3 March 2014  Jump Day

Hello Family and Friends,

The transfers are in! I will stay in Restinga and Elder Horst will finish his mission in Pelotas. Elder Dos Santos will be my companion. He is an excellent missionary, one of the big baptizers on the mission so I have high hopes for our time together. We arrived here in Porto Alegre together which is interesting because that means we have the almost the same amount of time on the mission. He is from the North part of Brazil.

Speaking of time on the mission this past week I reached the infamous "Slump Day" or 1year and 6months on the mission. That is crazy to say, 1year and 6months. I really thought that this day would never come. When I realized that I hit the Slump day mark, I remembered something that my missionary preparation professor at BYU told me. He said that you have to change Slump day into Jump day. Usually when missionaries reach 1year and 6months they start being more relaxed and start thinking a lot about home and less focused on the missionary work. In some cases it destroys missions. These last 6 months are the most crucial, it will make or break your mission. My professor told me that the drive and determination that you have when finishing your mission will follow you back to the "Real World" and that you will have a great advantage if you are working at your full potential. If you finishing your mission flying then you will soar in life as well hence the jump day instead of slump day. President gave me the perfect companion to help me stay focused on my purpose as a missionary, Elder Dos Santos, and we are going to dominate here.

I have some news in regards to coming home. Our secretaries of the mission say that I will be coming home the 13th of August. This is good because it will give me some time to get things in order before going off to school. There was a missionary living in our house who finished his mission today. Yesterday at church he bore his testimony and it was emotional. A returned missionary then bore his testimony after and mentioned that the mission is the best time ever and that it only gets harder after. Actually he talked so much about life being difficult compared to the mission that I almost called Pres. Castro asking for more time! I know that it will be complicated but I am determined to go into this 4th quarter of the mission running at full speed or as Marshawn Linch says, "Beast Mode" haha. It will be the best time of my life until this point.

That is all for now,

Love Elder Miller

Tchau