April 27, 2015 - Squirrel Bomb

This week we had lunch with Robert (I taught and baptized him in the Braddock YSA ward). He came down to Manassas and took us to a really good pizza place. We got a huge pizza for all of us and it was $30. He has been doing really good. He has done baptisms at the temple 4-5 times already and is almost finished reading the Book of Mormon. He received the Aaronic priesthood and is working on getting the Melchizedek priesthood right now. He also has a calling that has to do with family history work. He is getting married in California on June 20th, but they are going to live in Virginia still. It was great to talk with him again. He wants to take us out one more time before I leave.

Destiny and Sophia have been doing great. We have been teaching them twice a week and they have learned a lot. They went to mutual on Tuesday and played "food fear factor". They met a lot of the youth in the ward and had a great time. They were pretty nervous before hand. When it was their turn during fear factor they both had to eat baby food (haha). That was the first time I had been to a youth activity on my whole mission and it was a bit strange. Since so many people live in their house, we meet new people every time we go over there. This week we met two of their male cousins that are in high school and we gave each of them a Book of Mormon. Both of them are interested in learning more and we hope to start teaching them this week. The first time one of their cousins sat in one of the lessons with us, Destiny and Sophia told him about how fun mutual is and about how much the gospel has changed their lives. It is awesome to hear investigators share their testimonies with other people.

We also taught Chris and Katherine on Monday. They are great investigators, but it has been really hard to stay in contact with them. They have crazy schedules and sleep during the day. We are really focusing on finding new investigators this week because the rest of ours have slowly fallen off.

We had a couple of exchanges this week. On Tuesday, while I was with one of our district leaders, one of the members of our ward came to a lesson with us to teach a less active family. This member is usually a bit difficult, but after the lesson he sincerely complimented us on how "beautiful" the lesson was. On Friday, I went back to the Braddock ward on exchanges with the assistants. While we were in their apartment getting ready for bed some other Elders opened the door to their apartment, threw in a very large plastic Easter egg, and yelled "squirrel bomb". I felt like the whole world was in slow motion as the egg hit the ground and a squirrel flew out and started running around their apartment. We spent the next 10 minutes trying to chase it out the door. It was pretty hilarious. I am just glad it wasn't my apartment (haha).

We had zone conference on Friday as well and it was really good. It was President Riggs last zone conference. We taught the zone about how to qualify for the spirit using a talk by President Eyring titled "Serve with the Spirit". We didn't have a whole lot of time, so it went really fast. Then yesterday we had a regional stake conference. It was broadcast from Salt Lake City to all the stakes in the Northeastern US. Elder Anderson and Elder Hales were the main speakers. I saw Jason and Larry (old investigators that we passed off) at the conference. Jason is getting baptized this Saturday. Larry told me he is getting baptized for sure, but doesn't feel quite ready yet. It was good to see both of them.

Love,

Elder Braden Miles

Washington DC South Mission