Hi family:)
I can't believe I've been in Germany for a month! Everything about this week was pretty solid. Even the language. But German is so hard. Sometimes I just wanna cry. People who went on missions always said "yeah ya know the first few months are hard learning a language!" And I would just brush it off and say to myself ehh.. it won't be that bad. Ohhh was I wrong and ohh is it bad. You really don't understand how hard it is until you live it. It's rough. That being said, looking back a month ago to now, I have learned so much. I may not be fluent yet ;) but it's actually really cool that I can communicate and get by with people here. Even if it is just a little bit. I can understand a lot, the hard part is speaking the correct grammar. It's weird, I can't think and translate the word order to how I would say it in English first otherwise it doesn't make sense. I have to talk like Yoda when I speak German. Example: Ich habe mein Mission in Deutschland gedient = I served my mission in Germany. But the exact English translation is: I my mission in Germany served. Total freakin Yoda status.
Anyways! Tuesday we traveled to Berlin because Elder Hein and I had interviews with President Fingerle just to see how we are doing so far. That took all day and we got back late so nothing much happened other than that.
Wednesday we had a district meeting. We have 6 Elders in our district. Just Elder Hein and I are here in Schwerin and then 4 other missionaries are north in Rostock. After our meeting we had an exchange so I packed a bag and went up to Rostock for the day and night with Elder Spencer. It was a lot of fun. It's a cool city and it's the area in the Berlin mission with the ocean! During my exchange we had an appointment with a girl named Olivia who is 17 and her mom Hyemi. They are Chinese or Japanese - I can't tell which. Anyway, Olivia doesn't know if she believes in God or not and Hyemi is Christian. We killed it with Olivia - she is reading all of her assignments and praying because she wants to know if God is there, but Hyemi is a little bit more difficult. She is pretty content with how things are for her right now so as far as she goes, it just means we are going to have to work extra hard!
Thursday we drove back down to Schwerin and I was back with Elder Hein. We had English class again which I still love. I'll try and include a funny video I got. We had them practice having a conversation and at the end Dieter (a guy who comes to English class) stops for a second, looks at his notes, looks up and says "to shake!" He wanted to end it and shake the other guys hand - it was so funny!
Friday ohhh Meine Gute.. We started out with a service project. I don't really know how to explain it, but we spread rocks in a members yard. There was a huuuggee pile of rocks that Elder Hein and I had to shovel into our wheelbarrows, take it about 50 yards, dump it, spread it and then head back to the pile and do the exact same thing. Now I don't know if any of you have tried to shovel rocks before but it is So. Hard. We did that from about 9 in the morning until 2 in the afternoon. Still can't feel my arms. We went back to the apartment, showered up and then went to go do some finding. I decided I needed to step it up a bit and take the lead and try to stop people on the street this time because Elder Hein has been doing it the past month! I gave it a shot! The first couple people didn't stop for me but the third time is a charm! My man who came to be known as Miguel from Mexico City stopped and wants to hear more from us:) He's the nicest guy. A little later we stopped another guy. We think he is in the Armenian mob because he said some strange stuff and had some interesting stories. He has 3 phones and has to change their numbers every month which was a little scary at first but then he's like "ohh man yeah I know you guys, you guys are the Mormons. I love the Mormons!!" So that was good. All of a sudden it started to downpour. We got absolutely drenched and it was cold.
Saturday not much to report on. We played our usual soccer and some new guys came. They were big and they were hairy and they were pretty good actually. They were from Afghanistan and all super nice. That's really common here. I've met a lot of people from the Middle East as immigrants because their villages were invaded by Isis or another group and Germany takes them in.
Sunday, church was good. We had dinner at the Nuendorg's who are currently remodeling their mansion. It is gigantic. The only bad thing is they live in the middle of nowhere so it takes a long time to get there and get back.
With all that, I think this week was one of the more enjoyable weeks of my mission. Sometimes I look back and I get a little mad at myself, I feel like I was kind of a punk back home. Nothing big, just a little ungrateful and I took a lot of things for granted. Don't be or do either of those things! Count your many blessings:) I want to leave a quote with you all that my roommate Will, back in Hawaii, wrote me when I was having a little bit of a hard time.
"God doesn't care nearly as much about where you have been as he does about where you are and, with his help where you are willing to go." -Jeffrey R. Holland
Elder Miller
PS: Please keep my friend Kade in your prayers! I played soccer with Kade at BYU-Hawaii and he is currently serving a mission in Thailand but he got hurt and he has no recollection of the past 7 months. Thank you!
