Week 4 Obedience Brings Blessings, Total Obedience Works Miracles

Hola mi familia!

How is everything? How is Grandma Davis doing? Padre, how was your birtday? What´s been happening in the states? I love hearing from everyone. How are the wedding plans going for Mary and Joel? Es loco how fast time is going by I can´t believe that I only have two weeks left aquí. It doesn´t feel like I´ve been here all that long yet it is really hard to think about how it was before I came here. It amazes me how fast we can get used to things. For example, there has been only one day that I didn´t get up at 6:30 and even then it was 6:35. Can you believe it, only one day! Ha! I consider it a great accomplishment :D

So funny story, ever since day one, us, North americans, have wanted burritos and last Saturday we FINALY got some but then we started to eat them and it looked like pre-chewed food but it didn´t taste bad so I ate it and the next day I was soo sick it was not a pretty picture and a lot of other people had gotten sick too. So I guess it really isn´t that funny but I hadn´t gotten sick before and it was when we finaly got burritos, the irony of it makes me laugh. Haha. Story of the week. But best thing ever my district is SO funny! There is this one elder who really likes to draw on the board and he has been into drawing Harry Potter and it sparked this "argument" sobre Harry Potter en español. And then they started to quote Monty Python and the Holy Grail... en español. Beautiful. As a side note I look like a deateater with my raincoat on. Pretty sweet.

Español is starting to come to me a bit better. I don´t think that even on the good days of speaking mostly español that I am really speaking pure español.. Haha todos está bien. Es mejor. This week we got to practice teaching latino elders y hermanas which was a really awesome experience. Because they didn´t give us time to plan a lesson they just said "siga el espirítu" Bueno. So we just started to ask a bunch of questions and before I knew it I was going into the First Vision. And it was awesome because mi comañeras were able to just jump right in and it worked really well. And after wards, we were talking with the elder and I said that I talk like a child and he laughed and said "sí, poco" haha. Awesome. It feels like I´m taking the invitation to become as a little child seriously. Haha! Pero español is coming poco a poco.

On Sundays we get to watch recorded devotionals from the Provo MTC. And this Sunday we watched another one by Elder Holland. And what can I say it was awesome. But somethings that really stood out to me were one, when they first made Preach My Gospel it was going to be called Preach My Gospel By The Spirit but it was too long so they shorted it. Pero I love that title. Really there is no other way to do it. We can talk about the gospel o we can teach with the Spirit and help others learn, feel, and do those things that bring them to Christ. The LEARN, FEEL, and DO are really important keys in this. It is also really cool to study the scriptures with those things in mind. What did you learn, what do you feel, and what should you do. It is awesome. Then the other thing that IS ALWAYS emphasised is that the only way to have the Spirit is by obedience. I don´t remember who said this pero..."Obedience brings blessings, total obedience works miracles" or something like that. It is a lot harder to be completely obedient than I thought it would be. But thi importance of it is coming even more and more evident. Obedience is how we recieve the blessings the Lord has promised us. It is one of the most important things we can learn in this life, not just obedience but the DESIRE to be obedient. In another devotional we had by President Pratt he said this quote"...it[the Spirit] will whisper peace and joy to their souls. And it will take malice, hatred, envyings, strife, and all evil from their hearts; and their whole desire will to do good and build up the Kingdom of God" Wow! Isn´t that a wonderful blessing of having the Spirit?¿ I LOVE IT! Even though I have only been out a month I can testify of the power of the Spirit in teaching. You can tell when you have it and if you don´t. I would like to extend the challenge to you to pray to have the Spirit with you and then be obedient. The blessings that will come will astonish you.

I love you all and am so excited to hear from you again. If you could please send me quotes(just anything uplifting, somthing fun to put on my wall or something) and if possible the talk from Elder Packer that he gave with the poem that he has been writting y adds on to it every 10 years or so. You know which one I´m talking about? That would be awesome! Oh Matt and Spence, I bought something for you, I´ll try and send it if possible :D Oh Mommy, could you send me Maryleigh´s email por favor? Love you all so much. The Church is true and the Lord Loves you! :D

Con amor y oracion(prayer),

Hermana Milligan

Oh. P.S I have glasses now. when we first got here they had to to eye exams and I guess I can´t see thing that are a bit farter away. It weirds me out everytime I wear them because things are SO much clearer and I had no idea! Haha It really is only for like seeing the board and such but yeah. I´ll send pictures 

Week 3 Feliz Cumpleaños Padre!!!!

Well, mi familia this is week tres down. Can you believe it has almost been a month? Crazy right? Well before I get to far into this thingamajigger.... FELIZ CUMPLEAÑOS PADRE!!!! It´s coming up fast and before you know it you´re going to be an old man :P Love you Daddy. So this week has been a much better week than last one. I feel like there has been some progress with the language. This past Thursday (I think) mi compañeras and I only spoke español for about 90% of the day it was BEAUTIFUL! Then today we got to go to the temple again and I UNDERSTOOD almost all of what was said and able to say parts without prompting. That was my prayer when I went in. There have so many tender mercies. And some really funny things as well. One day when going through the lunch line one of the workers was asking ¿cual es su nombre? (what is your name?) and when I said Milligan he was like in as best english he could, "like Gilligan´s island?" Haha best ever. Made my day. Things with mi compañeras is going great, we had companionship inventory and boy did that help things. Last week was difficult because we all get along so well that we want to talk to eachother about everything and that is really hard in español so we revert to ingles. No bueno. No bueno. But we have all been making an added effort to Hablar Su Idioma (speak your language). And it really had been making all the difference. And our district is awesome! We laugh so much and are able to help each other along the way. Almost everyone is going to Chile (except Hermana Welch, she´s going to Arizona and me) But things are great, our teachers are wonderful. They are pushing us more and more and it is much needed. I need to get better at making goals. I tend to think to much about it then I run out of time to actually make any. Haha I think Sunday´s are my favorite days because we get devotional after devotional and it is simply wonderful! This sunday Hermana Pratt (the president´s wife) gave a wonderful lesson on President Uchtdorf´s talk for the Young Women given March 2013 (I highly recomend Looking it up) but it was all about the Language of the pure love of Christ. "...a universal language-- one that has the power to overcome emotional, physical, and spiritual barriers." There was so much more to it but I can´t go into all of it but it was awesome, read it sometime. Then we watched a devotional by Jeffery R. Holland. And whew! I think I might have lost my eyebrows it was so AWESOME! He talked about never going back to what you were before you left. So if I come back and I´m not changed you will know that I failed. So you better hope that I come back changed so much it is hard to recognize me haha.

 Oh Mom, I send you a letter last week and I have no idea how long it will take it to get to you and in it I answered the questions you sent like weeks ago haha but if possible I need you to send me a few things for Ecuador. A laundry bag ( I forgot one), a black shirt, like the one I bought at walmart, slippers, a tan slip, and my companion has a pair of Crocs that are flats and they are really comfortable and she says that they work really well for walking and when it rains you don´t have to worry about them (if possible black size 7). Which reminds me that in my last email I said to send letters. Well...don´t. It takes like 3 weeks....Yeah. Haha well we have two investigators (don´t worry they are our teachers) this time around. Jesús y Ricardo. Jesús is really receptive and asks a lot of great questions. While Ricardo is a lot harder to connect with. They are both teaching us a lot and it is really great. I am coming to know just HOW important having love for others really is. (How important you ask? MUY IMPORTANTE!) Also I LOVE seeing the pictures they are the best to see I especially loved to see little Skyler, SO happy for them! Well hasta luego!

Much love and TONS of prayers. REMEMBER WHO YOU ARE

Hermana Milligan

Week 2... It difficult, but it is possible....

HOLA FAMILIA!

Sorry I wasn´t able to write you all last week I was freaking out about the time restraint and just wanted to let you know what was going on. Thank you so much for you emails. I think you can send mail so if you want to, I wouldn´t be opposed to getting letters :P This past week was a bit more challenging, but hey challenges are meant to be concured (GHA not having spell check is getting to me haha) I love my companions they are great, it´t a little difficult to teach whith three people becuase either we will all try and talk at the same time or think that the other is going to so it goes silent haha but we really have much gotten better. One of these days I will send a message all in spanish and make you translate it haha no, but eventually I will be ABLE to do that. Last week there was this crazy rainstorm (Heather I


thought of you as I used my umbrella). It was like a river except it was the road haha. Good times. My boots really came in handy :P We can only take pictures on Pday so I don´t really have that many I hope you each got a picture. I felt really bad about not being able to answer questions so I wanted to give everyone a picture. Yesterday, mi compañeras y mi were able to go almost the whole day speaking nothing but Spanish, it was AWESOME! I hope all is well with everyone. Let me know how Grandma Davis is doing por favor. We taught our last lesson con Miguel (really one of the teachers who was acting) and it went well in the previous lesson he said that it was difficult to follow the commandments and we all kinda studdered through that it wasn´t really difficult (we are still struggling to get out a proper answer in español) but it bugged me that that was all we could say. So next lesson the words just came, Sí, es dificíl pero, es posible. Yes, it´s difficult but it is possible. On Sunday we watched a devotional from Elder Scott from the Provo MTC and in it he gave an apolstolic blessing  saying : Those struggling with a new language, you will master it. The Lord has called you and He will fit the trial to your capibility. It may have just been said at the MTC pero creo que es for You as well. I love you all and I am excited to hear how things are going more. Please give my dog a hug for me. Haha. THE LORD LOVES YOU with a perfect love that I cannot express. REMEMBER WHO YOU ARE.

With much love and prayers, Hermana Milligan

P.S the food here is great! They try and make things Americanized and it makes me smile so much. They give us pizza and mashed potatoes for breakfast haha it´s just great. Yesterday they made us tomalles though so they are starting to give us some more authentic Mexican food (or at least what we North American´s think is authentic haha)

Week One In The MCC...That's Fancy Talk For MTC ;)

Hola mi FAMILIA!! Okay so I thought I would mix things up a bit and email to daddy now. So I´m really trying to Hablar mi idoma. Or speak my language so that means you might get random Spanish words instead of English. Okay where to start...Well el CCM is fantastic! They make us work really REALLY hard and sometimes I don{t know how everything gets done but for the most part everything works out. Just like my first night here. I didn´t have a comanion. Yeah. I was kinda a wreck. They assigned out rooms in our house and they said that I had a companion so at first I was all alone in a weird room. And I waited and waited and nothing. So that first night I ended up sleeping in another room with two other hermanas. I seriously felt so alone and scared for that first little while. Then the next day I still didn{t have a companion so I just had to play a game of musical companions for the day, which was really good because it helped me to get to know the other hermanas better. Then AT LAST I got compañeraS notice the emphises of the S. Yes, I am in a trio. And I love it. They are such great hermanas. Hermana Welch y Hermana Meyer. Muy amigable! Very friendly. Hermana Welch es 21 y Hermana Meyer es 24. They are some of the oldest hermanas here and they are GREAT! They have helped me so much and Hermana Welch does hair so she has styled my hair quite a few times haha. So like day 4 or so my sense of time is WAY off, apparently a volcano went off in Mexico city haha you probably know more about it than I do, I thought that was really funny. We went to el templo hoy and it is muy bonito ( I think I´m spelling everything wrong haha) BUT THE TRAFIC ES MUY LOCO!!! Mommy you would die. Like there are no lines and if there were no one would follow them we almost got hit and we were in a big yellow bus. But not to make you worried all is well in el CCM :) The campus is really pretty there are these trees everywhere called hacaranda tress, they have bright purple

flowers and strange clam like seed pods. I´ll try and get pictures but we´ll see how that goes haha. Oh I want to share a cool thing I´ve been noticing about español. So CCM sands for el Centro de Capitacion Misional. I love how it is training es Capitacion like capacity. Because we are here to increase our capacity as misionaries. Español es muy hermosa when spoken right haha so in other words when not spoken by me. We have an investigator named Miguel and our last lesson with him went really well. I didn´t feel very good about it going in but in the end it went very well. We sang one of my favorite songs, Más cerca Dios de ti, or Nearer my God to thee. And I just love singing en español! That is another thing I noticed. The spirit is SO strong here. Not being able to understand what is being said almost makes the Spirt even stronger especially whey you hear someone bear their testimony. That is something we all have in common is the Spirit. It speaks to your soul no matter what language you´re speaking in and no matter how broken your spanish is or english. I´ve only been through one week and it kicked my butt! But I know that this work is worth it and that there are people out there who NEED to feel of it{s goodness and partake of the strength it gives. I am so privledged to be able to be here and learn how to communicate with these wonderful people and help them feel the Spirit and realize that the Lord has a beautiful plan for them. Here in el CCM we really are in the world but not of the world. you can here sirens going off and dogs barking, roosters everymorning and you can look out your window and see so many different things but here it is like you stepped into a whole new world. Yes that was a disney reference :P OH PLEASE PLEASE SEND ME PICTURES OF EVERYONE!!!!! Por favor! I want to be able to show mi compañeras y have some to look at myself. This is a long message the next one might not be this long. I LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH!!! I know this church is true and I know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that He died for us so we can return again to our Father in Heaven. I hope all is well with you and you are all constantly in my prayers.  Thank you so much Mommy and Daddy for setting a wonderful example for me. Matt stay cool. Spencer I love you, keep up the writing. Much love Hermana Milligan