Merry Christmas! 

It's great to be at this time of year again! And people here in the Philippines love it too! I'm grateful to have the opportunity to meet these people. A few cool things happened this week. 1) our mission got together to have a Christmas Party, and that was super fun. We sang songs, danced a bit, ate roasted pig, and other foods, had a bit of training too. A great time, felt like a missionary family. Not the same as your actual family, but we still made it fun. 2) My Tagalog is getting to the point where they can understand me, and I can actually contribute more than 10 seconds worth of lesson in a lesson, which is just so awesome because I want to share with these people, but the language was a small barrier, and I'm not yet fluent, but it's just nice to know I'm speaking the right language. So our lessons overall have been getting better, becuase 2 teaching is more powerful than 1 teaching. I'm loving it here, it's way hard, but as soon as we have a good lesson, or meet someone new who is interested, the joy overcomes the sorrow. That is the truth of life. or at least a truth. There are many hard times in this llife, but having a joyful experience makes it seem worth it, and worth moving forward. Especially this time of year, when there is a lot more goodwill than usual, I would encourage you to take advantage of that. Make someone's day better. Smile more, laugh more easy, and really focus on reaching out, so that you can find yourself. Spend time with your family, for they will be with you forever. I love this Gospel, because it has turned my family into a place where I want to be for Eternity. Merry Christmas!

Elder Miklich

Happy New Year!

Hi guys! 

This has been a pretty crazy week, (this is coming from a missionary). We ate a lot of food, shared Christmas messages, a bit more, and then shared a bit more. It is interesting how everybody seems to become more nicer around this time of year. We will go up to people to talk to them, and they offer us some of their alcohol. People here are super nice, but they don'tseem to know quite yet that we don't drink. Still super nice people, just a few problems, but don't we all have them? One of the things that I'm learning here is that most people don't want to sin, but they don't know that they are. It's our job to help them learn and grow and change. I say most because there are a few wacky people out there. it's sad, but true. Anyways, one cool experience I had this week is one of our investigators, Ronalto, started to cry during a lesson we had with him, because we keep stopping by, wanting to teach him, even though he is drunk most of the time, and he never keeps his commitments. So we committed him to Church on Sunday, I even wrote it on his calendar for him. He didn't show up, but it was still nice to see that our visits, even though they don't seem to go anywhere, are impacting him in some way. (He is the guy that made the altar\shrine with our pamphlet a while back) So i guess that is my commitment I leave with you this week. Try to go out and visit someone you wouldn't normally visit. Just for a few minutes, it doesn't have to be long. make their day better, leave them smiling, something. I know that by small and simple things great things can come to pass. You might even surprise yourself. Don't worry, I'll do it to. I hope you had a wonderful Christmas, and a happy New year!

Elder Miklich

Hey everybody!

It's getting closer to that time of year! People here in the Philippines love Christmas, and it's super exciting! This past week went by fast. We found a ton of new people, many of them aren't quite as excited as we are but they will be soon! We were teaching this one family on Friday, and they were super excited when we taught them the Restoration, and were excited to come to church, but they didn't make it that far. They are a young family so it must've been some kid troubles or something. Anyways, the Spirit was super strong that lesson, and I can't wait to go back there on Tuesday.

 On Sunday, we had the Primary program, and my companion can play a little piano, but not much, but the Primary President still asked him to play two songs on Saturday night, and he was super nervous. So when Sunday came around, he told me he said a quick prayer before he played to either bless his hands, our our ears. We were talking after, and it sounds like He blessed our ears, because it actually didn't sound to bad. 

So the lessons learned this week are that there is a plan for everything, because if certain things did not happen we would not have found that family, and God answers prayers, though sometimes not the way we expect it to. 

I hope you all have a great week, and remember that in the spirit of Christmas, we remember the best gift of all, Jesus Christ. Just take a minute and ponder on what His life means to us, and what we can do because of Him. 

Until next week,

Elder Miklich

Hi everybody!

Hope all is going good for you! Things are great over here in Naguilian. Some of the things that happened this week are: 1) We had an FHE almost every night because our branch is very sociable like that. That's been fun, and also a great place to bring investigators to. They get to mingle with members outside of the Church building and they love it. It really helps them a lot. And it has helped us too because my companion broke our fridge on accident last week, and as of now we still haven't got one. So we didn't have to buy as much food last week which was nice because it didn't go bad. 2) A family got baptized, a mom and her 3 kids. The dad is interested but it is hard for him to get Sundays off but hopefully we can teach him soon. They are a cool family, kids are high energy kids but they are still fun to be around. 3) Its December already! Christmas is near! Everybody here is pumped, but I hope we can all remember the true reason for Christmas. Christ, our Savior, was born into this world, where he lived a life in such a way as to save us. I love the gift giving and all of that, as long as we remember the best gift of all. Don't forget Him, and what He did for us. I love you all and until next week!

Elder Miklich

(Againg no pics this week...his church building doesn't have WiFi and it takes a long time to upload his photos at the internet cafe where he emails us and he just runs out of time each week...so I added these pics from before he left on his mission.  I just needed to see his smile on the blog :)  He says that he is taking a ton of pictures and that he will upload them when he goes to the bigger church building for his Zone Conference.  He is thinking they have WiFi in that builinding)

Hello Everybody!

Sorry I didn't get to you last week. Been busy. Life here in the Philippines are good. Some interesting experiences that I've had. We have an investigator that we taught like my first day here, and he was drunk. But then like yesterday we went to visit him again, and he made like a shrine/altar thing for Jesus, and he put the picture of Jesus ordaining Peter, from our L1 pamphlet, right in the center. It was so funny, because it was his birthday, and he was so proud of what he did, and he does believe in Jesus, but I don't think he gets it quite yet. Hopefully he will be able to understand. There was also like a Nativity picture and like a small statue, but in the center was our pamphlet that we gave him. That was my funny experience. A really spiritual experience we had was yesterday too. We are preparing this family for baptism this Saturday, and we actually pushed it back a week because the kids are super nice, but they had a really hard time praying and they wrote the steps down in their BoM and they used that to help them. So we were kinda worried about it. So we went over the Baptismal Interview questions again, and yesterday they knew how to pray, the answers, and were actually excited to get baptized. It was spiritual for me because I knew that they didn't study it as individuals. I'm positive that as a family, they helped each other out, which is awesome because that what our message is about. Families, helping each other to live the Gospel down here on Earth so we may live with them for all eternity after. This church is true, it blesses families. I've seen it change my family, and I can't imagine life without them.  

Take care, 

Elder Miklich