Elder Braden Miles, Washington DC South Mission: July 22, 2013

Hello family!

I can’t believe I’ve been here for almost two weeks and its even crazier to think I’ve been gone for almost a month!

A little more about my roomies and my companion: Elder Littledike played soccer and football at South Summit. He is leaving after six weeks with him, which means I’ll have a different trainer for my last six weeks of training. He is great and we are getting to know each other a lot better. He is going to Utah State after he gets back. Elder Johnson (MTC buddy) is still s stud. We get don’t get too long to talk cause we are working all day, but during meals, p day, and at night we get to chill. On the airplane we were talking about how crazy it would be if we got to be roommates and it happened somehow. His companion is Elder Gorton, from San Antonio. He is half Philippine and has been here for 6 months.

We just got back from playing some sports at the stake center. We played some basketball at first, which was way fun. I gotta keep up on my game so I can beat president Riggs (haha). Then we played Gatorball. It’s like handball pretty much, but the missionaries made it up I think.

Elder Johnson and I have been cooking some good food now that we get to go to the store. We’ve made omelets, pasta salad, alfredo, stir fry, fried rice, soup, etc. I need all the energy because the little amount of sleep is rough. We can only drive the van a certain number of miles each month and the elders before us used most of them, so we are on bikes till the end of the month. Yesterday actually felt pretty good because it was cloudy and sprinkling a little, but the three days before that were ridiculously hot! It was like 100 degrees, plus the humidity. Plus we were biking in the middle of the day with church clothes on. That is definitely the hottest and sweatiest I’ve ever been (haha). We eat dinner at members houses pretty much every night, so it’s awesome showing up dripping with sweat.

Elder Miles and Elder Littledike

Things have been picking up lately and we’ve been able to get some investigators. We've had several scheduled appointments with people, but they’ve all fallen through. We have a meeting with a guy from Ghana tonight, so hopefully that will turn out. We’ve run into people with so many different beliefs. I’ve met someone from pretty much every religion. Some of the classic responses from people include: I’m doing fine with the religion I have, I’m not looking to change religion, I’m Muslim, I already believe in Jesus and the bible. I feel like the women that answer are definitely nicer for the most part. We haven’t had too many doors shut in our faces yet. A guy from India we met the other day gave us his Quran to read and we gave him a Book of Mormon in return. It’s also Ramadan right now, so that’s also a big excuse for not wanting to listen to us (haha). That reminds me. Elder Littledike said some missionary he knew did their own Ramen-dan (eating only top ramen for a month) and ended up in the hospital. I thought that was pretty hilarious.

Elder Johnson and I got to go on an exchange together the other day cause we had a new missionary meeting to go to. Afterwards we went contacting together. We would be good companions. We got like four contacts in an hour. Some girl slammed on her brakes and yelled "Are you guys Mormon!?" then she got out and said she really respects us and that she used to go to church with her boyfriend. Turns out she is in Elder Johnsons boundaries, so they got to teach her. That was disappointing because she’s already read the BoM, come to church, and has lots of good questions. She'll probably end up getting baptized.

Elder Miles and Elder Littledike

My favorite experience/miracle happened on Saturday. We only had an hour before we had to be somewhere, so we just went to a random apartment complex to try and find some people. We ended up running into this 17 year old kid getting his mail. We talked to him for a couple minutes and he seemed pretty excited. Then his little brother runs out to greet us. Then his mom leans out and gets all excited and tells us to come in. We go in and it turns out there is a whole family there ready to listen to us. They all came here from Egypt a month ago. They won a visa lottery in order to be able to come live in the U.S. They were Christian and spoke Arabic for the most part. They all knew enough English to understand our lesson (I hope), but the 17 year old can speak English fluently so he had to translate a few times for his mom. Elder Littledike also happened to have a testimony written in Arabic of the BoM and Joseph Smith from another guy he met awhile ago. We had the dad read it out loud to everyone and I think that helped a lot. They want to read the Book of Mormon, so we need to track down an Arabic copy for them. I really felt the spirit and I hope they did too. They said they knew that God had sent us to them, which made me feel pretty good. They said to come back anytime (they don’t have a phone) and teach them more. Hopefully that can turn into something good.