Letter #60

This week. Monday through Wednesday went farely well. We found a new guy named Carlos who met with the missionaries in Madrid 3 years ago and now we are teaching him. We met him outside of a clinic where he works and we were able to walk down to a bar where a member works to teach the lesson. He could have lots of potential if he has time for us. He has a pretty wack schedule with working from 9pm to 9am and he lives in another pueblo not too far. He is a guy from Bolivia, nice guy. 

Wednesday we had a district meeting. There are two newby's in our district. It is fun to see them. It was really weird when they asked me how much time I had out. "umm about a year and a half.." What the heck? I mean 5 months! I was able to tell one of the new Elders that he was going to enjoy A Coruña because I started there!  For District meeting I was incharge of doing a practice. I had everybody think of a personal need to progress in the Gospel.  Then I had them apply that time of meditation to thinking about how each of our investigators each have their own individual needs as well.  We need to remember that everyone is different and each persons needs are too.  

Afterwards, I went up to el Ferrol for an intercambio. I like going up there. We ate with a family that I met a year ago there and they recognized me and I could communicate with them :) They are Cubans and really hard to understand but I did pretty well with talking with them..

I came back to Santiago with a rain storm and being sick. I haven't had a voice for the past 3 or 4 days. Elder Eskelson was sick the day I came back as well so we rested for a while on Thursday. It has been tough trying to re-cooperate and try to at least get some lessons in at the same time. Elder Eskelson has to do the talking and I tell us where to go to contact haha. I have been making a lot of hot chocolate and herbal tea and stuff. I hope I am better by tonight for a hard working week this week!!! 

For Pday today we just relaxed and cleaned up the piso. It needed some care badly! Our sink is no longer clogged and I don´t have to wear sandles in the shower anymore ;) haha 

Pam is doing well. I didn´t get to see her this week because I was in Ferrol but it sounds like she recognizes the spirit when we are there. He family is awesome. I really want to see them in church soon! 

Josh and I are doing well keeping in touch with each other. Sounds like you had two sick boys this last week, hopefully not another. 

Have a great week this week! I know the Lord is always mindful of us and knows the best for us. Sometimes it is hard to trust in His will because we do not understand everything, but He does. 

Love,

Elder Jayden Miles

#59 Santiago, Espana

Well to start off, Elder Eskelson are together again for this transfer. We were both prepared for him to be taking off but now we are excited to be working together again. We work well together and have a lot to do this transfer and are excited to get work done here! I feel like this past transfer kind of molded me and now it is time for me to mold the area a little bit. 

I am glad to hear that the family is doing well! Dad I hope that you have an awesome day tomorrow! Happy Birthday!! 

School and stuff has all started up here and it is pretty much a university city so we meet a lot of kids our age and not too much older. 

This week we did a lot of contacting but we got a lot more ´No´s than usual. We pressed on and kept trying to work as hard as we could. We had our patience tried a little bit after so many dumb comments and rejections. 

Pero es lo que hay! 

I had a fun week though. We helped a family move. They didn't live far from their new house but we sure moved a lot of furniture and if we were not there to help it would have taken a lot longer. They are one of my favorite family´s that I have met in the mission. They are from here, from Galicia. They are the main family from the branch. We eat lunch with them every Sunday up at their parents house with the wife's brother. It is always really good food.  Even though they did let us try some pig testicle without letting us know what it was before we tried it haha... tasted like bacon so no worries... 

We were able to meet with our investigator, the girl from Brasil. We had a really good lesson with her and brought a member girl that is from England that speaks Portuguese. We watched the restoration movie and invited her to be baptized. She said she would once she found out the truth for herself. I had a nice experience, it was the first time in my life I received the prompting to give blessing. Normally someone asks me to do so but she was going through a really hard time with depression. While she was explaining to the member in Portuguese what was going on, I turned to Elder Eskelson and told him that I thought we should give her a blessing and he confirmed to me that the spirit was talking because he had the same idea. It was a cool experience. I didn´t give the blessing but the spirit was strong and she said that she felt a difference. 

Yesterday was awesome. Our investigator's brother owns a Japanese restaurante and he invited us over to try some sushi! I have never tried sushi before but we were down to try it out. We expected to get maybe a couple pieces or so but he hooked us up with a whole meal.  There were probably 12 pieces for each of us with egg rolls and pot stickers and everything. All of it was super delicious and it was free so even cooler. We have been making them cookies and brownies to make up for it haha. They are a super cool family. Never thought I would say that I would have eaten at a Japanese restaurante in Spain owned by a Brasilian. haha

Today I dragged my comp to a guitar store and a CD shop to just kind of look around for p-day. It was fun to be back in my grove looking at guitars and checking out cds. The guy at the guitar store game me a free guitar pick. 

Well, I hope you all have an awesome week and have fun. I am excited Dad and Mom to see if you guys will able to come pick me up here! Grandpa Miles tells me that Mom is counting the days down! Don´t worry about distracting me or anything. I am in the game right now. 

Love you all lots! 

#58 Santiago, Spain

 Thanks for all of your support and love, it really helps a ton out here. I went to the post office and picked up your package today! As soon as I got back to the piso I tried on the new shirt and made some strawberry lemonade! The shirt fits perfect and the lemonade and sour patch kids hit the spot! Everything from the states has so much flavor. I could hardly handle how sour & sweet the sour patch kids were! Thank you!

Elder Eskelson & Elder Miles

This week I found myself thinking a lot about of how I am so grateful to have the Gospel. There are so many people in this world who, I think, do not take the time to contemplate the concept of God.  AND they do not clearly know what or who to believe in. Even though I am here in Santiago with it being the 2nd most Catholic place in the world, I have still met probably more Atheists than Catholics. It is sad to see. People these days, at least here, just don´t see the reason why it is so important to believe in God. I know exactly who I believe in, I know that God has a body of flesh and bones. I know that Jesus Christ is my redeemer and that if I live the Gospel and simply try my best in this life then I will receive eternal life. Some do not want anything to do with God or with religion. If only they knew the importance of finding out another perspective, that of learning what Christ's church has to offer. I am so grateful for even the small moments to be able to talk to someone on the street that has more than 15 seconds to hear what we have to say. I am grateful for open minded people that are willing to learn from others. 

Well those were kind of my thoughts for this week. 

We did a lot of contacting this week. Managed to teach 10 lessons. We met with Pamela, which was awesome! She is really cool and has a cool brother and sister in law that we want to get to teach as well. It has been fun talking with her because she mixes Portuguese and Spanish together and it reminds me of when Elder Ávila spoke Spanish. I can usually follow her when she speaks. 

We had a good fast Sunday. The branch here likes to all eat together after the meetings.  So, everyone brings a little pot luck and we all eat together. It was fun and pretty tasty. 

We met a member girl from England that is here studying Spanish. She is going to help us with a lesson with Pamela hopefully. We spoke a lot of English with her while she was there at the church. I kind of felt bad to exclude the branch a little bit but it was fun to hear her British accent. It is fun to meet people from all over the world! I told her that I have been to London and have enjoyed a good plate of fish and chips and some mushy peas, haha. She is from London by the way. 

Where is Jonny & his fishing pole!

Well this is week 6 of 6 in this transfer. We will see what happens to my comp. He has been up here for 3 transfers already so we will see if he goes back down. I have been loving this area. Even though it has been really tough and exhausting, it has been very gratifying to see the little progression that we have been able to be apart of. 

LOVE, Elder Jayden  

#57

Well this week was not too eventful. We did a lot of contacting on the street. We usually have a really good day planned but then this past week every one of our plans fell through and we are left to find more on the street. It is some pretty tiring stuff. 
Every once in a while we find a couple of people that will listen to what we have to say.  Unfortunately, we have not found any new investigators this week. From my point of view I don´t think a lot of people actually take time to ponder and figure out what they believe. A lot of people have very passive beliefs and don´t really have a curiosity to find out if there really is a God or if there is more after this life. And a lot of people don´t believe that the answer is found in a church or a book. Even being in Santiago, a very religious city, the Catholics don´t even know what they believe in. 

The past 2 weeks we have been trying to pin point one of our investigators, who is from Brasil. She has not answered our phone calls or we can't catch her at home. But, thankfully we ran into her brother and he invited us over whenever we wanted. We knew exactly who he was and they all thought it was a pretty big coincidence that we met her brother.   So we went over to her brother's house which is where she lives too.  He said that since we found her first we had to talk to her first, ahah.  It was pretty awkward at first because it wasn´t a very pleasent surprise for her to see us sitting on her couch. We actually ended up having a really good lesson with her. She has been having problems with depression. It makes me really sad and I really just want to help her and that is such a hard thing to overcome. But we had a good lesson on how the Gospel really does bring happiness into our lives. We shared Mosiah 2:41 and watched "Thanks to Him".  We got back on track with her which was awesome!

Today we went to A Coruña for Pday and met up with the district and went bowling. We ate at an all you can eat Italian food place which was super good. Pizza and Pasta, it was delicious. 

It has been fun being able to pick up on some Portuguese and Gallego, which is similar. Our Brasilian investigator, speaks a lot of brasilian. It is cool to be able to tell her that I have an aunt that is from brasil. 

Moito grazas por tudo.

I hope that you all have a great week. We will see if my knees will take another week of all this walking, haha. I get back to the piso absolutely destruido but I always am pushed by all of your prayers. Graciños.

Love you all,

Elder Miles

Letter # 56

I love reading about your weeks back home! Time has started to feel very strange to me lately. I feel like I have enough time left in the mission field but at the same time I feel like I don´t have enough! I know what is left is going to fly by though. I just hope that I will feel satisfied with the work I have done-mas que todo. I also hope the Lord is satisfied with the work I have tried to do. 

Dad & Mom, I would love to show you guys my areas. They are kind of spread out now since I am back up in Galicia. I could for sure show you some cool places though :) Life just feels so normal for me here now. I usually drop by a bakery every week for either for a un barra de pan or some sort of pastery. I take advantage of medio día and the Spaniards definitely do as well. There is usually no one in sight when it is from 2 to around 6 in the evening. They sleep for a little longer than we get to....! There is a festivo here about every week which makes things a lot more complicated.  All there are is tourists with backpacking gear that take the road to Santiago when it is festivo. I also love a good bowel of lentejas with pan de galicia, or a nice slice of empanada gallega. I have been picking up a little more on gallego here. It is very similar to Portuguese so it was fun to be comps with Elder Ávila for a transfer and hear all his random Portuguese words that he would throw into his Spanish. My Spanish is good. I wish that I had a comp that was willing to speak it all the time but es lo que hay. Maybe someday I will come back and study in Salamanca to perfect it. I definitely want to minor in Spanish. It really is the celestial language :) 

My week went well. We contacted, contacted, contacted. We did manage to find 4 new investigators though! I am really excited for them! We found a kid that is from here and wants to learn how to become a better person and wants to learn more about God, a girl our age from Brasil who is open to listen, and a Romanian couple that a member family hooked us up with. I am so grateful for people that will at least listen to the reason why we are here. So may people assume and just don´t want anything to do with God.. It is tough and makes me sad but I know that their time will come. 

Saturday was an interesting day, we got the door slammed in our faces by some Catholic Priest. We were actually looking for an old investigator and he didn´t let us get a word in edge wise. He just said that he didn´t have time or interest and that he was a priest.  We were just trying to see if a guy named Marcos was lived there... He told us to get out because we had bad manners.. very christlike I just have to say..haha! Then about 30 minutes later two drunk guys with there shirts off stopped us and tried to get us to come get a beer with them. "vamos al beer!" is what they said. They were pretty persistent because they were literally grabbing us and trying to drag us to a bar-haha. They couldn't really budge us since they were about a foot shorter than us. When we walked away Elder Eskelson said,"wow, so that is what peer presure feels like." I thought that was good! 

It is crazy to see how grown up Jonny and Jenna are getting. They look like they are having fun together though :) It is super cool that Jonny has braces now! That was a surprise to me! And now he has a longboard, a pretty sick one at that! 

You´re the best Mom with the packages. The Correos is pretty far away from my piso but I will be willing to hike up there to get it. I have been in search of water flavoring packets for a while but I have not had any luck. Don´t let the package weigh too much, those things get expensive to send. 

Love you! 

Love Elder Jayden Miles

Letter #55

Elder Miles in Santiago, Spain

 This week was a fun week of updates from you all! I am glad that Dad is starting to feel better. It sounds like Jenna is just having a blast with all her friends. Mom, I am glad that you are doing well. Sounds like everyone is doing great and having fun with their lives. Malad sounds like a cool little place. I will be looking foward to visiting Grandma and Grandpa Miles out there. 

I was suprised to find out that I was getting transfered to the North again. I have always thought that it would be cool to come back up here but I never thought that was actually going to be able to happen. I actually really wanted to come to this area, so it is a huge blessing for me to be here. Galicia is beautiful and breathtaking. It is so green and the weather is perfect right now. We did have a couple days of rain this week, but it was nice in contrast to the beaming Talavera sun. 

There are a lot of tourists here. This is the final destination of the Road to Santiago. There are people from all over the world that come here to see the Santiago Catedral. It is actually pretty fun to see people from all over, but it does make it a little more challanging to contact on the street. We have been doing a lot of that up here. The people here are really nice when you get to know them or when they give you time to talk to them. They are a lot more closed off than any of my other areas. It is the 2nd most populated Catholic place in the world though. The city is beautiful. I was whiped out all week last week from getting used to all the hills here. My legs are sore my knees are tired, my shoes are doing fine though. 

I got meet the branch yesterday. There are some really fun/nice members. I actually gave a talk for my first Sunday here. It was on Faith and how through faith we are able to stand strong and be brave. I think that was only my 2nd talk that I have had to give in the mission so it was not bad. I love the Gallegan accent. There is a definite difference from Madrid and Galicia in the way that they talk. If you remember from when I was up here about a year ago, a lot of people speak Gallego. I have been trying to let the accent stick to me so we will see how that goes. You could almost compare it to an Argentinan accent and an Italian accent combined with the Castellano Z(theta.) I love the culture here in Spain! 

Elder Miles and Elder Eskelson

Elder Eskelson is a really good guy. He walks pretty fast, but maybe I have just noticed that because of all the hills here. He is a really hard worker. We both have a good vision for this area, we really want to help it grow. 

It sounds like for a long time this area has been the same. There have been some baptisms but a lot of people move away or fall away. Santiago has only been open since the beginning of this year so there has only been a handful of companionships up here. I know that if I let it, this area will break me and form me into a more pacient and hard working missionary/person. I think I am going to learn to rely even more on faith and obedience here. I want to become stronger and learn more but I also want to take the area itself and break it and form it into a better area. I have been a seed planter for the majority of my mission, it has been tough but it has also been fun. I would really love to see some true progression here. The branch is awesome and they are pumped up to help us but we just have to figure out an effective way to use them. We have maybe 2 or 3 investigators right now and I feel like we can find a lot more. Well those are my outlooks for this area and for the next couple months for Santiago!!! God Speed!!

David was baptized the week after I left

Los 3 Muscateros de Talavera
Love you all and I hope that everything goes well this week.

Elder Miles

P.S- Answers to Mom's questions-

1-Area, comp, y tal arriba.

2-The greatest thing that I have learned on my mission so far is that... hard one to put into words. I know that God is our Heavely Father and that He knows each and everyone of us. I know that he is perfect and that the plan, the Gospel, he has made for us is perfect. I also know that even though we are all so different in this world, with different lives, experiences, trials, but the Gospel blesses all of us in the same way. 

3-The hardest thing on my mission has been the amount of time that I have had to spend on the streets. It is fun to meet people but when it's are all day, I get exhausted and my pacience gets warn down. I feel so much more purpose when we have a set lesson and it goes well. I know that being on the street and finding is a part of my purpose though. 

4- I just love the Gospel in general. I love how key Jesucristo is to it. He fullfiled the will of the Father without a single mistake. 

5-I wanted to buy some peanutbutter today from Carrefore but it was 4 Euro!! There are lots of things that I miss about the U.S. At the moment I can´t really think of them. I have grown in some American Pride since I have been out. I miss Road Trips and National Parks. 

Letter #54

August 4, 2014

Transfer Day:)

It was sad to say goodbye to Talavera. I was there for 6 months and I became very close to the members and my investigators. I gave my testimony at church and let everyone know how grateful I was for everything.

This morning I took a train and 2 buses to get to my new area. President sent me back up north!! I am in Santiago de Compostela! I pulled into A Coruña today and then from there I met my comp, Elder Eskelson. I flew with him from home to Spain. We have been out the same time. He is from Logan, Utah. We worked together when I was in Madrid a couple times. It is so strange to be back up here again. I thought that I would never be able to see this place again, but I lucked out! I am back with my Gallegan People. Elder Harrop was also transfered but Elder Ávila is still in Talavera.

Thanks mom for sending Ávila a package. I am really grateful for that and I am sure that he will be as well. Don´t be surprised if he sends you an email in response. I am going to miss that guy. I have a home on his Island now:)

I am going to keep things short. David didn´t end up getting baptized. We went through a ton of hassle to get the baptismal font but it turns out that he needs a little bit more preparation. It’s a bummer that I was not able to see him get baptized but as long as he does I will be happy.

Love you all and I hope that you have an awesome week!

Elder Jayden Miles