Showing posts with label MTC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MTC. Show all posts

Thursday, November 13, 2014

Week 5: Last Week in the MTC!!


I can't believe it.... I only have 4 more days in the MTC. Time has flown by. It feels as if we only just got here, and we are already the senior missionaries in our zone. 
Our District With the Surinames
So it's been a pretty uneventful week story wise. We've been really focusing on getting ready to go. We got our flight plans on Friday, and as of right now everyone except for one sister got their visas. 
We aren't giving up hope yet though, the same thing happened to the Danes, but their visas came in two days before they were supposed to leave, so they did get to go do Denmark. 

We will all be flying together with the other Dutchie District (I don't know if they all got their visas or not) So we will spend all of Monday traveling (fun!) 

Farewell Ritual
It was sad because the Surinames left us this weekend. They are all really cool guys, and we're going to miss them. I put some pictures of our farewell ritual in the picture album.

So just some updates on our investigators, Pip is progressing well, and he has committed to baptism on Nov 7th (He's actually our teacher, so he's not actually going to get baptized). We've had some really powerful lessons with him, and our companionship has really improved on teaching by the Spirit, and not just spouting out information. 

We haven't been able to teach Tony much. We've run out of time in class, so our last lessons have just been us bearing our testimonies to him. Sometimes that's all you can do. As long as they feel the Spirit, it's a good lesson.

Carlos is progressing well also. We taught him the Plan of Salvation and the Restoration. He has a really strong Spirit, and our lessons have been really awesome. It really boosts our confidence as missionaries, because we teach him in English. It shows us that we really do know how to teach, we just need to work on the language. 

So this last week has been pretty tough on our zone. It was really good that we got the talk two devos ago about the adversary, because he's been trying really hard to drive away the Spirit. Through small, unimportant, silly fights between missionaries, medical issues, or other things, he's been working hard to stop us. Luckily we've recognized his work, and every challenge has humbled us, and made us stronger together. He is having the opposite effect on us. He's making us stronger together. As we recognize his influence, we immediately stop what we are doing and talk about it. Most of the time we end in a prayer. It's really helped to battle the discouragement some people have been facing. 

We had a really good devo last night. Elder Godoy spoke to us. (He spoke at Conference in Portuguese) It was actually pretty cool cause we know his son. His son is serving in Rome Italy, and we arrived and are departing the same day. 

Anyway, Elder Godoy spoke about faith and miracles, and the four steps needed to have miracles as a missionary and in life. 

First, we must repent of our sins. We cannot help people come unto Christ if we ourselves are not living His commandment. For some missionaries, just returning home worthy is the best they can do. Good for them, they are for themselves successful missionaries, but we can do more. 

Second we must do good works. Working hard is the only way that we can help people come unto Christ. 

Third, pray continually. We should always have a prayer in our heart. Each night we should have a personal inventory with God. What did we do well, how can we do better? Prayer invites the Spirit into our lives, and with the Spirit, we can help others find truth.

Fourth we need exercise faith. With our faith, we must expect miracles.  Brother Godoy showed us two scriptures in the Book of Mormon about missionaries without faith. They did all the other steps, but did not have faith in the people. "The Lamanites are bad... They won't listen to us.... they don't like us.... blah blah blah. Who cares? Have faith" 

He then showed us a scripture in Alma about the Sons of Mosiah. How even though they were told these same things, they had faith, and they baptized thousands. With faith, come miracles.


Well that's all I have really for today. I uploaded some more pictures and I'm going to put a link to a video we recorded below. It's pretty funny. 

Also, if you could keep my companion, Elder Matos, in your thoughts. He has a cyst in his knee and they are not sure if they are going to have to take it out or not. If they do, his mission will be delayed for about a month.


Alright! We get half a P-Day on Saturday, so I'll try to email again then. It might not be a long one though. 

Tot ziens! 





Friday, October 17, 2014

Week 4: It's Been an Awesome Week!!



Yummy! Cafeteria food!!


The donut that smacked a missionary in the face during the war!


Our District at the Temple
My New Name Tag!
The Tripanionship of Destiny!
The crew getting ready for an intense game of Four Square!
Are we having fun yet?!
Hallo, (Hello!)

It has been an awesome week. So much to talk about. 

First of all, thanks for the package. It was great. 

Also if you could thank Elder Jurges and his parents for the package, that would be great. It was an awesome surprise. 

First I wanted to talk about some people that I ran into. 

So I forgot to mention this in my last email, but one of the Swedish Elders was from Delta Utah. Now of course someone very special to our family was from Delta Utah, Elder Layne Larson. So I asked Elder Bliss if he knew the Larson family. He didn't, but his mother did. She new Layne when he was growing up. Small world. (Layne Larson is very special to our family...he was straight from the MTC into the Belgium/Netherlands mission the night he came to our house in Mechelen, Belgium to give us our very first official discussion by the missionaries, back in 1998. He would also be the Elder that baptized Patrick, Bryan's father.  We love Layne Larson!)

I also ran into Sister Nelson from school. It was during lunch between the Sunday Sessions of General Conference. My collegas (a little Dutch coming at you!) and I sat down next to some sisters, and I swore I knew one of them. Long story short, we figured out how we knew each other. Mutual friends at BYU-I. (Brigham Young University-Idaho) We even have a picture of the two of us with our friends on Facebook. Kinda funny. 

I also ran into Elder Higgins, another friend from school. We had two classes together last semester. We both didn't know that we had mission calls, so it was a real surprise to see each other. 

Anyway, so this week the Swedes and the Nords shipped out to the field. That means that right now, it's just Dutch speaking and two Danish sisters in our zone. Today however, we are getting 21 new missionaries in our zone. I'm glad I'm not the zone leader haha. 

Because we are halfway through our tenure here at the MTC, I got released as District Leader, and Elder da Silva replaced me. It's kind of nice not having to go to all the District Leader meetings.

So something really cool happened on Sunday. The head of media in the Missionary Department of the Church came and spoke to us on Sunday. He showed us the impact that technology has had on missionary work, and how it's helping move the work forward. 

He showed us the numbers of referrals generated from internet ads, social media campaigns, and other forms of missionary work on the internet. Through Facebook alone, the church can reach more than 20 million non members through mutual friends of people who like the mormon.org page. Pretty amazing.  

He also showed us the numbers for the #becauseofHim #ItWasMom #ShareGoodness and #LdsConf campaigns. During General Conference #LDSConf was in the top ten trending hashtags on twitter. 

He then gave us training on what the church is planning next for Christmas. He showed us the draft that was just approved by the 12 Apostles. It was still a rough cut, and they are using the music from a popular song on the radio while an original track is being written. I'm not allowed to say anything more about it, but it's going to be awesome. Even with the rough cut, the Spirit of it was really strong. Every single missionary in the auditorium (about 2000 of us) got choked up. He then trained us for how we can use the things the Church will be doing at Christmas time to help teach people, and find new investigators. It was pretty awesome. 

Also some great news, we have a new investigator! His name is "Sam", and he's an actual investigator. (investigator is someone they are teaching the gospel.) We found him as a street contact yesterday, and had our first lesson with him last night. He's from Peru, so he and Elder Matos (also from Peru) clicked really fast. I have to say it's so refreshing to teach in English. It's so much easier than Dutch haha. The funny thing is that as I was thinking about our lesson afterwards, I kept thinking about it in Dutch. Weird how that happens. 

Last night we had one of the Quorum of the 70 speak to us, Elder Lawrence. He spoke about Satan, why he does what he does, what his tactics are, and how we can defeat him personally. It was really great. Our District meeting afterwards was even better. Everyone has such a strong testimony. I am so grateful for my district. We all love and support each other so much. It's going to be hard to say goodbye to them in the field. 


OK, so I was told that I forgot to tell the rest of the jumping the bed story. 

So two nights after Elder Hunter jumped the bed, he decided he wanted to do it again. This time he totally ate it. He jumped from the top of our bed to Elder Matos' bed, and totally missed. He bounced off the side of the mattress onto the floor. It was like a cartoon. When he hit the bed, his body went over on top, and his legs slid under making like a C shape around the mattress. He was like that for at least 3 seconds before he slid off.  He didn't get seriously injured, but it was super funny. Then he tried to do it again. This time the rest of the zone was watching (they were all hoping he'd eat it again) but this time he made it. So being the crazy Scotsman that he is, he decided to convince my companion to do it. 

It took ten minutes of talking Elder da Silva into it, but he finally took the leap.... and failed so hard. We thought he had made it, but the mattress was like a trampoline and bounced him back off. It was so funny. We were all laughing for a good 5 minutes. 

That's all I have time for this week. We get our flight plans, which is pretty scary. It feels like we just got here. I hope you enjoy the pictures, we really get into our gym time here. It's about the only time we can let loose for the whole day. 

Talk to you next week!

Elder Muller


P.S. I got my name on my tag fixed yesterday, I went to the office and asked for a new one.

Monday, October 13, 2014

Week 3: MTC Choir and General Conference

The SurinaMEN getting ready for four square
Elder Muller's District with the Danish District

Elder Muller and his District outside of the Provo Temple
Elder Silva finding the hidden "Hayden" picture!
Elder Muller saying goodbye to his Zone Leaders, or something like that!
Elders Reber, Hunter & Gudmunson. Elder Hunter is the Scottish Elder who sang the solo in the last song in Priesthood Session)
Saying goodbye to the Danes - Elders Reber, Silva & Gudmunson (Zone Leaders)So three weeks down, three to go. Pretty crazy. 

First I would like to share something about a Sister in the other Dutchie district. Sister Twiggs had been having health problems before she came to the MTC, and was struggling with pain in her stomach almost every minute of the day. She was always hungry, but it hurt to eat. Last Wednesday night it got really bad, enough to call paramedics. 

All the Elders of our Zone that night decided to fast the next day for her, not so that she could come back to the MTC, but that she could be healthy. After the day we fasted, for the first time in years, she has not had any pain. Miracles are real, and if you have enough faith, you can make them happen. 

Something else cool that happened the day after our fast: the cereal challenge. In the MTC cafeteria, there are towers of cereal. We decided as a Zone to empty the Rice Crispy tower. Because all of us Elders had fasted for the Sister, we were even hungrier than usual. We ate three and a half towers of cereal. At one point one of the cafeteria employees came out to refill it, and everyone started yelling at him not to. It was pretty funny. About 40 missionaries stuffing their faces with cereal, Elders and Sister alike. I ended up eating a plate of steak, and 9.5 bowls of cereal. As a zone, we ate 232 bowls of cereal. That's insane. It shows just how much cereal is in those towers though. 

So much to talk about this week. Of course the big thing was General Conference. All I can say is that it was amazing. (General Conference is our semi annual meeting that is held in the Conference Center in Salt Lake City, Utah.  It is broadcast around the world so all members can participate.  It is broadcast via the internet, radio, cable, and satellite transmission.  It is open to the public to listen to as well.)

We got up early and watched the first session together as a choir, and then bussed us over to Salt Lake where we practiced for two hours backstage in the Conference Center. They fed us a quick lunch, and then brought us to the choir loft. We ran through each song once before Conference started. So we only practiced with the organ once for each song before we sang them. Pretty crazy. We were all sure that there were angels helping us when we sang, because we were all singing flat during practice for some reason. 

When we were up there it was pretty crazy. The Conference Center is HUGE!!!! From where I was sitting in the choir loft, I couldn't even see all the seats. We actually had more Elders than seats, but they brought in extra chairs so that everyone could sing. 

So the two things that were really cool about what we did, is that there has never been a medley of Primary songs sung in General Conference, and normally they are not allowed to have solos in General Conference. Brother Eggett had to get special permission from the First Presidency to let Elder Hunter sing. By the way, I share a bunk bed with the guy who sang a solo in General Conference, pretty cool. And he's Scottish. I don't know if I've said that or not. 
Still Photo of Elder Muller in Choir

We were all sure that "Ye Elders of Israel" was going to usher in the Second Coming. Those chords at the end just melt my heart every time we sang them, they are just perfect. Of course it didn't, but we were all crying at the end. I couldn't even see Brother Eggett to know when to cut for the Amens. 

Anyway, it was kind of a shock to see Brother Rojas and Brother Bailey outside. (Two members of our congregation here in Florida!  They went to see Conference live and saw Elder Muller!) I don't know how they found me, but I wasn't allowed to stop and talk. One of the Elders in my Zone actually saw his dad and had to walk right past him. Must have been hard. 

On our way back to the MTC we had a testimony meeting on the bus which was pretty cool. The Church also provided us with a boxed dinner. 

When we got back to the MTC we were all still pumped full of adrenaline. Singing for five million people will do that to you. Elder Hunter decided to jump from the top of our bed to the top of Elder da Silva's and Matos's bed. Somehow he made it, but more on that later. (Elder Muller never got back to this story, so I will have to ask him to let us know about that next week!)

I am including links to the songs the the MTC Men's Choir performed at General Conference.  I hope you will take time to watch.  Elder Muller can be seen in the videos!  He is in the middle section of the choir loft. He is the 8th row up from the bottom - almost to the top - he is in the last seat on that row. He will always appear on your right hand side of your screen.  This is the Choir Loft where the Mormon Tabernacle Choir performs from!  Quite and honor and experience!  If these links don't work, please go to LDS.org and look for General Conference October 2014, Saturday Night Priesthood Session.  Remember to click on icon that says to include music.


Opening Hymn:


Missionary Medley:


Hymn song with congregation:


Closing Song:



So something really sad happened this week. The Danes left us. They were our first Zone leaders and just awesome guys. Elders Reber and Gudmunson. They will be remembered. Sadly we will not be getting any more Danish Elders, just Sisters, so that will be a gap in our zone for a little bit. 

The pictures from outside the Temple, and with Reber and Gudmunson are from the night we said goodbye to them. We also took a district picture outside the Temple. 


While I'm discussing pictures, let me explain a few things. The video is of Elder Silva trying Pop Rocks for the the first time (the elder giving him the pop rocks is Elder Dixon a Swede). It was pretty great. I also added some pictures of the SurinaMENs. They are also Dutch speaking missionaries going to the West Indies mission. They live in the room next to us. The pictures are of them getting ready for four square in the morning. I wish I had a picture of the next day, cause they all had mustaches as well as headbands. 

Link to Pop Rocks:  https://app.box.com/s/w6axfuxnhi5mmslgezs6/1/2543794805/21717364903/1

(I am having trouble getting this link to work, so forgive me if you cannot access it!)


The picture of Elder Silva holding a picture of a girl has quite a story. It begins in our classroom. I've been reading Jesus the Christ in my spare time, but one day Elder Matos found a copy of it in our classroom. Thinking it was mine, he just skimmed through the pages. The picture of that girl fell out. He thought it belonged to me, and started joking with me a bit. Of course, I've never seen that girl before in my life. We asked all the teachers if they knew whose it was, but they had no idea. It's a ghost picture. So we've started a new thing here. We plant it on someone, either in their suit jacket, under their pillow, etc. It's kind of dumb but it's funny. That picture is right after Elder Silva found it on himself the first time. His face is priceless. 

We now have two onderzoekers. (people we are teaching) "John" and "Tony". They are both moving along quite well, and we taught them both about the Atonement last week. We are close to asking "John" to be baptized, but we have to teach him how to pray first. We ran out of time in our last lesson. :( 

So I would like to share one more story. This happened last night, on the hallowed "P-Day Eve". It started with a spark that ignited into a war. 

So our Zone is made up of all Dutch speakers plus Swedes, Nords, and Danes. We've been having a grand old time together, but yesterday, a war started. 

Early in the morning, we were still sleeping. We hear a knock at the door. My comp, Elder da Silva, still 75% asleep goes and answers it. It's the Swedes in full battle array with squirt and dart guns. They totally blast him in the face as he opens the door. They lit the flame that began the war.
All day we plotted our revenge, if you mess with one Dutchie, you mess with all of us. We enlisted the help of the Surinames (Dutch speaking 
West Indies Mission) who the Swedes thought were their allies. As soon as we got home from devotional and changed out of our suits, we prepared for war. Elder Silva and Elder da Silva painted their faces with shaving cream, and Elder Silva donned a hood from a winter jacket (it looked hilarious) Elder Hunter filled several water bottles in preparation for a good dunking on a Swedish head. I prepared our diversion to draw them out of the room.
As I began the diversion, the Swedish lookout spotted my companions as they left our room and alerted his Swedish brothers. They all piled into the Zone Leader's (a Swede) room, and barricaded themselves in. This is where the Surinames came in. After sweet talking the Swedes, the Swedes opened the door just a crack to let them in, thinking them to be their allies. That was all we needed. We pushed the door open the rest of the way and began unleashing our fury upon those who dared squirt a fellow Dutchie in the face at 6:15 in the morning. Elder da Silva smacked a Swede upside the face with a handful of shaving cream, while Elder Hunter dumped bottle after bottle of water on the enemy before being taken out by a cookie launched by one of the Zone Leaders hiding behind a bed. The leader of the Swedes, Elder Dixon (he was the one da Silva smacked with shaving cream) grabbed my companion in a headlock, so I did the only thing I could. I threw a donut at his face. It smacked him right in the cheek icing side first. This shocked him enough for my companion to slip away. As we ran back to our room, the Swedes, filled with fury at their defeat began to storm after us down the hallway. When we got back to our room, we realized to our horror that we were locked out, with an army of angry Swedes 10 paces behind us. Luckily Elder Matos had a spare key, and we tumbled into our room. One of the Swedes (Dixon) wedged himself in the door and started spraying us with a squirt gun. We batted his hand down with a shoe and closed the door. As he turned to run away down the hallway, Elder Hunter burst from our room and rat tailed him with his towel. The Swedes will never attack us again. 

It was an epic night. 

Everyone had a great time, and right afterwards, the Zone Leaders invited us over for chips and salsa. The whole thing took like 2 minutes. We have several war trophies, including the donut that smacked someone in the face, and we are planning on handing out Medals of Honor tonight. Our Zone is the best. 

Anyway, I hope this email was long enough ;) I had more time today because we got our laundry done early. I'm going to go grab lunch and get ready for the Temple. 


TTYL,


Elder Muller


Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Week 2 from the MTC! "Boy Did It Fly By!"

Elder Muller and his District at the Provo Temple (check out Elder Muller's tie.....it has pigs on it....a special memento from Brother Bair in Wadsworth, Ohio!) 



Another beautiful day at the Provo Temple
Elder Muller with his two companions on the grounds of the Provo Temple



What a beautiful sky.  Again, Provo Temple Grounds


Elders Hunter, Silva, Matos, da Silva and Muller.  Elders Matos and da Silva are Elder Muller's companions, and Elders Hunter and Silva are the Zone Leaders.


Elder Muller's desk and study materials.  So awesome to see him writing in Dutch!  And even more awesome is that I can read and understand most of it!!!


  • Piception! A picture of Elder da Silva taking a picture of Sister Hanson taking a picture of me taking a picture of... you get the idea


Hallo van de MTC! 

Week two is done, and boy did it fly by! 

My Collegas (companions) and I now have two investigators (this is the term used for those people they are teaching), "John", and "William". We are teaching "John" about God and Jesus Christ. His father is Islamic, and his mother was Christian, so they didn't talk religion very much. "William" has had some trouble with the law and substance abuse, so we are helping him turn his life around. Very fun.

Last night we had a ton of fun, we try to have a good time because it's P-Day eve. We got a big group of Elders together and sang some good old fashioned gospel music. 'Tomorrow is P-Day, Oh Happy Day!'. We have too much fun :).

So the other Dutchie Elders are just amazing. Elder Hunter (the Scottish one) is just amazing. We found out that he actually helped write the song 'Come unto Christ'. If you watch the music video, he's the guy playing the piano. You can see his face for like two seconds. Pretty cool. 

Elder Silva is just super funny. Every night he tells us a bedtime story before we go to bed. They are all true experiences that he's had that are just crazy funny. 

Elder Matos and Elder da Silva are great. They both speak English, Spanish and French. The other day we ran into some international Sisters/Elders, and within 30 seconds we had 3 different languages going at once. 

As a companionship, we have been focusing more on teaching/relying on the Spirit. We've really seen an improvement in our lessons, and our investigators are moving a lot faster. 

The Sisters in my district are awesome as well. You can see the Lord's hand in putting them together, because each companionship is just perfect. We have some great district goals, and are working together really well. 

So about the choir. (This is the choir Elder Muller will be singing in this Saturday night, October 4, 2014.  It will be during the Priesthood session of our semi-annual General Conference...the best two weekends of the year! It is held in the Conference Center in Salt Lake City. You can watch on some cable TV outlets, or stream it on LDS.org  )   It's been amazing! We are going to be doing something special which has never been done before in conference. I can't say what it is, but it is so good. Apparently they are going to record us singing it, and use it in Church other church media. Pretty unique experience. 


In closing, 

Ik weet dat Jezus Christus mijn Verlosser is. (I know that Jesus Christ is my Redeemer)
Ik weet dat God onze Hemelse Vader is. (I know that God is our Heavenly Father) 
Ik weet dat de verzoening echt is. (I know that the Atonement is real)

and I don't have time to type out the rest. 

Till next week!

Elder Muller

I think I have this translated correctly!  --Amy

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Week One at the MTC! "Just Get Up, and Do Your Best."


Elder Muller and his companions in front of the Prove, Utah Temple! (That is his ID tag hanging out of his suit!)

 Elder Muller and his District at the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah
Elder Muller with his District...three Elders and six Sisters!!
Elder Muller running into Elder Alexander in the cafeteria at the MTC!  They are buddies from our Ward here in Florida. They overlapped by a few days in the MTC.  Elder Alexander is in the Argentina Mission!
The Scottish Elder favoring them with some Bag Pipe music!
Elder Muller and his trio in the classroom!

Elder Muller in his dorm room with roomies!  Elder Muller holding the Belgium flag!!!  Go Belgium!!!

Hallo van de MTC!!!!

It's been a crazy first week here. Every day feels like two weeks, and the week seems like a month. Reminds me of college a little bit.  I'm sure that it will start moving faster soon. 

So a little about the mtc.... I'm in a trio companionship with Elder Da Silva and Elder Matos. Elder Da Silva is from Portugal, but lives in Brussels. His mother works in the EU Parliament. He is called to speak Spanish, which he already knows, but has to learn Nederlands as well. Elder Matos is originally from Peru, but now lives in Canada. He is also called to speak Spanish, but must learn Dutch as well. 

The rest of our district is made up of sisters, 6 of them. They are all wonderful and are amazing examples to us. 

There is another district of Dutchies that is very similar to ours, there is one companionship of elders, Elder Hunter and Elder Silva (ya it get's a bit confusing at times haha). Elder Hunter is from Scotland, and is pretty amazing. He worked in a couple of the Church Pageants and has an amazing voice and is an excellent actor. He is the only other Elder called to speak just Nederlands like me haha. Elder Silva is Brazilian, but lives in Portugal. He is so funny. He speaks good English, but sometimes doesn't know how exactly to say something, so he makes up is own names for things. He is full of funny stories, and is just a great Elder. 

I'm the district leader for our district, and it's been quite fun. Mostly my job is to be a mediator in our district meetings. They are an open forum, and I'm just there to guide them along. Our zone leaders a lot of fun. Elder Reber and Elder Goodmunson are learning Danish, and are the only two elders in the world learning that language right now. They like to have fun with us, which is great. 

Our zone is made up of several different languages. We have the Swedes, the Nords, the Danes, the Dutchies, and the West Indies (which is funny cause the rest of our zone is in Europe). They're grouped with us because they speak Dutch in Suriname. 

So the language is coming along well. We've taught 4 lessons so far all in Dutch. Onze onderzoeker's naam is "John", en hij kompt uit den Hague. (Translation: Our investigator's name is "John", and he is from den Hague.)  We've taught him about the Atonement and God's love for him. Yesterday we taught him the Restoration. We watched the restoration video that I found on lds.org with Dutch subtitles. The Spirit was incredibly strong as Elder Matos, da Silva and I bore our testimonies of the truthfulness of the gospel and of the Book of Mormon. All three of us were crying a little at the end. 

This past Sunday was a such a Spiritually charged day. We started it off by taking part in the Ogden Temple dedication. It was incredible. The closing hymn was The Spirit of God. Imagine 3000 missionaries all in the same room singing that. Yeah. Amazing. 

We had the privilege to hear from Elder M. Russell Ballard last night for devotional. He gave a great talk, and what I think might be my motto for my mission. "Just get up, and do your best." 

So some exciting news, Elder da Silva and I were selected to sing in the MTC choir at General Conference!!!! It is going to be in Priesthood session, so Papa and Jeremy better keep an eye out for me!


Anyway, that's about all that I have time for. Below are some pictures for you. 

Talk to you next week!!!!!


Elder Muller