Silver City - Week 9

Hello everyone,

I only really have a few things to share and they happened yesterday. Unfortunately, this has been an other slow week with a lot of lessons falling through, so we've mostly been visiting less actives and recent converts.

In sacrament meeting yesterday, I got to speak for the first time on
my mission. Elder Coyne and I were asked to speak on how the gospel blesses families. I spoke somewhere around eight minutes, and I had to write out every last thing I a had to say since I couldn't practice it that much. But everyone complemented me nonetheless on how well prepared I was, even though I was just reading off of a paper the whole time.

We had a former investigator return to church yesterday as well but
let me explain. The second day I was here in Silver, we went with our ward mission leader to visit an investigator named Pauline, who the Elders before us tracted into a few months ago. The night I saw her she was about to go into rehab (voluntarily) in Las Cruses. She looked like a mess and she was a mess. When I saw her yesterday, she looked like a whole new person, and now Elder Coyne and I are going to begin preparing her and her kids for baptism! The change the gospel has brought to her life is quite evident and incredible.

Wish I had more to share, but that's about it for this week. Love you all,

Elder Miller

Silver City - Week 8

Hello everyone. 

Elder Coyne and I have been doing real good these past
few weeks. Marie and Carrye are still having Word of Wisdom problems, and we've moved their baptismal date to Oct. 1. We also set a date with an investigator a member found for us, Joseph. He told us the other day at a church activity that he has really enjoyed the lessons and what he's been hearing, which was really encouraging to me. We're hoping that everything will go fine so we can baptize on Oct. 15. We taught Hendricks - who is also getting ready for baptism - and his grandma, Betsy, in Friday. Our ward mission leader knows Betsy pretty well, and in the lesson he asked her for her candid opinion of the church. She said she was disappointed by how some people act so irreverent while the speakers give heartfelt talks during sacrament meeting, which was a bit upsetting to hear. I would just recommend that we as members watch ourselves and put in good preparation for the sabbath. People are watching us, and we need to make sure we're representing Christ's church the way He'd want us to. A member in Silver City ward - who is a temple sealer - said the other day that there is no reason why sacrament meeting can't be every bit as spiritually edifying as a trip to the temple. I believe that; do we not realize we are participating in an essential, holy ordinance every Sunday within the wall of our meetinghouse? Let our actions and thoughts reflect that every Sabbath and it will be so much more refreshing and uplifting for all of us.

Love you all.

Elder Miller

Silver City Week 7

This has been an excellent week for Elder Coyne and I. It's been a few weeks since we've been able to focus all of our time on our area. We hit all the standards of excellence, which are goals set by our mission president for each week. I've been talking about having
appointments with new investigators falling through these past few
weeks; this week we were able to finally meet with some of them and we now have two new people we're meeting with regularly now.

The first person is Hendricks Jackson who was actually taking the
lessons before he went to live with his dad for the summer. He lives
with his grandparents in Silver during the school year, so we were
able to start giving the discussions again this week. In our lesson I
asked him if he'd like to be baptized; it was the first time I had
done so. It was very abrupt and weird when I did it and it made
Hendricks very hesitant. Luckily Elder Coyne and his grandparents were able to coax him into it afterward and he agreed to set a date for September 17. Hopefully I'll figure out a smooth transition to use before asking people to be baptized.

Brother Jones, one of our ward missionaries, has been letting someone live in their camper on his property, and has asked to take the missionary discussions as well. His name is Joseph; he's been having a difficult time both emotionally and financially as his wife died from cancer a few months ago and he spent a lot of money trying to keep her alive. We had a great discussion on the restoration and families. We invited him to read the introduction of the BOM and he seemed very interested in doing so. He seems like a solid investigator.

Lately we've doing service for a member in our ward who needs his
house cleaned up before his wife comes home from the hospital. His name is Brother Roger Flythe; he hasn't actually occupied his house in years since he's had to care for a lot of sick relatives in his
family, so his dogs have pretty much had free reign in it for a while.
He's a very smart guy and used to be a very successful artist, making over a hundred grand a year doing it. I'll have to figure out a way to send pictures of some his paints to all of you; he is very good and prolific.

Be safe and have a good week,
Elder Miller

Silver City Week 6

Hello everybody,

I survived my first six weeks, and am now halfway trained. My trio has
ended and Elder Kapele is in his way to Tucson to pick up his new
companion. He will be training, so that means I won't be the new guy
in Silver City anymore.

This week was pretty slow, sadly. No new investigators. We tried to
reschedule with the news we had lined up last week, but those meetings fell through again. Hopefully we'll have better luck this week. On Friday went looking for a referral who lived in the middle of nowhere and two miles away from the mission boundaries. We took a wrong turn and had to ask a farmer for directions. We finally got there and...he wasn't home, so we had to turn around and go home and our day was pretty much over by then. Thus is the life of a missionary I guess.

On Thursday we had our regular meeting with Marie and Carrye. We had finally made it to the dreaded Word of Wisdom lesson as they are both smokers. They actually took the lesson surprisingly well and understood the doctrine of it clearly. They understood perfectly why they needed to kick their habit before baptism and expressed a willingness to try. It will be interesting to see how this goes for them. One thing I'll say for sure is that their baptismal dates will need to be pushed back as it was originally set for the 13th of this month.

Sundays have been a bit lengthy since we have to go to both first and second ward's sacrament meetings; which comes out to about six hours of church. I've become the de facto priesthood pianist for second Ward which is all right with me; it gives a good excuse to hit the keys on my P days.

Have a good week. Love you all; miss you all,
Elder Miller

Silver City Week 5

Hello everyone,

My first full week in a trio went pretty good. Elder Kapele and Elder
Coyne have both been fun to work with. Elde Coyne and I were expecting three new investigators this week and had all the appointments set up.

Unfortunately they all fell through. But since we've had to devote our
time to two separate wards, I think we have a valid excuse for our low
numbers this week. We did commit someone to be baptized in Elder
Kapele's area, so we're still getting a lot done.
Because of the failed appointments, we've spent a lot of time visiting
with recent converts and less actives. On less active we've been
focusing on - Sister Whelan - is a very interesting person.  She took
an IQ test in college and it was high enough to where she could have
joined Mensa, but her mother asked her not to. She learned how to do
Indian healing and has done and taught it professionally. She told us
many stories of instances where she has restored people's sight and
things of that nature. How much of it is actually true is hard to say,
but cool stories nonetheless. She said she also went on a vision
quest, and when she finally got her patriarchal blessing some of the
things in it matched what she had learned doing the vision quest. It's
interesting to see all he different walks of life that the gospel has
touched and effected each day.

Elder Coyne and I are still working on Marie and Carrye and they are
still continuing to learn about the gospel. Marie's grandkids came
over in the middle of our last lesson and they even sat down and
listened in for some of it. We were showing a video about the first
vision and they were asking questions and wanting to learn more as
well!

Hope everyone is doing good themselves and feel free to email me
anytime during the week (I just won't respond till Monday)

Elder Miller