Elder Braden Miles, Washington DC South Mission: December 15, 2014

Mission Conference Lunch

This week was the mission Christmas conference! We were trying to gather performances for over a month. We ended up with plenty of performances to make it a great day. We started out the day in the gym with a talent show. There were about 15 performances in total. Most of them were singing and playing instruments. Several of them were really funny and others were really good.

Some were both! One Elder played the bagpipes, a couple of Sisters did a "missionary rap", and we even did a performance of sorts.

Sister Riggs had the great idea that us, the office elders, and President Riggs needed to do something in the show. She wanted us to sing and dance, but there was no way that was ever going to happen. We agreed to be in the show. Elder Raban came up with the idea that we should do a skit where we are all midgets. I will send a picture so you know what I am talking about. Of course we dragged Sister Riggs into it since it was her idea anyways. She was not super excited about that, but she agreed nonetheless (haha).

"Straight A Missionary" skit

For our midget skit, I was Elder Raban's partner. His arms were the feet and his head was the head. I stood behind him and I was the arms. We went through a morning routine of a "Straight A Missionary". We "exercised", "ate breakfast", "prepared for the day", etc. It was pretty funny and the crowd went wild! My favorite part was stuffing a piece of pie in Elder Raban's face for his "breakfast". I threw the bowl that the pie was in and it hit Elder Smith in the face. That got a good laugh from the missionaries.

Elder Miles' original MTC Group

After the talent show we sang Christmas hymns then moved into the chapel. The Mount Vernon Stake President, Brother Studdert, and President Riggs all spoke to us. Brother Studdert is a two time Stake President, a mission president, and helped write Preach My Gospel. Then we took a whole mission photo and ate lunch. The stake that was hosting us did an amazing job. Like usual we stayed afterwards to clean up the mess. It was a really fun day, but like any meeting that we spend hours preparing, it’s a relief when it’s over.

Recently we have been having a lot of success finding new people to teach! People are coming out of the wood work and asking us to teach them! Yesterday at church a sister in the ward brought a friend that we are going to start teaching. On exchanges this week, the Elder that I was with introduced me to a guy they are passing off to us. He is coming with us to FHE tonight.

Robert is still chuggin' along. He came to church again and we are going to the temple visitor center lights with him and a bunch of other people next week after church. While I was on exchanges this week, we had a lesson with Alexandra. We taught her about prayer and the Holy Ghost to set up the lesson, then we read in 2 Nephi 31 about baptism. When we invited her to be baptized she said yes! She never wanted to read scriptures or be baptized until we started meeting with her. Her whole life people always tried to force her to do those things and she didn't like it. The spirit was strong when we invited her to be baptized and she told us she couldn't say no because of how she felt or else she would be a liar.

Alexandra lives in Guatemala and will only be here for a month, so we are trying to figure out how that is going to work. The sisters in our ward also have two people that are pretty solid about getting baptized, so our ward in general is doing very well right now. Thank you for all the prayers! I'm sure they are a big part of the reason for so many people coming unto Christ right now!