Letter #13

jayden.miles@myldsmail.net

Hola Familia
Happy Fathers Day Dad!! I hope you had a great day. It sounds like all of you had fun at the new Superman movie. It will be a good one to see when I get back! Good to hear that everyone has their summer packed already with volleyball, hiking and martial arts. Sounds like it is going to be a great summer. Mom and Dad and Jenna, thanks for updating me this week on everything! I love emails :)

My Piso

This week was pretty eventful so I will list some things that have happened.

Tuesday: I had another intercambio in Ferrol but this time I was with Elder Lopez from the east coast of Mexico. I had a good time practicing all of my Spanish. I could feel the gift of tongues while we taught a couple lessons. I could understand a ton of what was going on and I could respond pretty well. The language is coming. I was accepted into a family from Argentina because I used to play World of Warcraft! haha. I guess that paid off playing that game for a couple years. It´s always funny to see how much pride people have in their characters.

Wednesday: We had a District Meeting but the buses in Ferrol were on strike and we didn´t have a way to get back to A Coruña.   So we tried hard to get there by walking to the main bus station but the next bus was leaving later than we wanted. Luckily a member drove us an hour back to A Coruña. Super nice of them! We made it back just in time to eat the Stephenson's delicious American food after the district meeting. We ate mashed potatoes and gravy and turkey! It was sooo good :) Later that day we ate at one of our investigators house. 

I have been meaning to tell you about an investigator. His name is Ion and he is from Romania! I met him my second day here & he is so awesome. He is dirt poor. He makes money from scanvenging in trash cans & fixing things to sell. There are always different people at his house & it is interesting to meet his friends. They are all from Romania, super nice people. 

Friday: The four of us Elders of A Coruña are starting English classes in order to serve the people here & to see if we can get some investigators out of it. We made flyers & have been posting & passing them around the city. I have never taught English before but hopefully it will all work out. We haven't had anyone show up yet but I´m excited to see what goes down. 

P-Day Bowling

We went to a big farewell party for a member in our branch. Her name is Fiorela and she is from Peru. The party was really fun & a lot of good little hors d'oeuvre. At the end there was a dance party. I have never wanted to dance so badly in my life! haha. All of them were so smooth! I probably sound really weird right now saying that I just watched my branch dance but....whatever. 

They all tried to get us missionaries to dance because we had a hard time standing still to the latino dance music. My branch is awesome.

Sunday: It was district conference for all the branches in Galicia in Santiago. There was no room for us to ride in members cars so the four of us Elders took the train to Santiago which was only a 40 minute ride. We had to walk about 3km to the conference center. We ended up passing through an abandoned carnival that the city must of had the night before. We got lost a little bit and ended up hiking in our suits and ties to get to this place. We came across the fútbol stadium in Santiago.  As we were walking we heard some explosions. The explosions kept getting closer and closer until it felt like we were getting shot at! We all kind of over reacted and started running for our lives! We then looked at our map again & thankfully we were close to where we needed to be. I knew that we would make it to the Conf. Ctr. safely but I would have never predicted taking the path that we took to get there. Definitly an exciting morning. The conference was really good and we had 2 of our investigators there :) I knew they felt the spirit & I am so glad that they were able to go. Sunday we also got two new investigators! Maricete and James from Brasil! James speaks Portuguese & really fast. He was very passionate about the Bible which I was glad to see because it showed that he had some potential to study spiritual things. His wife Maricete was really nice and I can totally see her progressing. I am excited about both of them.

My A Coruna Elders!

Time is flying by!  As I reflect on the days that pass I am always amazed how much work we've done. My testimony of José Smith is really growing. I have always known that he was a profeta of God but I am just so grateful for his sacrifice to help restore the Gosple. It has also helped me that I have been to his house and the Sacred Grove. I can picture the events that took place there and It is even easier for me to testify about them. 

I love this work! Two Christlike attributes that I've been working on and would love to improve is diligence and patience.

Thank you family for all that you do. Don´t forget about Family Home Evenings :) I love you all so much and I miss you. 

Love Elder Miles