7-16-12

Hey everyone! Happy monday once again. :) I hope this monday finds you all doing splendidly. :)

Got another email for you guys, consisting mostly of responses to things said by others in their emails. I hope you enjoy. :)

Crazy things that have happened to us?:
Well my companion and I did get approached by a Jehovah's Witness lady the other day getting off a bus. I missed most of what she said, because she was talking rather softly in a loud area, and companion didn't hear too much more than I did, but she was talking about how she was holy and we aren't, and other strange things. Wasn't too hateful, just seemed a bit rude. But she is just following her belief, and following Christ the only way she knows how. That is good in my eyes, though it does make things hard.

After a comment on how I am being exposed to many cultures:
It is interesting to get to know so many people. There are lots of Turkish people, some Russian people, I think I may have heard some French, I have seen plenty of Muslim women, and I am sure I have seen quite a few other kinds of people and been completely oblivious!

On the topic of weather:
I'm glad you guys got some rain! It has been raining here on and off for almost two weeks, two out of every three days or so. Pretty crazy. But it never lasts all day. Always sporatic weather. Two days ago it went from light rain, to heavy rain and thunder, to hail, then back to rain, and then mostly clear and sunny within the space of an hour. Pretty crazy!

After having discussed unexplained bouts of negative feelings:
My advice when your sad and don't know why? Search your soul. Pray. Meditate. Deep breaths (I know deep breaths sound cliche, but it is so true. It helps so much to mellow out and let go.) Find your balance again and figure out what's wrong. Sadness is NEVER a happy way to live. ;)

'Do you still have to pass off discussions?':
We don't pass off discussions or anything like that. We learn the content of the lessons in preach my gospel, and pratice teaching them, but there is no certification or test. And we are always encouraged to modify the order and time spent according to their needs. To teach only as much of each lesson as we have time for as we really work to teach for understanding and answer questions, and to teach them what they need, and not just what comes up next in the que. There is also a very large stress on following the Spirit. Being ready to ditch the lesson plan and follow promptings when they come.

'Do you have a favorite German word or phrase?':
My favorite word is one that does not translate very well. It's a phrase really: 'doch'. The o makes an 'oh' sound, and the ch is like the phleghm-y sound, but without the actual phleghm. Kinda like the same way you gargle, but you close your throat a little more so that the air passes through smoothly without the gargling sound. 'doch' The closest equivalent to this phrase in English is 'yuh-huh'. It is a contradiction to a negative. But only to a negative. i.e. Someone says 'I don't think that's possible.' You could say 'Doch!' As in you think it is too possible. 'I don't think the bus is coming.' - 'Doch!' - meaning, it is too! Etc. Fun phrase. Nothing like it in English which is sad. But that's ok. Fun to say too. :)

Now for a spiritual thought! The other day, we were teaching a family, and they expressed the concern that it is impossible to tell which church is correct. They all say that they are true, so many churches claim to be the true church of Christ, so how are they supposed to be able to differentiate.

In answer to this family's question we gave the following analogy: So my companion here has a favorite color, could you tell me what it is? They said that they of course had no idea. We followed to tell them that of course if they wanted to know his favorite color, the would need to ask -him-.

We went on to tell them that they had the Book of Momron in their hand, which they could read for themselves, and then pray about it, and ask God. God is the one with the answers. God has the truth. God would be able to tell you which church was his chruch. We invited them to read in the Book of Mormon, and then to pray. To ask God whether the Book of Momron is true, and whether our message was true.

They were very happy with our answer. They then understood that they could find out for themselves what is truth, and they commited to read and pray.

This truth of our Gospel applies to every aspect therein. When we want to know whether this Church is true, we can ask God ourselves, and if we ask in faith, believing that we will recieve, He will testify of it to us throuh His Holy Spirit. If you don't know about Joseph Smith, you can ask God about it. If you are having a hard time with something one of the Presidency or Twelve has instructed you to do during General Conference, you can ask God about it. If you pray and ask sincerely, with real intent, planning to act on the answer you recieve, our loving Father in Heaven will -always- let you know. You will feel the Holy Spirit testify to you, straight to your heart, that every piece of this Gospel is true. I can testify of that. I have proved this concept in my own life, and in the name of Christ our Lord, I promise that you can find the same.

Have a wonderful week everyone. Keep Christ close, and love those around you, no matter what. I'll talk to you next week. :)

- Elder Michael Miles

7-9-12

Dear blog readers!

Hello everyone. :) I hope you are all doing well this week. :) My post will be a bit short today other than my spiritual thought, because I spent so much time writing it. It is dedicated to my brother Andrew, because things he said inspired me to write it. I hope you all enjoy it. :)

Let's say that you have a very large bucket full of your soul. It has two handles, and is very wide and difficult to carry. We are striving to carry this massive tub, so to say, up the mountain of progression. Trying to carry our soul higher. Christ is always there. Often times we look to Him and we ask Him, tears in our eyes, why is my bucket so heavy? I am so tired. I don't know how much longer I can go.

We begin to dispair, and He always feels our pain. The problem is, we are often so busy dispairing, and telling Him how heavy it is, and asking him to take some of the weight out of the bucket, that we are completely deaf to His pleas to let Him help you carry.

'Your soul has two handles.' He says. 'Please, please let me take one. Let me help with some of the load.'

Finally we hear His plea. We let go. We stop worrying. We release our death grip on one of the handles and allow His careful loving hand to begin to bear us up. He begins to help you to see where to step. He begins to be able to help you find the path. Things become easier and easier. Our soul becomes lighter under His glorious influence, and we find peace. We begin to look around and the beautiful landscape. The wonderful flowers and view. The way becomes joyous and easy. Constantly moving up.

Then you see others. Other people carrying their souls. Christ is helping some of them too. You see how heavy it is for them. Your soul begins to yearn to help them. You look back at Christ and He smiles that bright loving smile that only he could muster. He tells you, 'I can carry this load. Will you please help these others?'

'Are you sure?' You ask him. 'My load is heavy, and the way is steep.'

He smiles again, and assures you, 'I am very sure. Let go. I've got you.'

That is the moral of this story. Let go. You are safe. You are taken care of. You will always be in charge of your soul. You decide which path to take. Chirst will always defer to you as he carries you up the mountain. But you don't have to stress. You don't have to carry it alone. You can stop worrying, and instead focus on helping others. As you work to help others up the mountain, the way will become brighter and brighter. You will be filled with the joy that can only be found by doing the work of Christ. Things will work out. As you let go of your stress over your own bucket, Christ will be able to lead it up better and better paths. The way will become easier, even though it never flattens out.

You can do it. Christ knows it, I know it, your loving Heavenly Father knows it. Be at peace. Matthew 11:28-30

"28 Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.

30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."

Follow Christ, do His work, the work of serving others, serving God, and you will find true rest.

Moroni 7:3 "Wherefore, I would speak unto you that are of the church, that are the peaceable followers of Christ, and that have obtained a sufficient hope by which ye can enter into the rest of the Lord, from this time henceforth until ye shall rest with him in heaven."

God loves you. Jesus the Christ loves you. Your friends and family love you. Let go of the stress. Don't worry. Things will work out. God is on your side and is always working, always doing everything for your good. For your joy. You just need to work with Him to get there. :)

I hope you all have a wonderful week. :) I will mail you all again next week. :)

7-2-12

Hello everyone! A bit of a short one today, I apologize for that. But we should have the picures figured out this week, so hopefully you all get to see some of those. :)

First of all, I want to thank everyone that sent a birthday card. It turned out wonderfully because all of them came exactly on my birthday. Wonderful little thing to brighten up the day. :)

We got a new mission president! He got here a few days ago. We actually met him at a baptizm that we went to in another area yesterday. I like him a lot. I think we are going to enjoy being led by him. His wife is also very nice, and they are both lots of fun so far. :)

I have been hearing that there have been a lot of fires going on. I would ask you all to please remember that in your prayers. There are many people getting affected very hard by them.

The concept I stumbled across this week, which I remembered from having developed the idea earlier in my life, is the idea that we don't need to worry. When stressed or upset or anything negative, I remind myself as meaningfully as I can that it doesn't matter. I will do what I can. I will continue moving forward. I do not, however, need to worry myself about it. Everything will turn out. I just need to keep doing what I am supposed to, and moving forward. :) I try to prevent myself from judging others when judgement is not necessary. I try to stop myself whenever I find myself thinking negatively and remind myself that it doesn't matter. I strive to replace the thoughts with positive ones. :) I challenge you to look for opportunities to stop worrying and dragging yourself down. I hope you live happy. :)

Well, hopefully you all get to see some pictures this week. :) Have a wonderful week, and I will talk to you all next week! Keep Christ close. :)

.- Elder Michael Miles

Pictures:

  -My side of the main room. We also have a kitchen to the left, cant see that doorway in this pic, and then the entry way back through that doorway has a bookshelf and the clothes off to the right, and the bathroom is over on the left through another door.

 -Our little deck out back with the grill

-Telephone booth! Way cool.

 --There was a really cool Christus statue in a large church/cathedral courtyard right nearby that palace from picture four.

 -Went to this really big Castle/palace place. Walked for hours around the gardens and other buildings in the area. It was crazy

 -That doorway has a mustache!

 - (This one belongs with the other ones from the palace place) Gorgeous archway of greenery in the surrounding gardens of that Palace place. Way cool.

 -trying tea for the first time. It was apple cherry, and it wasn't bad. :)

 -the hot dogs, they came in glass jars! Weird huh.

 -cutting up the hot dogs

 -the dough

 -There was a really heavy rainstorm! It was crazy. If this picture actually uploaded, it should be me standing under a tree in the rain. There was some thunder, which made it rather cool, but mostly we just got really wet. Kinda forgot the umbrellas that day.

 -peeled an orange in one piece! Woohoo!

 -ready for the oven!

 -baking

 -all done and being delicious!

 -Elder Miles approved!

6-25-12

Happy Monday everyone! I hope things are going well, and that you are all enjoying summer. :) The summer here has been kinda crazy so far. Plenty of rain, some rather cold days, and some very hot days.

Not a whole lot to report. Cool member from Africa who had been having a hard time finding the Church in Germany showed up yesterday. Speaks English, and very little German. He didn't understand much of the meetings at all, but he was very happy to be there, and talked about how he would be there every week now that he knew where it was. I knew exactly how he felt not understanding the meetings. :P

As far as my spiritual thoughts this week, I would like to focus my thought on Christ. He is such a massive concept. Such a wonderous person. Through sheer love for us, He was enabled to suffer all things for all of God's children on all worlds for all of time. There is a wonderful quote, which seems to be a preface to a book written by a wonderful LDS woman. http://www.sober.com/forums/t/6580/talk+given+by+chieko+n+okazaki+lighten+up.aspx I encourage you to go read it. It is beautiful. I will also be posting a wonderful song on my blog that our stake Christmas choir sang a couple different Christmases. I hope you go listen to it.
I hope you all have a wonderful week. Remember Christ, and let Him play a bigger role in your day to day life. I promise you He would love to. I bear my testimony in His name that He truly is The Son of God. The Divine Redeemer. Our Loving Lord and King. Amen.

- Elder Michael Bright Miles

6-18-12

Hello everyone! I hope you are all having wonderful weeks! My email this week is going to be a little short. I hope that's ok.

Things are going well. We still have two investigators preparing for baptizm, and that's wonderful. :) They are learning a lot, and are happy to learn. They are even getting married, in part to live the law of chastity. :) Wonderful.

I thought I would share a piece of a conversation I was having with my grandma, and my mom:

"One thing I started working on before I left for my mission was the idea of 'retaliate with love'. When someone loves you, retaliate with love. When someone is not so nice to you, retaliate with love. Fighting punches with hugs. That kind of idea. :)"

This applies to all of life. When an unhappy thought comes up in your mind, retaliate at it with a loving thought. A positive replacement for the negativity. When someone says an unhappy thing, retaliate at them by thinking and speaking positively. It will help a lot. :)

I challenge you all to try to retaliate more and more with love. You will become so much more of a happier person.

I made pigs in the blanket this week finally! They turned out very well. They got a little darker brown than I would have liked, but they weren't really burned. They were delicious. I will attatch pictures. If they aren't up here on the post, bother my family about it. ;)

Well, have a wonderful week everybody! Retaliate with love, and don't forget to read in the scriptures. Make this a good week. :) I will close with a wonderful quote my grandma shared with me from a book she is reading:

"The injunction to repent is, in effect, an injunction to change one's mind. This is not a trivial requirement. In fact, it suggests a profound transformation. In Classical Greek, the word noos may be variously translated "mind," "thought," "reason," "intellect," "purpose," "will," "heart," "design," or, we might say, "mind as the active principle of the universe." In light of this, Jesus' commandment to repent, becomes a call for the transformation of the individual, the remaking of the self at the most profound level. Christ calls upon His listeners to become completely new creatures. Closely linked to that change, and in an interactive and inextricable relationship with it, is faith: We must believe the gospel as a sometimes precursor to, sometimes result for, the necessary transformation."

-Elder Miles

6-11-12

Hello everyone! I hope you can all honestly tell me you are doing well. :)

Things are going well this week. We got Jenifer and Elson commited to baptizm! Very cool. They are actually living together, and are not married, so they will be making the choice soon as to whether to get married or have one of them move out. Worst case scenario is that they drop the baptizmal date because they don't want to commit to a big, relationship changing decision like that. But I don't think that will happen. :)

We are teaching quite a few people, but to go down the list would be long and boring. :P

My new companion is great. We are getting along very well. There are always differences that one runs into, but there hasn't been anything of note. He's a fun guy from Middletown, Pennslyvania. Likes music a lot and has a guitar here in the field. Cool guy.

The weather here has been rather up and down. Some days warm enough for short sleeved shirts, other days cold enough for a coat. Rather intense. Not too bad though. I'm not really complaining. :)

I will now be including a couple sections from my correspondence with my uncle Walter again. He asks quite good questions. :)

He asked what we do for food on the run, I told him that there are bakeries everywhere, and we normally would just drop by one of those. Pastries, really nice bread, snack stuff like little sandwiches or even little pizza-looking things.

He asked about whether little kids said stuff to us a lot, he having gotten that a lot on his mission. - - There was actually one kid that came up and talked to us once. He said 'Was arbeiten Sie?' Which kinda translates into what work are you guys doing, or what are you up to kind of a thing. We told him we were missionaries, and he just kinda said 'Oh.' And pretty much walked away after that. Funny little moment. We also have had a couple different instances where teenagers hear us speaking English, and speak a couple phrases to each other loud enough for us to hear, and then laugh with each other about it. None of them ever actually try to really talk to us or anything. Funny people.

He asked whether I have been doing any splits or exchanges - - We do do exchanges actually. My last companion was district leader, and he is asked to do a lot of exchanges. We usually did them once a week. Did one with each of the other elders in our district, one with one of our zone leaders, and one other time with the elders in Neuköln. Was pretty intense. Weird to sleep somewhere other than my appartment, and be with someone other than my companion. Makes for some good adventures though.

In any case, I hope you all are doing well. I challenge you all to kick your Book of Mormon reading up a notch. If you don't read, try reading one verse a night. Not bad at all. It could be random, or it could be in order. If you already read each night, try moving it up a notch. Read more. Start using colored pencils to mark. Come up with a creative color coding that makes sense to you. You could try studying a topic instead of just reading at random or in order. I have heard that studying a topic can make for much more wonderful study time. Maybe try expanding what you are studying in. Jesus the Christ is wonderful. The Bible is always there. Conference talks are a great resource of modern day scripture. :) Try to keep the Book of Mormon in there every day though. :) Just do what you can! Challenge yourself! Go start enjoying the Gospel! It's such a glorious thing. :)

Have a wonderful week everyone. Go spread the Light you have. And if you don't have any, I have got to recommend finding some. :) Talk to you next week!

- Elder Michael Miles

6-3-12

Hello everybody! I hope you have all had a wonderful week! Gotta be a bit quick today, have a lot to respond to, and a lot going on today, but my uncle asked some very good questions, that made for some really good stuff to include. :)


Firstly, he asked if I had found any tasty cereal. -

I actually like the off brand frosted flakes pretty well. The granola here is also very delicious. Everything tastes rather different. Even name brand cereals have a completely different taste. And since the chocolate here is rather different, the chocolate cereal is way different. It was the first kind I got, and I haven't gotten any since. :P


Then the subject of delicious foods that I have found so far -

Hmmm... I think maybe the bread... They have a lot of tasty quality bread products around. I really like these things called spitzel rings. Kinda looks and tastes like a churro-style doughnut, minus the cinnamon.


He commented that root beer was a big deal back in his mission -

There is quite a bit of effort over here on the missionaries part to make root beer and such. You can buy classic A&W and such, but it's hard to find, and expensinve. It's rather a divided subject for Germans. Some people hate it, some people love it. But any German person that I have heard of that actually really tries it a couple times, grows to love it very quickly. They actually had quite a bit of it at a ward event a few days ago. Lots of people were drinking it.


He asked if we see people selling food on the street -

They do sell food on the street. I have seen bratwurst stands quite a bit. In very large busy areas, you will sometimes see guys will an entire grill setup with condiments and everything hanging off of their front like a massive reverse backpack. It's almost as big as they are. maybe I'll try to get a picture of one for you guys.


He asked about whether my companion and I pray and sing together, and talked about there being a lot of Elders in one appartmet where he had been -

There is usually two to an appartment here. Sometimes four. There is one appartment I know of that has six. My companion and I don't really have any traditions to sing or pray together at the end of the day. We get home, pray, plan, and then go about our own things, talking and relaxing until bed.


He asked how big my area is -

My area is rather large. I think you might be able to look it up online. The Berlin area has one central area, and then there are six areas coming out from that like spokes of a wheel which cover their little chunk of the circle, and extend out into the countryside, covering little 'dorfs' or small towns here and there. It's all very well connected by busses and trains. We spend a lot of time on public transportation, and then walk the rest of the way once we get as close as we can. We spend most of our time in the dense city though.


He asked me about terminology that my mission has -

Terminology... Well new people are called goldens, not greenies. They strive to make it a positive term. Goldens have 'golden power'. That mysterious ability to make miracles happen through hard work and effort, even though they don't have much skill at all. We also have a kind of 'mission geneaology' (I hope I spelled that right). My trainer is my father. His trainer is my grandfather. Other people that my trainer has trained are my brothers. Pre mission life is the pre-mortal life, the MTC is the womb, your first city is your birth city, going home is death. My dad is dying this tranfer and going home, and goldens are considered golden for two transfers, which means that my secondary trainer that finishes my golden training will be called my step-dad. We had a big conference call Saturday where the mission president was able to read off all of the transfers and everyone could listen from their phone. It was cool. My new trainer that will be coming tomorrow is named Elder Stoe. We'll see how that goes. Also, a missionary going home soon that stops working as hard is getting 'trunky'. They have packed their trunks and are cheking out early in their mind. My trainer has been doing well though not getting very trunky.

I hope those were cool things to hear about. :) I don't have a whole lot of time, or things to talk about... A couple investigators of ours have a baptismal date now, and that's very exciting. :) My companion has been doing a lot of getting ready to go home. Taking pictures with the investigators and members. Saying goodbye to people. It's been kinda nice to watch, and to see how much the relationship is there between him and these people.

Have a wonderful week everyone! Keep your Light shining. Find something positive that you are good at, and make it even brighter. On the flip side, find something your struggling with, and go make a plan! Work on it, pray about it. You got this. :) Talk to you next week!

-Elder Michael Miles