12.28.15

I hope everyone had an Awesome Christmas!

We hit standards again this week! third week in a row, even on a week
where we didn't proselyte for two days. So I learned more about this
whole "standards" and why its like a good thing to achieve even though
its called Standards. Turns out its called Standards Of Excellence. So
its like the top.
So its the standards to be awesome,the best,the top, to achieve
Excellence hahaha. So it is a bigger thing than i thought, and we got
a shout out in the mission email from President this week!

So we hit standards on a super weird week. So we didnt proselyte on
Christmas eve or Christmas, and on top of it we had some crazy stuff
happen.

So Tuesday morning our trio got torn apart and Elder Rodriguez was
transferred up to the cold in Prescott. He is now training a new
missionary. So now it's two fairly new missionaries in an area they've
been in for 2 weeks driving around with no gps and many people to see.
It has been a struggle haha. Then that night we have his old man
talking to us not letting us leave his house and is trying to tell us
there is no way he can stop drinking. And then we get lost trying to
get home so ya we don't show up till 10 and our roommates are all
worried and so the zone leaders are at our house all worried and ya
that was fun. Even though we were only a half hr late it was quite a
big deal apparently.
So then Wednesday night, elder dwigans, one of our roommates, broke
his elbow, when he crashed on his bike. So I drove him to the hospital
and we didnt get back until 1 am. Then on top of that President shows
up as well to our apartment, so that is always a little nerve racking
being around him. Not because he's scary or anything just the fact
that the mission president is in your home, like that's not normal. So
ya that was fun. So if that's not enough at about 3am on Christmas
morning elder dwigans has a reaction to a medicine and can't stop
throwing up. So they wake me up and we give him a blessing. Well he's
still throwing up and we are about to take him back to the hospital at
4am. We call president and he comes over again! So we've now had him
over 3 times since when he told us that elder Rodriguez would be
leaving us. He called a doctor and we got elder dwigans sleeping and
by then it's 6:30. President leaves at about 7, and we are supposed to
have breakfast with a member at 8:30 haha. So we slept for about an hr
more and went and had biscuits and gravy and tamales with the whole
zone. It was actually really good. So this is Christmas Day, we dont
have much to do now haha.we end up going to the institute building and
play pool and ping pong for a bit, but you can only do that for so
long haha. So we went back home and slept pretty much from about 11 to
3:30. I then finally got to open my presents and I got some sweet
stuff. Thank you thank you for everyone that sent me stuff. It was
awesome! One of the presents that I got that we had some fun with was
a huge box of candy I got from my grandma. The reason for this massive
box was to give it away😊 so Christmas Eve we went around to
investigators and members and doorbell ditched a ton of people and
left a bag with candy canes chocolate and Christmas hand towels. It
wasn't this huge special present but it was fun, and I hope that it
made them happy.
Another fun thing I got was some snow in a can from my other grandma
haha. So we did have a white Christmas. We made a little house scene
thing  haha it was fun. And we made this little video of us doing it
haha. I felt like a little kid but we didn't have much to do Christmas
Eve night after we ran out of candy to pass out. Wow I'm skipping all
over the place. And thank you for everyone that wrote me for the 12
days of Christmas thing. It was so special to hear from all of you
guys. I love you guys so much.
But ya back to Christmas best part of the day was obviously was when I
got to call home 😊 it was awesome seeing the family and talking to
them. It's weird how much has changed in my life, and how"normal"
things are still at home haha. It was the best, but It was so hard to
say goodbye 😣 but hey 5 months I get to do it again yay. It's been
officially 5 months tomorrow so I can wait another 5 to talk to them
again haha.

Always gotta do my food section haha😋
Christmas Eve dinner we had it with this super nice cute old lady from
DF Mexico. She made us tamales beans rice.... And a huge bowl of
menudo. For those of you that don't know what menudo is a dish with
tripe, or in normal mans terms cow stomach 😅 I have had it before and
actually liked it, but this stuff was interesting. It was in huge
I mean HUGE chunks, and she didn't cook it enough so normally it's
pretty chewy but this was the chewiest thing I have ever put in my
mouth. It wasn't bad the flavor was actually pretty good, in was in a
lemon onion squash caldo( soup) but it was just soo chewy that I ended
up just swallowing the pieces whole haha. So ya pretty fun. Sadly
that's been the weirdest thing I've eaten so far, but I have already
eaten that prior to the mission. I'm still seeking for something down
here haha. Oooh I did eat and start a Chile eating challenge. So one
of our investigators has a bush in her backyard that grows these
little little chiles, and she has no idea what they are. So I ate one
and o my gosh. The hottest thing I have ever eaten in my whole life. I
started sweating and my nose was running and I was crying. Oh my gosh.
So of course I asked for some more haha and now we are seeing who will
take the challenge so far I've gotten 3 others to die with me in the
flames of this tiny nameless chile😂

So ya this has been a interesting week to say the least.
Love you guys all sooooo much. I really wish I could have called you all
Thank you for all the love and support you guys have given me.
2016 here we come!
Hope u all have some good resolutions 😋
Elder Miller

Pictures 12.28.15

1.) elder Nicholson my first district leader. love that dude. Hes the one that is from South Carolina, but went to Herriman his sr yr.

2.) Nikki's baptism  

3.) Lizet and Juan Carlos Baptism- First baptism in Solano right before Elder Rodriguez left

4.)Mesa Temple -Middle Elder Cespedes Right Elder Rodriguez

5.) Mesa cespedes-Elder Dawson, Our roomate

6.) Mesa- Elder Rodriguez

7.) Elder Bryan- I love this dude. Hes my new district leader and he is the other elder in the ward. He is an awesome dude.

8.)Middle elder Dwiggens (The one that broke his elbow) and elder Dawson

9.) Valdomeros Baptism

Video 12.25.15

Christmas pictures 12.26.15

Photos 12.24.15

12.21.15

Merry Christmas everyone!!😄

So I had another awesome week. To start off we hit standards again! So
hitting standards isn't huge, because it's called standards, but it's
not just something easy you get by waking up and walking around ya
know. The hardest for us right now is finding new investigators. On
Tuesday we came across this guy who was setting up some pretty cool
lights in his front yard. Started talking to us and he invited us in.
He seems pretty open and had a lot of questions. So there's 1 new
investigator!. Then I was going through the ward list a saw that there
was a 9 ur old that wasn't baptized. We stopped in wed and his mom
said that she wanted us to teach him so his baptism meant more to him.
So that's what we're going to do! 2 boom we hit standards. We are
going to see how many times we can do it in a row. 😁
Everyday I can count on something awesome from my 12 days of Christmas
letters. Everyday I get different letters from you guys and it's the
best. Thank you for all your letters and love and support, but
especially thank you mom for setting it all up for me😊 and the tree
is looking pretty good haha. So with that plus grandmas treats from my
other 12 days things it's been Christmas everyday! And I keep getting
different packages and I'm super excited to open them. The only thing
is I don't know who their from? But Thank you! Haha it definitely felt
more like Christmas this week with the presents and tree, but
especially with the spirit that I've been able to feel throughout this
week. We had lots of different lessons and neat experiences with all
kinds of people at the beginning of the week, and the weekend just
made it perfect.
We had our Christmas conference on Friday and it was incredible. So we
split the mission between three different days, but my group was
Friday. Anyway we all met up and rode a bus together, about 70
missionaries, to the Mesa temple! We got there at about 10 and got to
tour their newly reopened visitors center. It's awesome. They have all
these really neat new displays/exhibits. It was really cool. Then we
watched a movie of Christ's birth.  I think I forget most years that
Christ was born pretty much in a cave. Like you think of a nice little
stable or something, but this video shows this dirty cave and it
reminded me truly how humbly he came into this world. That our King
and Savior was born in a gross little cave. It then went on and showed
parts of his life and was through narration of the apostle Paul. It
was cool. After the video we went out side and president talked to all
of us and bore his testimony of the atonement. It was awesome. He is
such a spiritual man, and every time he talks to us he puts things
ways that just are perfect. We then all went and did an endowment
session. Wow. It was so cool to see that many of us in the temple all
together with our president and his wife. I also felt the spirit so
strong, and received so much love and comfort from Heavenly Father.
The temple is such a powerful place. If you are ever down, need the
spirit, have questions, the temple is the place to go. I know that
it's the Lords house and the spirit will always be there. I love the
temple so much.
After, we went to an awesome buffet. It was funny because we pretty
much took the whole restaurant hahaha. After dinner we went back to
the temple and got to walk around the lights. They were really pretty.
It's was weird with having seen the salt lake lights, like I wouldn't
say they were worse or better, just different, and both really pretty.
They had  some a awesome displays and the last one was the manger with
president monson voice reading from Luke. It was a fun night, kinda a
big break time to hang with other friends, and feel the spirit really
strong. It was a pretty awesome day.

So if that's not enough for this week, Saturday at about 11:00 we get
a phone call. It's our mission president, and he says he'll be there
in 2 min! We were all freaking out trying to clean, and figure out why
he would be coming, and it was crazy. He arrives, and has us sit down.
He starts off with how sometimes there has to be emergency transfers
and that when that happens one companion ship has to get split up and
they didn't do anything wrong. Well turns out that elder Rodriguez is
getting transferred 😢 I'm actually really sad. He's a super nice guy,
he's the one that knows the area and the ward, and he's been the one
taking us around haha. So then on top of him just leaving in the
middle of the transfer he's going up north in the snow and he has no
warm clothes, so president gave us permission to go get him a coat and
stuff. So we're just at the mall on a non pday haha it was weird. Then
we spent that night/Sunday visiting members for him to say goodbye. So
he leaves tomorrow morning. I really am sad though because he's a
super nice guy, and we've had some fun.
After getting him all ready to go, I was able to go back to Monte
Vista for valdomeros baptism!! He's the 9 year old boy that we were
working with that I put on date a few weeks before I left. It was
awesome to see such a young boy mature while learning about this and
see he choose to do this. He was nervous every but kept saying how
excited he was. It was super fun to see elder wells again and a lot of
the members including Nikki! It was fun. I love being out here, and
the feelings at baptisms are the best.
Sunday, it being the Sunday before Christmas, we sang in a little
choir for the sacrament meeting, as well as later that night in a
stake fireside. It was a very well done program and there were a bunch
of different musical #s all celebrating our savior.

A lot of you have told me how I am lucky to be out here especially at
this time of Christmas, and you are all so right! It has been an
incredible Christmas season full of the spirit and remembering our
savior. In just this short time my testimony of my savior has grown so
much. I am so grateful for Him and the atonement. The feeling of being
able to be forgiven from our mistakes is indescribable. And then the
strength and comfort he gives because of His perfect love is
incredible. I love Him and will always be thankful for him.

I love this scripture. As a mission we read it every morning since
I've been on the mission. It's Alma 7:10-12

10 And behold, he shall be born of Mary, at Jerusalem which is the
land of our forefathers, she being a virgin, a precious and chosen
vessel, who shall be overshadowed and conceive by the power of the
Holy Ghost, and bring forth a son, yea, even the Son of God.
11  And he shall go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and
temptations of every kind;and this that the word might be fulfilled
which saith he will take upon him the pains and the sicknesses of his
people.
12 And he will take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of
death which bind his people; and he will take upon him their
infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to
the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his
people according to their infirmities.

Love you guys soo much
Merry Christmas everyone 😄🤗😜😊🎄🎄
Elder Miller

Address Update 12.14.15

This is an update to my previous email regarding the new address of the Arizona Phoenix Mission Office.  After several discussions with the post office, we discovered that we cannot have the new address approved and set up in their system until we have a permanent mailbox installed.  This is to be handled by the architect of the new building, and will not be done for a few weeks.  So we are forced to have you send all packages (letters seem to get to us OK, so they can be sent to the new address) to the old address of 18001 N 79th Ave., Glendale, AZ 85308 for the next month or so, and the post office will then forward it to us.  We will keep you informed as to when the mailbox is installed.

12.14.15 Pictures