First Letter from Noumea

Bonjour tout le monde!

I'm going to write as much as possible as fast as I can, there's a lot to say and no time to say it.

So, I made it to New Caledonia!!! Yay!!! It only took around 20 hours of flying! I got in to Vanuatu on Monday and went out with two other Elders until Friday, when I met my new companion. My time in Vanuatu was cool, we taught at least 4 lessons a day, and I even started to pick up Bislama, which wasn't too hard with my French and English background. My trainer here in New Caledonia is Elder Tuarau. He's from Tahiti, and only speaks a little English, which is great for me because it forces me to speak French all the time and hear it all the time. Elder Tuarau is hilarious, and we get along great. I don't always understand everything he says, but we muddle through. He's actually only been out as long as me, but that's OK, he knows his stuff. 

Everything here in New Cal is beautiful, suffice to say. I have to go now, and I'm so sorry, but missionary life is crazy!

Talle!

Elder Miner 

Elder Miner Arrived!

Elder Miner arrived safe and sound in the Vanuatu Port Vila Mission.  We are so glad to have him here

Sister Stevens
Vanuatu Port Vila Mission
O: 678-23146
M: 678-550-1272

Last week in Mesa!

Hey everyone!

So, as it turns out, this is my last week in Mesa! I got my visa, and I'll be leaving on Saturday! My flight plans go from here to San Francisco, San Francisco to Sydney, Australia, and then from Sydney to Port Vila, Vanuatu. I'll spend around 4 days there and then hop over to New Caledonia! I'm a little sad to not be stopping over in New Zealand like my original flight plans, but maybe on the way back. This week is shaping up to be quite awesome. We have a missionary training broadcast on Wednesday, and then Elder Neil L. Andersen will be speaking to the mission on Saturday! We also have a lot of teaching appointments set up for the next week. More on that in a little bit.

This past week was positively amazing! We had so much happen this week. We had more lessons scheduled than ever, and even though a lot of them fell through, we still taught more lessons than ever. 

On Monday we found a new investigator named Joe. He's an older gentleman with a younger family, and he wants to raise his kids right and he really admires the Church's standards. 

Tuesday I went on exchanges with my district leader here in my area, which means I had to lead in the area. I was really nervous because I didn't want us to waste time sitting around deciding what to do, but we planned well and we were able to fill all of our time. And we found another new investigator named Keira. She seemed really interested in learning more, and she's friends with an inactive member who had been meeting with missionaries before he moved, so we have some really good potential there. 

Wednesday we had a zone training meeting which went really well and I learned a lot. We also taught a young man named Zach who is a fairly recent convert who lives with two member parents. (Long story) but the lesson went really well. He's having a hard time getting out to church because of his work schedule, but we encouraged him to try and find a way to get to at least a sacrament meeting, even if it's not his own. 

Thursday was my first zone conference. A lot of time was spent on this new thing they're installing in missionary vehicles to help keep missionaries safe. It was cool I guess, but it's really not applicable to me since, especially now that I'm leaving, I won't be driving on my mission. The rest of our lessons were really good though, I particularly liked one that one of our zone leaders gave about why it's so important to keep a good area book, and he related it really well to the scriptures and gave a lot of scriptural references about record-keeping. I really enjoyed it, and it's so true. Accurate records are so important, especially in missionary work. We also taught a less-active member named Sister Smith. She has a lot of health challenges, but that's all that's been keeping her down. We had a great discussion and offered our help with anything else that she needs.

Friday may be my favorite day on my mission so far. We were able to commit an investigator to a baptismal date! Her name is Lexi. She was being taught by another set of missionaries, but she lives in our area and has started attending our ward, so we had a lesson to kind of hand her off to us to begin teaching and she is so ready. We just need to finish teaching her. We set a baptismal date in February, so I guess that means I won't be around to see it, but that's OK. I don't mind helping to lay a great foundation. We also had dinner with a less-active family. There are such a cool family, and I loved getting to talk to them. I hope that we can help them find a desire to come back to church because they are so awesome, and could be such a strength to the Kingdom of God. After dinner our lesson fell through, but we were able to talk to a lady named Tracy. She was raised in a non-religious home, but has had a lot of spiritual experiences that have led her to believe in God and Christ. We taught her a few principles there on the street, and she accepted a Book of Mormon and a Plan of Salvation pamphlet. She was asking such great questions, and I wish we had more time to teach her, but she had to get home and so did we. Hopefully soon we'll get a lesson set up with her. 

Saturday was a day full of contacting. Everyone seemed to be outside or willing to open their door, and we talked to a lot of people.

Finally, yesterday we went to both of our wards' sacrament meetings. All three of the lessons we had planned fell through, but we did find a new investigator named Rigo. 

This area has so much potential, I don't know why there weren't more investigators when we got here, but there sure are now! We've finally gone from spending most of our time trying to find people to teach to actually teaching most of the time, which is definitely where we want to be. 

I know that this work is directed by God, and that this church is true. I know that the message we share brings peace and greater happiness to people through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. I am having a wonderful time dedicating myself to spreading the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

I'll see you soon,

Elder Miner

Fun fact about Mesa for the week, street names carry over through basically entire the entire city. Even though they may be totally different neighborhoods, if the streets are on the same coordinate line, they have the same name. This makes navigation rather tricky. 

January 18, 2016

This is me and Elder Doman on the bike path that parallels the canal here in Mesa. We use it as a shortcut to avoid a lot of the main roads and get places a LOT faster on bikes. :)

This one is me in the mission office. Put on the armor of God!

January 11, 2016

Hey everyone,
So I've now been in Mesa for almost a month now, and I really am
enjoying it. I still want to go to New Caledonia, but I'm definitely
going to miss serving here, I've already made a lot of friends.
This past week it rained nearly every day. It was worst on Monday, and
we got to bike in it. We got positively soaked and dirty, but it was
fun. Everything about missionary work is fun if you just have a good
attitude and see anything bad as just a trial to show your faith in
God. Basically, being a missionary can be one of the best times of
your life, if you decide it is. This past week has been pretty great,
aside from the rain. On Monday I tried my hand at actually cooking for
the first time here on the mission, and I made penne Alfredo. It was
really good, and I fed the whole apartment. Then we went out and biked
in the rain. Like real missionaries. I feel bad for the missionaries
in cars, I think they have much less fun.
On Tuesday I got the iPad that I'm currently emailing you from. This
one is just a loaner, but it sure is nice to have our entire area
book, daily planner, and a map right here. We also had a meeting that
was a perfectly timed pick-me-up. It's been hard in this area, the
work has been pretty stagnant, until just recently. More on that
later.
Wednesday I got to go to the Mesa temple. That temple is really
beautiful, inside and out. I felt very privileged to get to go the
temple again on my mission, because I highly doubt that I'll be able
to in New Caledonia. I had a wonderful experience there. We also
taught one of our progressing investigators a lesson. She wants to get
sealed, and so we read 2 Nephi 31 and talked about baptism opening the
gate to greater blessings, and we invited her to get baptized next
month, but she's adamant about waiting until December because of the
opposition she's experiencing from her family. We want so badly for
her to get these blessings, but we'll just have to keep working with
her and she'll have to decide on her own time.
Thursday was district meeting. I got asked to teach something from my
time in the MTC, and it was a little weird to be training missionaries
much older than me, but I enjoyed it. It rained pretty hard again that
day, and we spent a lot of time trying to contact referrals we had
received from members.
Friday was great, we finally contacted some investigators the previous
missionaries had been teaching, and found out that one of them was
baptized in another ward. Our plan now is to teach her the new member
lessons and teach her mom the lessons at the same time. We also met a
woman named Tamica. She's a super happy Christian who was so happy to
talk to us and eagerly accepted a future lesson. Even though the air
was cold that night, I was so full of the Spirit from getting to
testify so much that night that I barely noticed. I love actually
talking to people, and having the, accept our message.
Saturday was my first time on exchanges. Our district leader came to
our area to train my companion, so I went to his area. We were asked
by a Bishop to attend two funerals, and we were able to help serve the
families there. We also taught a lesson to a couple of recent
converts. It was tough because their kids were going crazy the whole
time, but we still were able to help them learn from the scriptures.
These converts were also Navajo, and they had a Navajo Book of Mormon
and bible, which I thought was way cool. In a way, I taught some
Lamanites. Yesterday was ward conference for the Three Fountains ward.
We had a number of cool meetings with stake leaders. We the spent the
evening trying to contact less active members. A lot of them had
actually moved away, but that helps us too because we can clean up the
area book a little.
That sums it up. It's been oddly cold here in Mesa recently, not sure
why. All the natives are freezing, but Elder Doman and I have been
fine. I'm also going to try and give something cool about Mesa, (or
wherever I'm serving) each email. I don't know if I've already
mentioned this or not, but I'm going to share it anyway. Here it is,
Mesa really loves pre-planned communities. There are so many here,
it's a little ridiculous. It can be frustrating too because they only
have one entrance, so we often have to ride way farther to get to a
house than if we could just go through the area like a normal
neighborhood.
Remember everyone, God loves you and has given you the easy way
through this life. Just follow the Gospel.
See you in two,
Elder Miner

January 4, 2016

So, I'm going to try to summarize and cap off the past three weeks here in Mesa. 

First off, typing that has made me realize how fast time has flown. 

Ok, so Mesa. Mesa is pretty nice, I'm not going to lie. All the members here are SO nice. We get fed dinner every night, and they're very supportive of missionary work. We get honked at as we're biking all the time, and there's so many members where I'm serving that it almost feels like Utah. One of the most unique things about Mesa is that there are orange trees EVERYWHERE. Just randomly lining the streets, almost everyone has one in their backyard, it's crazy. There are so many, that some of them are actually "decorative orange trees" and they bear fruit, they just don't taste good. Crazy to me. And the harvest is going on right now, so we get tons of citrus from people, which is great. 

Christmas here is way cool also. The Mesa temple gets decorated with tons of lights, and on Christmas night the missionaries got to sing there. It was a way cool experience. Having the temple in my mission is nice because we have a Visitor's center we can use for teaching and as a conversation starter when contacting, and I'll get to go to the temple on Wednesday. They go once a transfer here, so if I'm here longer I'll get to go more than once, which I think is wonderful. Our roommates actually were able to go to a convert's sealing which I think is so cool. 

My companion's name is Elder Doman. He is from Loveland, Colorado. He is probably one of the healthiest people I've ever met. He loves fruit like nothing else, he'll put away 3 oranges+ for breakfast and he was a cross country and track guy in high school. He's been out only about 5 months, and he's training, so that tells you how great he is. He and I are actually whitewashing our area (which means we're both new to the area) and he has been wonderful to work with and a great example. 

As for this week, last Monday was interesting. We had a lot of success finding in one of the apartment complexes in the Fraser Ward. I've been assigned to two wards in the Mesa North Stake, the Three Fountains Ward and the Fraser Ward. Three Fountains is pretty middle class and what I would call a "newly-wed-nearly-dead" ward. Lots of young families and older folks, but almost no youth. Fraser is a little poorer, but much more active and with more variety in ages of people. Anyway, in that apartment complex we talked to a lot of people who were interested, so hopefully we'll get some new investigators out of that work.

Tuesday and Wednesday I was sick. A lot of missionaries in our district have been getting sick recently, but I think I got something different. I had a really nasty stomach bug for about 48 hours. Not fun. 

Thursday I was doing better and we had dinner with Bishop Dampt (pronounced Dompt) and his family in the Fraser Ward. He is originally from France, and his whole family speaks French, so I was able to speak a little (I try not to speak too much French because I don't want my companion to feel left out) but I was able to listen to a lot of native French which was awesome. 

Friday we had a missionary party of sorts for New Years. We played a lot of games like kickball and human foosball and had this delicious steak lunch that I wasn't able to eat much of because I was still kind of recovering. We also had a fireside in which we said goodbye to an Elder who has been having some heart problems and is being sent home to recover. 

Saturday was a really interesting day. All of our teaching appointments fell through. We had some on Tuesday, but I was sick, and we had a couple this day, but no lessons. I actually still haven't taught a single official sit-down lesson my whole time here. We weren't left with a whole lot of investigators when we came in to the area, so we've been trying to find more and not teaching much. We did find a less-active member who has been struggling with his testimony. He wants so badly to come back and find his faith again, he just doesn't know how. I hope we can help him, he seems like a really cool guy and he really wants the best for his family. 

Sunday was cool because it was my first time in a ward council and I got to see how ward leaders really try and address the needs of everyone in the ward.

I hope this email is satisfactory and that you enjoyed it. As some more cool stories or experiences come I'll try to include them here as appropriate. 

See you in two,

Elder Miner

Thanks for all the Christmas presents!

I'm sending pictures now because we're at a stake center, and we'll probably do most of our emailing from another church with better wi-fi off of our ipads, but all of my pictures are on my camera, so here you go.

This picture is me and Elder Doman soaking wet after riding our bikes home last Monday through a crazy rainstorm. 

Also, just because I'm not in France doesn't mean I can't eat like it sometimes if I want. :)