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