March 26,2011

Hellllooo Family and Friends!  

It´s been a while since I´ve heard from you all. We had transfers today! I´m not very good reminding you when those are so that´s why you didn´t hear from me on Monday. I´m guessing I´ll forget next time so I´ll just tell you now that next transfers are April 24th. All is well though. Actually, all is super well! I´m sitting next to my new companion Elder Vallejo! Way sick kid, and my first comp from Honduras! He brings 19 months of experience to the area of La Campiña, and I think this will be the last stop of his journey. I think this will be a fun change, but I´ve got to make sure we do work son haha. He is the new DL and senior comp but I´ll be in charge of the area for the next couple days because I know it.

Transfers meeting was way fun seeing old comps Stevens, Portillo, and Burgerner. Burgs told me Carlos Juan got baptized last month. He was the guy we taught who had been investigating for 18 years. Elder Portillo has 2 more changes and then my papi is outta here. President and Sister Galvez spoke and told us we weren´t a very "smiley" mission. We need to smile more :) and we´ll be more successful. January was a pretty good month for the mission though Let´s see what else is going on... 

We have a lesson with the Solano family that im excited/nervous for. They´re incredibly hard to meet with so tonight will be important. I´m hoping the dad will have an interest in listening to us. I´ll let you know how that goes next week. This week we had 2 baptism goals set for the 26th. One is a señora named Esmeralda who has major heart and back conditions. She can´t get baptized in cold water or else she´ll have a heart attack. There is one chapel in the country with hot water so I think we´ll go there and do it. I´ll have to be careful with her if I do the baptism haha. Then there is Karla. The eleven year old with the attitude conditon ha! I´ve learned that teaching young kids is not my favorite thing to do in the mission, but you got to what you gotta do. She struggles with respect for her mom(reminds me of a younger someone I knew) and wanted nothing to do with the church. She´s comin´ along though and we´ll be ready in 2 saturdays. In Costa Rica there is a lot of single moms because the dudes just get their girlfriends pregnant and bounce. So that´s why we teach children so often. Well my short time is up. I love you all. Take care 


Pura Vida 

Elder Miller 

Febraury 31, 2011

                 San Jose, Costa Rica Temple
Buenas Dìas Familia y amigos

First off, wow what an amazing blog! Probably the coolest thing I`ve ever seen haha Thanks Mom and Kerstin.

Today is the 28th of so that means I`ve been a missionary for 7 months. Pretty exciting I know. ha Actually in my 7 months I`ve learned that time is not important at all, so I`m not really counting but I did realize it was the 28th today. You can be an effective missionary from day 1 till the trip to the airport if you`re willing to put in the effort.

Anyways this was a quick but very rewarding week for Elder Crellin and I. We started  the week off with a couple investigators that weren`t showing too much promise, but we decided we were going to change that. As of now we are looking at 10-12 people that we are really excited about. We even had 7 of them show up to church. In that 7 was the Solano family, a young single mom named Marcela and a U student named Carlos. I think we were able to have a good Sunday in Church because of the 20 or so phone calls we made at 7 in the morning to everyone. We were determined to get people in the chapel.

On Thursday I had a pretty cool experience. We did a switch around and I went to Los Yoses for the day with Elder Hernandez from Honduras. Los Yoses is a pretty big city area. We had one lesson planned the entire day and the rest was spent on looking for families. Talk about a lot of contacting. I feel like I really improved on my street approach and knocking doors. It was tough but I think Im over my fear of tracting in the big city. We ended up finding 5 nice families.

Saturday the b-day! haha Not exactly the greatest day ever but very much enjoyed. We had every single one of our lessons and back up plans fail us. We covered our entire area walking and It rained for the first time in about 2 months. Needless to say we ended the day with subway where my comp sang to me ha No cake and no package but I was still very content at the end of the day because we worked hard.

Last story. Sunday night we went to follow up on a contact we made earlier in the week. We weren`t expecting much but what we got was more than we could ask for. Meeting Carlos Montenegro was one of the greatest experiences I`ve had in the mish. When we started talking he immediatley broke into tears and told us his whole life story. He told us he has felt alone his whole life. He lives in a house by himself and has no friends or life dreams. He can`t sleep because he is always depressed. He said us coming over was an answer to his prayers. We felt he was an answer to our prayers as well. He was incredibly prepared to hear our message and recieve and read the BOM. We left him with a blessing of comfort and told him to start reading from the front cover. I know his life is about to change dramatically and I`m so grateful that we decided to talk to him.

Now that these things are goin on a blog I have some incentive to make them good haha jk but i can`t promise the`ll all be this long, but I wanrted to share some special stories that we had this week. I love you all and I know the gospel is true. Thanks for everything.

Pura Vida

Elder Miller