January 6, 2014 - New Years

Happy 19th Birthday, Elder Miles

Thanks everyone for the birthday wishes and to everyone who sent me mail! I had a rather normal birthday (haha). It was Fast Sunday, so I didn't get any big meals and then for dinner I had PB&J's and cereal (haha). I’m finally old enough to go on a mission! Yay! I told a member I was 21 and they believed me (haha). For New Years we didn't do anything different except we had to be in an hour early. We watched The Testaments (church movie) with the extra time that we had. Too bad we didn't get to watch other movies. Oh, well.

I got to eat some pretty diverse foods this week! On Tuesday an Ethiopian lady in the ward had us over for lunch and fed us Ethiopian food. It was pretty strange, but actually pretty good. They don't use silverware. Instead you just tear off some weird spongy bread stuff and pick up your food with that. We had some meat of some sort cooked in some stuff... You just scoop it out of the pan that still has the bones and everything still in it. Some of it was really spicy. That was a fun experience and then while I was on an exchange we ate with a Jamaican guy and he made us Jamaican jerk chicken and rice with beans. That was really good and I ate lots!

While I was on exchange with another missionary in my district we helped a guy change a flat tire. I’ve only changed a flat once before (when mine went flat in the school parking lot). That was a helpful experience because this guy had no idea what he was doing (haha). We helped him out and he tried to pay us, but instead we just asked if we could teach him sometime and he said yes! Also, we found some other really cool people to teach. Good stuff always happens on exchanges!

The other night while we were riding out bikes, two dogs were chasing us and barking at us. They were super annoying. One of them charged us from the front and Elder Oyler pretty much ran over it with his bike! It yelped and ran away. It was fine and left us alone after that.

I didn't even think about this before, but George Washington's house (Mount Vernon) is right up the street from our church. We passed it the other day driving to a meeting. I want to go see it, but the other missionaries say it’s like $20 to get in. I think that is where they kidnap the president in the movie, National Treasure.

Elder Miles and the Spirit of Christmas

It has been rather cold her this week, but it has been awesome! It has been in the teens a few times and it is supposed to get down into the single digits tonight (yay!). We have been teaching a man from Ghana and he is getting baptized on February 1st. We taught him several times with his roommate. Turns out his roommate is a less active member who was baptized in another ward several years ago! We have been teaching them a lot and it is really fun. You can never tell how old Ghanaians are though! I thought this guy was like 40. Turns out he is 55! I could feel the spirit really strongly as we taught them about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and about repentance. We do lots of street contacting on the busy road in our area and talk to lots of people waiting for the bus. It is really fun and you never know who you are going to run into.

Things have really started picking up this week and I’m excited for this week!

Love you!

-Elder Miles