June 25, 2013

Hola Friends and Family

Wow what a crazy couple of days! So yes i am in Tampico Mexico right now at the moment! Man it is HOT here! I though South Carolina was hot! haha at least we got AC in our barracks haha! Everything is going good though. So over the last few weeks have been a couple of mixed emotions, all with leaving the MTC and arriving to Mexico, i know i will for sure miss my district and what not in the MTC but i was ready to get outta that place. It was a great experience. So our last testimony meeting was a good one! A ton of picture taking and crying done by the hermanas in our disticto. It was kinda sad to be leaving all them and what not. But on Monday morning we woke up at 4 and carted our luggage to the travel office, where we ended up waiting to leave at 5 thirty because the travel office was confused. So then we left to the Salt lake airport and waited and got some last Cafe Rio before we hit Mexico then our plane left at 10, then we flew to Houston, there i got to talk to my family for a little which was good, I did not have much time because i ran out of minutes, i even had to barrow some already from another missionary. In Houstan we meet up with the other group and some of us had some last minutes American Chineese food at Panda Express! Then off we were to Mexico were it is always a laugh sitting next to Elder Anderson because he hates planes! and at the smallest amount of turbulence he freaks hahah. So then we arrived, right when we walked outside I felt like I was back south but worse haha. Soo hot at all times hah. After we got past the security and the armed soldiers that guard the airport, we met our Misson President and his APs they were way cool. They drove us to the mission house, which was way nice. There we had a amazing meal of something haha. Then we had a quick little meeting with all the elders that arrived on our plane. All of them except me and Elder Stoor are taller than 6'2 so everyone looked like giants. There were 12 of us shoved into 1 tiny tiny house with no and only 6 beds so we had to get creative, there is no AC here so it was way hot all night, but at least we had a fan for every room. I remember last night i took a cold shower and came out and felt the same way in the shower haha thats how humid it is here. Surprisingly I slept alright until at the crack a dawn i heard it seemed like 20 roosters all decided to start crowing at the exact same time. I swear every other person here has a pet rooster, and everyone here does have a pet dog. So when we woke up. Me elders Stoor and Smith Walked across the street to the Tampico Temple to have a morning study. That was really nice. The Tampico Temple is very beautiful! For sure the nicest building in Tampico. After we had some study time, we all drove to the institute building where we went to meet our trainers and have a couple classes. It was all Spanish, so....I didn't understand alot of it haha but i got the jist of things, after, we had an amazing dinner back at the mission home with everyone, then we all got assigned our companions and zones. Elder Tipton played sweet hour of prayer and i played another hyme for everyone after. They asked were i learned to play because they were impressed and i said me madre, go mom hah. Im assigned to a zone right inside Tampcio. I’m so excited! My companion is a little native elder who knows hardly any English so its kind of hard. It was hard to say bye to my comps from the MTC especially elder Tipton. He is such a great friend and missionary. After we all piled into a couple cars it was cray cray! not Joke in the mission presidents van, we had 16 elders haha! The drivers here are kind of crazy, The taxies are allowed to run red lights, and its free go on the roads cause there are like no cops. One bummer is that i am not allowed to play any soccer, kinda sad about that. but on P days we can go on the beach and play sand volley ball and play basket ball. The houses here are unlike anything ive seen in america, is its super green and tropical almost a jungle here. Ive seen Mexican soldiers everywhere with their faces covered with mask

s its a little different. I would seem as if they were expecting trouble at any second ha well i gotta peace out. Thanks for everything feel free the email me or write me at anytime! i would love it!

June 12, 2013

Hola!

These last couple of weeks have been pretty great!  Well every day is great! The Spanish is coming along really great, it is still hard and will be for the first couple months but I know it will come really fast when I am there. Everyday Elder Tipton and I teach 2-3 lessons, it is pretty fun and we never go in with notes and just let it flow. The last lesson we had with Paublo went really interesting because he is doing everything we told him but he isn't praying and receiving answers the way we want him. So our lesson with him consisted of us asking him if he had received an answer concerning the decision of baptism, and he was still unsure so we asked if we could pray with him right there, so after he prayed we asked him how he felt and he said good but didn't think he had received an answer so we had him pray 2 more times and then we said a prayer. We literally were on our knees the whole lesson and finally he yielded to the spirit and said he would be baptized so that was interesting. One other lesson that went good is where our whole district taught this one lady and then she gave us all feed back, and she told Elder Tipton and I in front of everyone that we did the best because she said she felt that we were the only ones really listening to her and trying to figure out her needs .  I thought that was cool because even though Elder Tipton and I didn’t know much Spanish, she could still feel our spirit I guess.  Our zone got 2 more districts the last two weeks and they are all awesome! It is sad cause the district one week ahead of us, leave on Monday, and I’ve became really really good friends with them and I will miss them very much. They are all going to Chile though. We leave the Monday after woot woot. So last week the Tampico Mexico missionaries flew to Vegas for the day to get our visas. It was so weird because the fly there and back, since we did not gain very much altitude, I could see our drive way and basketball hoop in Lehi, as we flew over, we honestly flew right over my neighborhood. Even the drive to the airport, driving through lehi was kind of cool. I took alot of pictures. Vegas was awesome! We all ate real food and some guy in a wheel chair bought all of us missionaries Cafa Rio at the airport, that was cool. We all got to hand out pass along cards and I gave mine to this guy who came up and started to talk to me because he "used" to be Mormon, but obviously not anymore.  He had just broken up with his fiancé in Vegas.  I talked to him for a bit and gave him our card saying if he had any questions here's our number and website, he put the card in his wallet, and that was it. It was good to get out of class and be in the real world finally. Yesterday was the first time in MTC history that we had our devotional in the Marriott Center because we can’t fit everyone, the MTC is growing so fast. The normal amount of missionaries is 500-600 a week, we have been receiving 950 a week now.  They had to open a new campus about half a mile from the MTC cause of how many are coming in.  Right now there are 65,000 missionaries out and by the end of the summer there will be over 100,000

 crazy. They actually have been reassigning people like crazy because the original missions are to full. So every night Elder Tipton and I bear our testimonies to 3 different groups of people, that's been way cool. So I still lift everyday, Everyone has started to call me muscle Hamster recently hahah its kinda funny.  I am finally getting stretch marks on my arms hahah. I weigh in at a solid 170 and no one here believes I use to wrestle 125lbs.  They all think I wrestled 160s or 172s. The MTC has records for some physical events that have been up for a long time.  I do not know how long but, I beat the male push up record with 171 push ups without stopping, it was really hard, my name should be up on the MTC record board today actually. So there is a big devotional on the 23rd of this month, the day before I  leave. There is going to be a big choir of missionaries and I will be in there somewhere. You can watch it.  It is being broad casted.  All the general authorities are supposed to be there. This is supposed to be a big deal. They won’t tell us what it is, but they said they are going to announce something that will go down in history for missionary work.  So it may be worth watching just saying.....  My companion Elder Tipton sprained his foot really bad yesterday so we've been walking really slow and I have had to carry him places so that's kinda fun.  I love all our experiences here.  It is so great! Well I think that's everything.  When anyone gets Ian’s address, tell me asap! So I guess,  hasta proxima ves (until next time) thanks so much.

Elder Vince Miller