Week two in Chile!

Wow! I can´t believe i have already been a Chile Viña del Mar missionary for 2 weeks! So crazy! I guess time just flies by when you are having fun, working hard, and being focused right? I absolutely love it here! Chile is So different from good ole O town utah but it is so awesome! I feel humbled right now to have this great opportunity to serve and be a missionary. I also have no choice but to be humbled with how fast chileans speak spanish and how many ´´modismos´´ they have. haha. But serisouly i love being out here and bringing the one thing that can give people true happiness and hope... the Gospel. Elder Mace and i are working super hard and are going all out! I never thought that walking could make me tired but after walking super fast all day, i sleep so well! haha.We are finding, we are teaching and we are being obedient and working hard. Success is a gift from the lord and as long as we keep working hard, and working smart, follow the spirit, be obedient, and be humble, the lord will give us success. He is a great trainer and has taught me so much already... i still totally have to rely on him for so much... especially the language haha. Elder Mace has so much great advice that i have basically soaked up because he is a great missionary and i know i can learn so much from him, as i already have. So Elder Mace and i have 3 investigators with ´´fechas´´ or baptismal dates! their names are Marcos, Yeovanni, and Danisa. So if its alright, i would love it if you all could pray for them. Our zone is rocking!!! as a whole zone, which is one of the smallest in the mission, has 36 investigators with Fechas!! Hoorah! i´m pretty sure that is a new record! So the north of Chile viña del mar is rocking with fechas and our goal is that 16 people are baptized in the month of Sept. So awesome! So here in chile, its not the regular knocking door contacts... there is a special way that you get the peoples attention in the house. most of them do not have door bells and there is usually a gate around the house with spikes on the top. so in order to get the people out to find ´´ futuros´,and do a contact, we say...¨¨ALO¨. haha. Every day for luch, we have the great privilege of eating with the members! some days great, other days not so great! but the grand majority is so good! i love the Chilean food. The members give us SO much to eat, and often times i even have a hard time finishing it. The food is so good though! Often times, we eat at houses that lets just say, are not the cleanest or nicest houses in the world. But the members are so nice to give us food! so basically here in chile, people don´t really eat breakfast or dinner so our whole day is sustained on lunch. I love the food though... the bread is amazing and they have Panerias on basically every corner that sells fresh bread. So lets just say, in general, i am in love with chilean food. Well i love you all and pray for you! I absolutely love my mission! it is Super hard but the reward is what makes it worth it. bringing salvation to the souls and giving them something that we are all so blessed to have! Farewelll until next week ha. Elder Millard

First e-mail from chile!

WOW! I am finally here in Chile! I really cannot believe it, it does not even seem real right now! haha. It is SO different from good ole Happy Valley Utah haha. and it is absolutely not what i expected, but i love it! So, lets start out with the flight to chile... i never thought there could be a longer flight haha it was good though because i got to read a little bit, catch up on my journal, and just try and contemplate that i am actually on my mission right now and going to the place where i will be spending the next two years of my life! So exciting. So after a long night, we were still in the air, but as we were flying over chile, the sunrise started to form... all i can say is wow! that sunrise was absolutely stunning! it was creeping up over the Andes mountains and it was vivid blue on the bottom and vivid orange red pinkish as it got progressively higher. So beautiful!. as we were landing in the Santiago airport, i looked out of the plane, and i thought to myself.. Here i am!!! Ready to go!!! we walked out of the plane and started walking to go pick up our luggage. we talked to as many chileans as we could on our way there... so we said ¨Hola¨.. their response sounded like this... apwoefjsldknva haha i could not believe how fast they spoke! me and elder roach just laughed. We eventually got our luggage and met President Gillespie. What a great guy! He will be an awesome mission president.. we took some pictures and headed off to viña. it was about a 2 hour drive. i just looked out of the winow of the car and could not believe that i am in chile. from santiago to viña, it got progressively more beautiful... vinyards on the hills, beautiful scenery... We got to viña and stopped at a lookout point. we all got out to take pictures. The view of viña and valparaiso was absolutely amazing!! wow this place is so cool. president Gillespie then gave us a little speech about how there are thousands of people out there ready to hear the gospel. we need to find them and give thm the joy that we have and the knowlege that we have so they can have the joy that they are looking for. Great thought... Obviously it was better than i am describing it right now haha. We then got back to the car and drove down into the city of viña to go take pictures at the flower clock. This place is so different but so awesome! we took some pictures and then they told us that they were going to split us up into groups of 4 and give us the address of the mission home. we all had to split up into these groups of 4 and find the mision home on our own in this city that we just barely drove into. haha. thats where spanish comes in handy... we asked the natives where to go and eventually we found it. it was a cool experience! At the mission home, we had a little meeting where we got to know everyone and then went into another room for orientation... where we learn all of the essential of what we need to know to be a missionary. after that was done, it was food time!!! we ate some amazing Empanadas. if i eat like that for the next two years, i will be a happy fat man/elder. haha. After diner, we went out to go meet our trainers. our trainers walked in singing the mission song. ¨viña del señor¨. they then told us to go find out who our companions were so we had to go pick someone, get to know them is spanish, then ask them if they were our trainers.... eventually, i asked all of them and none of them were my trainers. that meant that i have a nice 6 hour ride up north to meet my trainer in Coquimbo chile. So i packed my stuff along with 2 other elders and we head off for coquimbo. When we got there, we were met by our trainers! i soon realized that my trainer is Elder Mace from England. He is so awesome!!! He has been on his mission for 10 months and has been in coquimbo for about 6 months so he knows what he is doing. He also plays the piano and likes to sing! which is so awesom because we have sang hymns in a couple of our lessons and it just invites the spirit so much. we also have a concert with piano and singing this wed for mentally ill kids and their parents. hopefully it will be a good finding tool! He is so awesome though and i have learned so much from him!! its actually kina funny, his spanish has an English accent as well haha but his spanish is really good and he is helping me out a lot with spanish. Great missionary and i´m sure i will learn so much from him about how to be an effective missionary. We get along really well too and have a great time together. Missionary work is alot harder than i thought it would be! ha. there is the 'physical side of it where we have to walk about 10 miles a day, but at a pace where we want to get somwhere fast!... we don´t want to waste the lords time walking slow right? so my legs are actually a little sore believe it or not haha. but also its go go go all day long and having the spirit with you and having these spiritual experiences drains you. It is all SO worth it though. of the lessons that we have taught, i have already seen a huge change in peoples lives! thats what makes it worth it, making a difference and giving the people somthing that is of eternal worth to them. It is a huge responsibility and a powerful calling and i am so humbled that i have the opportunity to share this true message and gospel to the people of chile! We are working with 6 people that have fechas... or baptisimal date. it is just SO cool to see the change in these people and see how much the gospel will change their lives. we are teaching a girl named Joselyn. She has an abusive mother and basically lives on the street. she spends most of her time at a members house just chilling there and helping out where she can. We are teaching her and she is coming to church and accepting the gospel and i can see the light in her change. she now has something to live and hope for. she loves church and loves meeting with us and this is what makes it all worth it. all of the walking, the waking up early... I love missionary work. Well i love you all so much and i love it here! missionary work is awesome and when i fully put my heart into the work and love the work, i will forget more about the distractions and be a better and more powerful missionary. Love you all Elder Millard

Letter from the Vina Del mar secretary

Dear Millard Family, We would like to thank you for supporting your son and for allowing him to serve in the Chile Viña del Mar Mission. We want you to know that he is doing very well and enjoyed the first day here. We are very blessed to have such a great young man and look forward to serving along with him. Upon arriving, he took a picture with President and Sister Gillespie in front of the flower clock here in Viña del Mar. Attached is picture which you may share with family and friends.
-- Elder Williams
Secretario
Misión Chile Viña del Mar

Week 8!

As i am writing this letter, I cannot help but be SO excited that this is my last week in the MTC and i will be leaving for chile in 6 days 8/16/10. WOW!!! So excited! so this will be the last email from the MT, the next will be from the distant land of Chile! I have absolutely loved my time here and i learned so much! Missionary work is amazing and i can't wait to get out there to Chile and start serving! These times in the MTC will stay with me for the rest of my life and i am so grateful for all tthat i have learned and for how much i have grown spiritually! This is the greatest thing i can be doing right now and i am so honored to have this opportunity to serve the lord. So this last week was absolutely incredible!!! I am now at the point where i know my way around really well here and i can just focus on learning the language, improving my teaching skills, and learning about the gospel. I learned so much this week and have had some great experiences! So this week, one of the things i learned was of the importance of setting goals and actually accomplishing them. The goals that you set reflect the true desires of your heart and the type of missionary you want to be. I learned to set goals that are achievable so you can accomplish and improve. if you set goals that are out of reach,, yyoouu plan to fail. We had some great teaching opportunities this week! we had the privilege ooff tteeaacchhiinngg the word of wisdom a couple of times, the law of chastity and the law off tithing. These are all somewhat hard to teach because they are hard for some ppeeoopple but throught theese practices, i have learned that it is not so bad if you follow the spirit and make sure they know the blessing they will recieve andd tthhee importance of keeping these commandment. i have loved the experience that we have bbeeeenn getting to teach people in the MTC. i feel so much more prepared to go out aanndd teach real investigators. Hermano Cowles (my teacher) went to cchhiille on his mission. so he talked to us like a chilean would talk to us!, i definiitteellyy have a long way to go haha. I got to go to the temple one last time for two years!!! it was such a great experience! i love the temple so much. so this sunday, i had the opportunity to play a musical number with cousin jordan!!!! it was so awesome! we played and sung "Where can i turn for peace",... one of mmyy favorite songs. so i was on the piano, and jordan and i were both singing. it went so well! i loved this musical number so much! it wwaass such a great experience. i hope i will be able to use music a lot inn mmyy mission. music is so powerful and i believe it is one of the languages of heaven. if it is the right kind of music, itt brings the spirit so strong and it touches people hheearts. after the musical number, people were telling me that thee song that we played was exactly what they needed to hear. apparently we put our branch president to tears.... yeah music is extremely powerful. and i love it. so my toe is doing absolutely amazing!!! i have been able to run around and it is not huurrting me too bad. so basically its ready for the field!!! hoorah.! i heard some great advice this week on the keys to a successful mission. they are 4 tthhiings that we need to do: Humility, Diligence, Attitude, and obedience. all of these put together will make one heaven of a missionary! ha. so these are the things that i will focus on. if i can achieve these, all the other things willl fall into place This sunday, we had the wonderful opportunityy ttoo watch the Joseph Smith Movie. Wow, this movie is so powerful and after watching, it, i really gained a stronger testimony of this church and of the prophet Joseph Smith! He really was a true prophet and this church is absolutely true!! As a missionary, i have really gained a better understanding of the eternal perspective and what is important. i have also learned of the complete joy that the gospel brings! this gospel is amazing and i cannot wait to go share and serve the people of chile!! This MTC experience has been amazing! i'm positive it will keep getting better and better. we often learn more from the hard times. i can't wait to go serve!!!!1 Love you all so much. and next week, i will be talking to you from CHILE! Love: Elder Millard

Week 7

HEY HEY HEY!!!! This last week was so awesome! So many great experiences and lessons learned. time is starting to go by Super fast now that i have been here almost 7 weeks! I'm loving the MTC so much! this place is so awesome! I'll definitely live it up while i'm here but i can't wait for Chile! its basically a 2 week countdown now! So crazy! as of this week, our district is the oldest district in the zone! we are now the Jefe (boss) group of the zone. the elders here are so great! i have loved spending time with them and getting to know them. So this last week was the first week that we were able to go to the temple!! i love the temple so much and it was so awesome with the missionary perspective while going through. Great experience! i only get to go a couple more times, then the next two years are dry. So funny story...sort of... on last tues, i was planning a little bit with elder roach. when elder paulsen walks into the room, he came to sit next to us so we can all plan as a companionship. when he sat down, his scriptures in his scripture case were just chilling on his desk. so when he lifted up the platform, his scriptures slid off and landed.... i'm sure you can imagine... directly on my toe!!!! AHH! it hurt pretty bad! it was swollen for the night and all of next day. on Wed, i decided to get a priesthood blessing from my companions. so that is exactly what we did on Wed night. It was a great experience, i chose elder paulsen to give the blessing. The next day was my doctors appt. At the doctors apt, the doctor moved my toe around to see the condition. When he moved it down, he actually pushed reallky hard! haha I basically screamed like a girl ha, anyways, after the doctor messed with i a little bit, he told me that i could start wearing my regular shoes and even start running.!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Miracle!! priesthood blessings are so great!!! so the next day at gym, i played some frisbee and tried running around a little bit and it actually felt pretty good! it's not perfect but it is definitely feeling SO much better! THanks for all the prayers and love!!! In the RC this week, i had the opportunity to talk to a man named David, in spanish of course. so when he answered, he talked Super fast!!! i could only understand about 87.6 percent of what he was saying. But that did not matter because i have the help of the spirit right! so one thing led to another, a conversation started up, and i ended up talking to him for about 15 min! at the end of the conversation, he accepted the missionaries and they were sent over to his house! i always love these RC experiences because they are the closest things to real missionary work. In the TEC this week, The dynamic trio taught many lessons. i would like to highlight two great experiences. So the first was with Hermana MUrillo. We were practicing door contacts. So we did the contact and it lasted about 6 min. when we were done and she was giving us advice, she said that our contact was so good that she would not have changed anything! EVerything is starting to come together! the Next experience was with bro. wellings. We taught him the first lesson. We got in there and started to get to know him a little bit. his question was: Why do terrible unjust things happen to good people? he later went on to tell us that his son was killed in an accident. we talked a little bit about the plan of salvation and totally taught to his needs. we used great scriptures, shared great experiences and testified. The spirit was so strong and we made the investigator cry. afterwards when he was giving us critiques, he said "Elders Que hermosa su leccion, que bonita!" in other words, your lesson was absolutely wonderful! he said we were so good and the spirit was so strong that he invited us to come back. he asked us to set up another appointment with him because he wanted to hear us teach again! So awesome! i Love missionary work! This week Was So great and i learned so much! I love you all and Chao until next week. Love Elder Millard