9-3-12

Hello everyone. :) Not a whole lot of time, as always. Thought I'd share some stuff about my new area though.

I am now serving in the Köthen area. After speaking with some natives, I finally got a difinitive answer on how to pronounce that ö:

The ö sounds a little more like the oo in the moo of how a french cow would sound. :P You make a soft 'eh' sound, and then shape your mouth into an o, which forms it into the ö sound. :)

I hope that helps. :)

This is a town and not the large city I had been growing accustomed to. It is wonderful to see the horizon again, and not be surrounded by tall buildings all the time. Things are a lot quieter feeling. It makes it harder to find people because a lot of people have already been approached, and there aren't a whole lot of people out on the street like the was in Spandau, but I am excited for the work. :)

This was also apparently a frequent haunt, and I think possibly the childhood home of, Johann Sebastian Bach. Found a cool little bust statue. Probably gonna send the picture next week or so. :)

We also work in a couple of the surrounding towns, such as Dessau, Wulfen, and various other little bity highway towns.

My companion's name is Elder Tolbert. Very cool, nice guy, who grew up on a farm in Delta, Utah. We are getting along quite well. We are making wonderful goals for this transfer, and are both ready to work.
I have liked it a lot here so far, and am looking forward to a very good transfer here. :)

Spiritual thought for this week comes from some scripture reading I was doing on the train here from Spandau. I was reading in Third Nephi, and stumbled across 3 Nephi 17:4

4 But now I go unto the Father, and also to show myself unto the lost tribes of Israel, for they are not lost unto the Father, for he knoweth whither he hath taken them.

I actually was not really nervous or afraid of the upcoming transfer at the time, but right as I read this scripture, the Spirit came over me very powerfully testifying to me that 'I am not lost unto the Father, for He knoweth whither he doth take me.' It was a wonderful experience. I felt God's love for me, and a powerful testimony of how closely and lovingly our Heavenly Father looks after His children.

I can make the exact same promise to each of you.

'You are not lost unto the Father, for He knowether whither he doth take you.'

Trust in Him, and strive to get the good out the situations you have.
Improve bad situations and mindsets.

Fear not. Got knows where you are. You are not forgotten. He is not busy worring about something else. You are in His care, as far as you let Him take care of you.

I challenge you all to try to keep your faith and belief more active in your life. Try to find one more opportunity to pray each day. Find some daily thing that could use a prayer to go along with it, or that could act as a reminder to pray. You will see blessings from it. As a certified and called servant of the Lord, I can, with authority, promise that to you, in the name of Christ.

Have a wonderful week everyone. Love you all. Keep close to Christ. :)

- Elder Michael Miles

8-27-12

Hey everyone! I have been transfered!

It is so very strange because every (male) missionary has about 16-ish transfers in the field. That is always how mission time is measured
here: how many transfers you have had, and how many you have left. You will often hear conversations like so: 'How old are you?' '15 transfers.' 'Oh man! Dead man walking!' Etc.

I have already had 3 transfers! Plus the MTC, but the 16 doesn't count that. I also will be hitting the six month mark on September 14th!
Crazy crazy.

I have officially recieved a transfer to my second area! I will be leaving early tomorrow for a town called Köthen. Imagine a frenchman pronouncing a word like 'bleur' and you may have come close with the eu in the middle to how an ö sounds. So the best I could write it as far as pronunciation is Keuten. Or possibly Keut'n. Some also pronounce it with more of an oo sound. So maybe something like kooten or koot'n So excited to go! Gonna go learn a new area and a new companion.

Anyway, today I thought I'd relay a really cool discussion that our Mission President's wife gave this last zone conference. It is about Psalm 23

 1 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

 2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

 3 He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

 4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

 5 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies:
thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

 6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life:
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

Now as we had explained to us some background on how Shepherds work, and how sheep are, many of these verses take on much deeper meaning.
Let's take a look.

1 - 'I shall not want.' Rather simple. A shepherd leads his sheep and takes care of them in every sense. They are not left wanting everything. Christ leads us. As we truly follow him and do what we should, we will truly have everything we need.

2 - Interesting point about sheep, they literally will not lay down until they feel entirely safe. If they feel in danger at all, they will not lay down. Also, sheep can't swim. Their thick wool soaks up water like crazy, and if there is any current at all preventing them from being able to walk along the bottom, they will drown. - Christ will protect us.

3 - Christ takes care of us. When we are hurting, he will always nurse us back to health. Shepherds pretty much live with their sheep. When one is sick, he will carry it when needed, he will tend it carefully until it is nursed back to health.

4 - Firstly, sheep trust their shepherd. They are very, very hard to herd, and if they don't trust their leader entirely, they will not do anything that scares them in the least. But as they trust him, they feel safe. We must trust in Christ, and trust in Him as he leads us through our own valleys of death. He will keep us safe. Secondly, when a sheep runs away and was being a problem, a real shepherd will break it's leg. No questions asked. He then carries the sheep back to the fold and nurses it tenderly back to health. Sometimes Christ hurts us in order to help us continue in the long run. Trust Him. It may hurt, but He always knows what He is doing, and when you are in pain, He is always there to help it heal right, as long as you will -let- Him help you. :)

5. A shepherd prepares a special coctail of different spices and chemicals to annoint the heads of his sheep. This repels bugs and thereby helps to protect against all of the problems that come from the many diseases and bugbites that come from that.

6 - Here we see the blessings. Read it carefully. Apply it to you.
Think about what that really means with an eternal perspective. :) Wonderful isn't it. :)

I hope you guys all have a wonderous week. :) I wish you all the best, and challenge you all to go follow Christ, and go -make- it the best.
:)

- Elder Michael Miles

8-20-12

1. Classic German sidewalk. Cobblestone, lots of trees, sometimes on both sides, appartment buildings, and the little red section is the bike path. Those are everywhere.

2. Went to the palace place again. There was a cool angel statue, and I put the sun behind it. :)

3. Cool statue in the graveyard.

4. Look what I found to dip my dinosaur chicken nuggets in! XD

5. Acorns!

6. Rain!

That is all for now. :) Love you guys! Have an awesome week!

- Elder Michael Miles

8-13-12

Hello everyone. :) I hope you are all doing well, and that you are all staying close to the Light. :)

I was thinking I might be able to tell you a few fun little stories of little things that have happened to me in the last week that you may find interesting. :)

An older man sitting on an electric wheelchair (there are lots of those here) by a bench the other day stopped us and after confirming who we were, told us he was a Jehovah's Witness. We nodded carefully, waiting for him to start arguing with us, because people of that religion are known to do so. He asked 'The Bible says that we are all brothers right?' We agreed, and he seemed satisfied. That was pretty much it. He was rather pleasant about it. We gave him our card, and walked away. It was nice. In that moment he was just another Christian briefly talking with us about nice Christian beliefs. :)

We have been able to get into contact with a handful of people who were formerly meeting with the missionaries, but who got out of contact at some point. Some of them seem rather interested. We are excited for them. :) Wonderful to see how the Lord works. :)

Elder Williams (who is part of the other companionship in our district) and I were walking down the road just after having had district meeting. We were now on exchanges, and were doing a little finding in my area, before we left for his area to do the work for the day. We saw a guy looking a little exasperated looking at four large bags of stuff and a bike. He seemed to be trying to figure out how to carry it all while riding the bike. We asked if  he needed help. He did. We gave a card to his friend, who seemed rather interested, and then his friend had to go, and we proceeded to help him carry his stuff for a good thirty minutes or so to his appartment. The whole way we were talking about the Gospel. He seemed to have been raised Lutheran, but had very little religeous knowledge. For example, I asked him what he believed about Christ, and he told me that he knew of Christ, and that some people had killed him. He then proceeded to ask me questions like, why they had killed him, why he had a crown of thorns, what the resurection was about, and other various things. He seemed to have a blief in a God and a Christ that he knew very little about. Seems to have inherited the faith, so to say, from his mother. Very cool kid. We answered all the questions we could in the time we had, and finally got him and his stuff to his place. Plan to be meeting with him soon to have some more formal lessons. :) (His name is Celvin.)

Those are all I can think of right now. I hope they will suffice. :)

As for a spiritual thought, I would like to draw your attention back to a story that I think is rather common, at least in some parts of the church.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego

Now these wonderful role-models come from the book of Daniel in the Old Testament, chapter 3. The story goes that the king, Nebuchadnezzar, had errected a golden tower, and concocted some gods to go along with it. Every time that loud music was played throughout the city, everyone was required, by law, to stop what they were doing, and bow down and worship this tower. Now of course our righteous, upstanding three brothers here would not do such a thing. They were loyal to God.

So of course the king was very angry. He had decreed that all who would not worship his tower would be thrown into a fiery furnace. He brought the three to him by force and demanded of them why they would not serve his statue, threatening them with the aforementioned furnace. They boldly told him that they were not going to worship his gods, and that they had full faith in their God. The king was so infuriated by this statement, that he caused the furnace to be intensified to seven times the original heat level. The king then commanded some of his soldiers to take the men and cast these three rebels into the flames. The flames were so hot, that those who delivered the three were consumed by the heat as they carried out their order.

Let's stop and think here. We have seen how wonderful the works of our Lord are. As we read through the Old Testament, we have seen him rain fire from the sky, turn rivers from their course, move mountains, and countless other marvelous miracles. We know he has the power to change this situation. He could strike the king, he could put out the fire, he could do any number of things to change this situation so that they would not need to be thrown into the fire. But he does not. The story goes on, and the three are thrown in. And then is when the miracle happens. They are preserved. Not a hair on their head, or a thread of their clothes is even singed, or, as noted in verse 27, 'nor the smell of fire had passed on them'. They didn't even smell like smoke! And then my personally favorite part, verses 24 and 25:

 24 Then Nebuchadnezzar the king was astonied, and rose up in haste, and spake, and said unto his counsellors, Did not we cast three men bound into the midst of the fire? They answered and said unto the king, True, O king.

 25 He answered and said, Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God.

Christ was standing with them.

Now here is the moral I would like to share with you: God does not put out the fires very often. He is much more likely to strengthen us, and send us help that we may endure it. Trials come. Hard times are a necessary part of growing. God loves us enough to leave the hardships there, that we may progress. We all want to progress. And we always have help. We always have someone at our side. That is Christ. Have no fear. Christ is there. Do not fear the flames. Do what you can. Stay true to your faith. God will not fail you. All things 'shall give thee experience and shall be for thy good' - D&C 122:7.

Have a wonderful week everyone. :) I love you all. Keep close to Christ. He will take care of you. :)

- Elder Miles

8-6-12

Alright everyone, crazy quick post today.

Question from uncle, do many Germans try to immitate English?:
Many Germans here actually speak some broken English. It is a very good language to have in this area, because it is pretty much the language you need to speak with tourists and other European countries. The kids are required to learn some all through school. Many of them don't retain much though. :P In any case, there are a surprising amount of members in our ward and people on the street that speak and understand very fluent English.

Another from uncle, how many appointments do you teach?:
We are teaching one or two lessons (as opposed to discussions) a day on a slow day, and more like four on a more packed day. Sometimes as many as five. These last couple of weeks were a bit slow, but things are picking back up again this week. I love having appointments to go to. I am actually doing my share of the teaching. I was doing a good chunk by about four or five weeks in I think. I just got blessed having had some German before I came.

Found an awesome scripture this week. Romans 13:8-10. Love is the key. If you truly, purely, try to love, everything else will fall into place. I can feel that it is true. I challenge you all to see where you can exercize more love.

Keep Christ close. He is the BEST example of love.

Have an awesome week everyone! Love ya!

- Elder Michael Miles

7-30-12

Hello everyone! Hope you are all doing well. :) Pressed for time, but here is a post! (madly copy-pasting from other emails) ;)

This week was alright. A bit rough. Some appointments fell out, which is always hard. We plan out a block of our time, and then take the effort to get all the way out there, only to have the person not show up, or not be home. We then resorted to finding. Walking the streets talking to people and looking up old contacts so we can go knock on their door and ask if they still have interest. Had a small handful of people tell us to come back another day, which was very cool, and we got a new investigator out of it too. He has been meeting with the missionaries for quite a while on and off. He likes his church, and thinks that our Church is very nice and cool, but doesn't seem to have any real motivation to change, or any perspective on whether our Church is the right one. We hope to be able to change that. ;)

It is always nice to have the time in the day all planned out with appointments. You just go from one place to another getting things done. Having blank time is hard. Talking to people on the street is a physical strain as you walk around for however long, and try your best to present this glorious message to people that mostly do not have time to talk, or interest in talking about religion. But sacrifice brings forth the blessings of Heaven, and finding on the street does work. We have to bring these people the Gospel in whatever way we can. :)

Good scripture: Alma 37:36-37. Go look it up and read it before you continue to the next paragraph. :) (If your scriptures aren't nearby, lds.org has online scriptures. ;) )

...

The part about watching over your sleep is amazingly touching for me, because I always have such a hard time sleeping, and almost always wake up with a mild form of dispair creeping in my heart. Feeling like life is unhappy and being kinda sad. I don't know what causes it. Normally I am not that negative. I don't go to bed that negative. :P But I truly have experienced Christ's protection. When I really focus on Christ and fill myself with Light before I go to sleep, and imediately think about Christ and the Light when I wake up, I feel so much better. I feel so much better rested, so much happier. I feel Christ's care around me, and know that He really has watched over me while I slept. When I really dedicate myself to it, I see wonderful, merciful results. :)

This scripture is also very straightforward and informative. I have it written on a little thing on my desk so that I see it often and think about it's council. I hope you can benefit from it as well. :)

Have a wonderful week everyone! I wish you all the best, and challenge you to bring down the blessings of Heaven through your faith and obedience. :)

- Elder Miles

07/23/2012

I don't have much time, but I still plan to get a bit of a post out!

Hello everyone! :) Hope you are doing well, and are happy and at peace. :)

Public service announcement! I have accidentally falsified the pronunciation information I gave you last week about the word 'doch'. In German, the ch sound on the end of the syllable either makes the softer sound without the phlegmy, gargly sound, or the deeper, rougher sound with the phlegmy, gargly sound. (kinda like trying to clear your throat very softly without roughing it up, verses doing it more rough and making that gargly sound) This all depends on the vowel sound preceeding it. I knew that the open 'oh' sound in 'doch' meant that it should be the deeper, rougher, gargly sound on the 'ch', but I forgot in that moment. I realized my mistake a few minutes after leaving from doing emails, and am now here to rectify the mistake. :) The 'do' makes a normal 'doh' sound, and the 'ch' makes the gargly, rough clearing your throat sound, all coming together as one syllable. 'doch'

My mother had realized a strange thing happening with my spelling: So, in German: the z, when at the beginning of a syllable, makes a 'ts' sound, like in the word pizza. 'pee-tsuh'. Anywhere else in the syllable, it makes an 's' sound. X/ The 's' in German normally makes a 'z' sound. This, I have no doubt, may be affecting my spelling. Funny. Gonna have to re-learn English a little when I come home. :P

Mom asked if we switch wards each week like the Elders in her area: We actually attend the same ward every week. In Germany we are called to serve in areas defined by ward boundaries, so we only have the one ward in our area. :) (I am not sure how it works with branches and districts when there aren't enough members. Those exist here in Germany, but I have not learned about them yet.)

Mom asked my favorite food this week: Bakery stuff. There is a wonderful treat here of a rather wide and flat and kinda dry pastry which is round, has crubles on top, and simple white frosting drissled on it. Very tasty. I have been buying it too much. :P Though I did finally get myself to stop buying candy to stash in my appartment. :P

I am now reading Articles of Faith, and was very fascinated by the take it gives on following the laws of the land. I loved the explination it gave and how clearly it seemed to define and explain how it ties in with LDS beliefs. It made a lot of sense, and affected the way I think. I would recommend it. :)

Short spiritual thought from my Grandma's email:

"When our belief is confirmed upon our souls by the Spirit of God, faith becomes a causative force in our lives, driving every thought, word and deeded heavenward. We pray for strength and guidance with trust -- just as they did. That's what it means to walk with 'faith in every footstep.' It was so for our pioneer ancestors, and it must be so for us today."

I challenge you all to work a little bit more to improve your faith. As it permeates your soul, you will see wonderful glorious differences and good changes in your levels of Light, kindness, and other Christ-like attributes. You will love it. You will come closer to Christ, His Peace, and His Love. I promise that in His name. :)

Have a wonderful week everyone! Thanks for all your letters! I love them! Talk to you next week!

- Elder Miles