and we started things off. We explained how easy it is to share the Gospel with people. We broke it down into 5 simple steps. 

1. Talk to them, get to know them 

2. Explain who you are and what you are doing

3. Share a principle of the Gospel (Joseph Smith Story, Families can be together forever, etc.)

4. Share your testimony

5. Get their information if they are interested in having the missionaries come by

We explained all this and then made them practice. We split them up into groups and had them contact each other. This was the part I was a little worried about but the Branch killed it! That's one thing about Mexicans, they are not afraid to talk to people, they just needed to be taught how to talk about the Gospel. The Branch loved it! They were having a lot of fun and taking it really seriously. It was super cool to see and we have already seen some awesome things from it. A recent convert, Hermano Oscar Contreras, decided one day at work to talk with a guy that he was decent friends with, and when he did so he invited the guy to church, and it turned out that the night before he had just met the sister missionaries in our branch! The sisters were teaching his wife and daughter and he had just met the missionaries. It was a pretty neat miracle. 

On Saturday the event went really well. The hope was that they would get more comfortable talking to people and also see a little bit of daily missionary life. I feel like it went super well. We found a lot of really cool potentials, and afterward the Branch President told us that he would like to do that more regularly. 

Daniel and Lucia are still doing super awesome as well!

"We found these awesome graffiti in our area!!!"

They came to the Noche de Hogar and Daniel's testimony was amazing! He isn't even a member and he already has such an amazing testimony, and his girlfriend, Lucia, killed it as well! They both really wanted to go tracting with the branch but were unable to because of family commitments. We've been working with them a lot to read in the Book of Mormon, and this week we felt like we should read the introduction with them again, so that they can understand why it's so important to read. I wasn't there for the lesson (I was on exchanges in another area) but it went super well. I guess Daniel had a ton of questions but decided to wait until the end of reading the introduction to ask them. When they got to the end all of his questions had been answered! Then Lucia was all "Oh that's why we have to read, so that we can have our questions be answered." We've been trying to get them to understand that for several weeks, but we are super happy that it finally clicked.

For transfers this week it got a little crazy. So on Saturday afternoon we were out knocking on doors when President calls us. He only calls you during the day if you are getting a leadership call. So anyway we answer the phone and he starts talking to Elder Harman. He tells Elder Harman that he is going to be going to Moses Lake and training a new missionary. They are taking over an area that used to be a sister area. I was like "Dang! You’re gonna love Moses Lake!" Then President asks to talk to me and I was all "Uh oh." He first asks if I would train a new missionary, I told him yes. Then he asked if I would take over the responsibility of District Leader as well, so again I told him yes. The whole time I was getting a little nervous inside. I have never been a trainer, never been a district leader, and never taken over an area, and now I had to do all 3 of those things at once. Plus I have to move, figure out the boundaries for a new area that was created in our branch, get new elders settled in (the branch is now going to have 6 missionaries), and do all of this without a car. We are now in one of three biking Spanish areas in the whole mission. Kinda crazy. They are giving our car to the new elders, but they're living with us so we'll be able to use it occasionally, like going to meetings and stuff. 

We had another crazy experience this week. We were

knocking doors and we knocked on one door. No one answered so we moved on to the next door. Well as we were knocking on this door the neighbors we had just knocked on came out of the door and started yelling at us. He told us that no one was home and that if we didn't leave he was going to beat us up. So we were all "Ok, we'll go." Well I guess we didn't move fast enough because the guy went and got his two huge dogs and brought them towards us as we were walking down the driveway, and he said "I'll show you what the real Jesus looks like." It was pretty crazy, but the whole time I honestly felt fine. We weren’t doing anything wrong. I felt like everything was going to be okay. Even if he had sent the dogs after us. So, yea, kinda crazy.

Anyway that's it for the week. Love you all! And I would highly recommend reading the introduction to the Book of Mormon. It's something we skip a lot as members but it's super powerful! Especially the last two paragraphs!
-- 

Elder Miles

Washington Yakima Mission