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