WK 7 - A Brief Detour

Hi everyone! Another week down! I'm gonna start out with a spiritual experience: One afternoon Elder Probst and I were playing some bball in my driveway. He set his phone on top of my Mom’s car and she took off in that car without him remembering it. As soon as he realized what had just happened, the search was on, and we retraced the path my Mom had taken but came up with nothing. I tried calling the phone to see if someone had grabbed it (or if it was even still in one piece), but nothing came from that either. 

After returning home and deciding to go check out an area one more time, I offered a quick, broken prayer in Amharic thinking, “Why not? Two Elders? Let’s see if we can use some of that Elderly spiritual power.” No less than a few minutes later I’m getting a call from his phone. Elder Probst’s brother picks up saying he found the phone on their porch. Someone must’ve found the phone and dropped it at their house. Elder Probst and I would be too powerful as a real companionship.

The funny part is Elder Probst and I were joking about those kinds of stories as we were shooting hoops. I learned a valuable lesson from that experience though haha. Never underestimate the power of a prayer of faith.

I actually have some news this time! On Thursday Elder Lyman and I were teaching Wendim Alex (new guy this time, we met him on a train) (but also still our teacher) when I got a bunch of calls all in a row. A few were from my district and one was from my Stake President. It seemed like an omen of good news. Turns out it was, although not the news I was hoping for. Still exciting news though…

As of now, I have been temporarily reassigned to the Ventura, California mission! That area is the lil bump on the coast right above L.A. I’ll be serving there while I wait for my Visa to be processed to go to Ethiopia. Elder Lyman and Elder Kearl from my district will be joining me there. I’ve got one more week of MTC and then on March 8th I’ll be flying to Phoenix and then to Santa Barbara. Stop by before I go! I’d love to see any of you one last time. 

ጤና ይስጥልኝ

May God give you health

Elder Miles

 

The Malachi District as The Office

Facetiming the Elders on P-day

Elder Lyman's homemade movie poster for our upcoming Amharic Moses film.

WK 6 - LP WORLDWIDE

 ሰላም ነው ወንድሞችና እህቶች፦ ዛሬ ስለ ህይወቴን እና ስራዬ ትንሽ መልእክት አለኝ።

This week was really busy...but at the same I feel like not much has happened!

Home MTC itself has been pretty plain lately! The pattern of a few hours of Gospel study and then a few hours of language study, or vice-versa, continues. Despite the monotony I feel like I’m progressing and learning so much spiritually as well as in my language/teaching skills.  And even though 9 weeks feels like forever when mostly stuck inside, I’m grateful for the extra time to learn, prepare (Especially shopping-wise we’ve done a lot of that lately. Woof.), and just enjoy still being at home. Little fun experiences in class, with my comp, and with my district also help keep things interesting. Home MTC has been amazing, but goodness I'm ready to serve and teach in Ethiopia.

My brother suggested I watch a certain BYU devotional talk this week, and it ended being one of the best church talks I've ever heard. If you have the time, please go watch Elder Holland's "Lessons from Liberty Jail" because it is so powerful and so applicable to our lives. I know that God is always aware of our individual circumstances. In our personal "prisons" of life, though God can seem far, he may actually be closer to us than ever. And I know that the Savior Jesus Christ is always there walking beside us.

This story goes out to all my Lone Peakers out there! The other day in class, I was in a bit of a daze when something snapped me back to reality (Elder Miles ft. Eminem). In the corner of my eye, I saw the sister in my district from Uganda leave her chair and I kid you not there was a LONE PEAK LOGO there. I was shocked. I brought it up with my district, and some of them told me they noticed it was a Lone Peak Ballroom jacket. Apparently, she has a sister who had been living in Utah and going to school here, probably at Lone Peak? I’m gonna ask her more about it when I get a chance! But to the knights who read this I have one message:

We’re worldwide.

ጤና ይስጥልኝ

May God give you health

Elder Miles

(P.S. Go Jazz)

Elder Pilling and I went and donated blood on Tuesday and then we hit up Noodles & Co

This is what I imagine Amharic Snapchat would be like

Sweater Squad

I dunno what we're doing in this district photo but Wendim Beyene thought we looked cool doing it

WK 5 - The Miracle at SuperChix

Gung ho everyone! 

Week 5 is in the bag and boy was it busy. Some days I feel like I don’t have enough time to get everything done that I need, but I’ve learned that the Spirit and improvement come on the move! Diligence and work opens those doors for us. Plus it makes the weeks fly by. Speaking of that, I have about 3 weeks of home MTC left. If our training session had not gotten changed to 9 weeks I would’ve been done by now because of some weird scheduling and timing. Crazy.

I still haven’t heard anything about where I’m headed though. No reassignment yet, but also no visa or flight plans to Ethiopia. I guess Church Travel likes to live on the edge and keep us on our toes. Understandably though, especially during these circumstances. More updates on that as they come!

The week was fairly normal so I’ll just give a brief rundown of each day:

Sunday: Super Bowl food. Also shoutout to The Weeknd who performed at halftime and apparently is Ethiopian and speaks fluent Amharic. Maybe I’ll reach out to him and see what I can do...

Monday: I started doing Zoom on a better computer which made classes so much better.

Tuesday: We had our first MTC workshop since the first week and it was awesome! The MTC president and his wife went over the Book of Mormon and the role it plays in our calling! Then that night Nate Wilkes invited Elder Probst and I over for some home-made calzones.

Wednesday: Taught another 45 minute lesson to Wendim Abebe. I’m not sure exactly how it went. It felt better in some aspects and worse in others. Also congrats to Sarah Davis who opened her call that night and was assigned to the Baltic Mission, Russian speaking!

Thursday: Our Internet died and I missed half of class. It ended up being ok though because they barely went over anything.

Friday ties into my spiritual thought for the week! My Mom and I went out for dinner at SuperChix in AF (which is bomb by the way I recommend it) and an older gentleman came up and paid for us because he saw my tags! Anyways after we finished eating we went to go talk to them a bit and this man’s wife shared her conversion story and her testimony of the power of testimonies! She also said this: “When times get tough, never doubt for one second that a miracle is just around the corner.” I loved that and I wanted to share! In our trials, as we strive to do everything we are supposed to and follow the Savior, we should expect nothing less than miracles in our lives! I testify that faith brings power.

This one was a little bit longer sorry!

ጤና ይስጥልኝ

May God give you health

Elder Miles

 

1-The District

2-Hippos waiting for their prey

3-The View Pointe Elders and Bishop Foote!

4-Hippos waiting for their prey pt.2

The District

Hippos waiting for their prey

The View Pointe Elders and Bishop Foote!

Hippos waiting for their prey pt.2

WK 4 - Don't eat the Hyenas

Hello friends and family! Because my 9 week MTC training is more like 8 weeks and two days, I’ve made it to the halfway point! WOOHOO! Time to step it up for part two.

The work is full speed ahead. We did a lot this week. On Tuesday Elder Lyman and I gave a full forty minute lesson in Amharic on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Lemme tell you I did not think that would be possible after such a short period of time yet here we are. Speaking is progressing as usual but I made the realization this week that listening to and understanding Amharic is going to take some major practice and time. Although Elder Lyman and I could teach we couldn’t answer Wendim Abebe’s questions more than just nod, smile, and hope “yes” or “very good” were suitable responses. At one point another day me and another Elder were tasked with answering questions created by the rest of the district and I’ll be honest I was betam tefa (very lost). Brother Osei-Tutu also prepared us this week to give a short lesson in English which was really neat. Learning how to teach the Gospel simply has definitely helped my own understanding!

I’ve been doing a lot of research on Ethiopia lately and I’ve learned a bunch! The church's branches are in Addis Ababa and two resort towns to the south as far as I can tell. Another sweet fact is that apparently Ethiopia is famous for its HYENAS. At night they can be found on the outskirts of mostly all the cities. There’s a town called Harar where they are basically domesticated and people will feed them meat out of their own mouth. THAT’S RAD. I’ll attach a picture. In my obsession with Hyenas this week, I made a sentence about eating them for dinner during grammar practice and my teacher laughed and then said please don’t do that. Let’s just say people would not be happy. It was only a sentence I promise.

Spiritual thought: read Philippians 4:13! It’s so good! We can find confidence in Christ if we are struggling to find confidence in ourselves!

Shoutout to Sister Juber for getting called to Las Vegas! And shoutout to my boy Elder Probst for starting MTC this week! The View Pointe boys are all missionaries now.

ጤና ይስጥልኝ

May God give you health

Elder Miles

THE MALACHI DISTRICT SEASON 2

My companion's photoshop skills

Hyena mouth feeding

Book of Mormon meme

I have no clue how or why I did it backwards