August 4, 2014 - Nationals Game

At the Washington Nationals game

I failed to mention in my email last week that we were going to a Nationals baseball game this week. We went to the game on Saturday night at 7. They played the Phillies and it was exciting at first, but it got pretty boring towards the end (Nationals won 11-0). We sat in the nose bleeds again this year with the DC North mission. We got the closest (if you can call them close) of any missionaries. We sat on the same row as President and his family, the office Elders (our roommates), and our Zone Leaders (Elder Johnson and Elder Hansen). Elder Johnson and I sat next to each other last year at the game, too. We both talked about how it’s crazy that it has been a year since the last game. 

Elder Miles with Elder Johnson

This year we did a Book of Mormon Blitz at the game. Everyone took a Book of Mormon and had to give it to someone at some point during the night. I got rejected 5 times before I finally gave it to a lady working a hot dog stand outside the stadium. She actually had a book about Jesus with her too. It was really fun to see random people walking around with a Book of Mormon or talking with missionaries on the Metro. We got home at around 12:30 am and most people were talking about how late it was. For us we actually got to bed sooner than usual (haha).

I can’t remember if I mentioned this last week, but we are assigned to the singles ward in the area. We cover 3 stakes in total and about half the mission geographically. One of the stakes is outside the mission boundaries, but we still get to proselyte there because it is part of the ward. I had never been to a singles ward before, so that was a new experience last Sunday at church. It was a little odd. It also makes it harder to find people to teach on our own. The best place to go to find new investigators is at George Mason University campus during the day. We have to work through the ward members a lot because they know plenty of young single adults. 

Yesterday we actually started teaching a less active member

Elder Miles and Elder Ni

and his girlfriend. She had been taught by missionaries on Skype awhile ago and has been to church a lot. She said that she lied to the sister missionaries about praying to receive an answer. She was scared that she would get an answer and have to act on it. She brought out all her concerns and from what I see she is ready to get baptized. Her biggest concern is that her parents don't support her in doing it. Hopefully we can commit her to baptism this week when we teach her. It will be a lot different working in the singles ward from what I’m used to.

There are a lot of responsibilities that I have with my new assignment. Each transfer we are expected to go on exchanges with each companionship of Zone Leaders at least once. Each transfer there is always one of two things: Either President has interviews with everyone in the mission or zone conferences and it rotates every transfer. This transfer happens to be zone conferences, which means we also have ten of those to go to and train missionaries. We also go to any other meeting in the mission and write up the agenda for it. This week we had 4 meetings: Zone Conference Tuesday, Mission Leadership Council Wednesday, New Missionary Expectations on Thursday, and a half Mission Conference on Friday. Depending on how much stuff we have going on that week, we usually end up working in the office after proselyting every night. Last week the normal day was to wake up at 6:30, go to a meeting all morning and afternoon, proselyte from 6-9, and do office work until like 1 or 2 am. Thankfully, it is going to be a lot slower this week than the last two weeks. We also help President with any other needs of the mission. We work with him on deciding transfer and leadership assignments. We give our input and he has the final word. There are other tedious things to do to. We also get to run errands for President. For example, last week we had to go and jump Sister Riggs’ car (haha).

Friday for the half mission conference the topic was about consecration. Elder D Todd Christofferson said this about consecration: "To consecrate is to set apart or dedicate something as sacred, devoted to holy purposes. True success in this life comes in consecrating our lives—that is, our time and choices—to God’s purposes. In so doing, we permit him to raise us to our highest destiny."

We talked about truly consecrating ourselves to the work in order to be successful as missionaries and to become what God wants us to become. We used the story about the Title of Liberty and made it into "The Pledge of Consecration". We made a sweet video of President rending his suit coat and making a flag. One of the Office Elders is pro at video editing, so it looked awesome. I wish I could let you see it somehow. Here is what the pledge said "To show gratitude for the Atonement, for our families, and for our happiness: we pledge to remember our covenants, fulfill our purpose and perform our duty." The conference went really well and from what I’ve heard the missionaries loved it.

I have been working a lot lately on always seeking to do Gods will and not my own. I know from experience that God knows more than us and when we listen to him we will be successful and happy.

Love, 

Elder Miles