Tuesday, July 25, 2017

Homecoming for Elder Garrett Mifflin

Garrett will speak in church on July 30th at 9am.  The address to the church is
2925 E. Bengal Blvd (7800 South)

Saturday, July 8, 2017

June 30, 2017








Elder Mifflin continues to serve for a few more weeks in what will be his final area.  On July 18 he will celebrate his 20th birthday.  Yeilin, one of his current investigators, shares the exact same birthdate so perhaps they will celebrate together.  Below are some excerpts of recent emails.

“I am enjoying the mission but I can definitely feel my return day getting closer.  I am hoping to be able to help a lot of people in these 6 weeks and do some good in the world before going home to become a slave to college.”

“One thing that I will miss, but at the same time not miss at all about the mission is being able to meet and get to know so many random people everyday.  It is cool to meet all different types of people and try to help them in their lives…the not good side of that is we meet some people that are not so excited to see us…”

“We have been able to work with the bishop and the ward council to improve on some small but important things that need to change here” such as having members clean the church and starting sacrament meeting on time. “It is interesting how as a missionary you basically learn how to fulfill all of the callings in a ward because sometimes you are the ward.”

Recently Elder Mifflin was working to help a couple go to the temple but some challenges arose in the family and he was able to act as an intermediary.  He writes, “Believe it or not I have become quite the marriage counselor during the mission.”

 “On Monday (P day) we went back to Conani, my first area of the mission.   I was able to see a few of the people that I knew and worked with.  Overall it went very well.  The ride back to San Francisco was not very fun though.  It was only about 50 minutes but the bad part was that we had 15 adults and 8 children packed into a van that should probably not hold more than 12 people.  To make it even better, it started raining heavily which forced us to close the windows, turning the van into a giant sauna.  At that point my stomach was bothering me quite a bit so in all it was one of those things that are just terrible in the moment but later on you can laugh about it.  It was a pretty classic DR moment.”

Elder Mifflin was later diagnosed with Giardia but has now been treated and is doing much better!  We will see him in the flesh in a few weeks!  He will return home on July 27th and speak in sacrament meeting on July 30th 


Saturday, June 3, 2017

Pictures












May 22, 2017



My comp and I have mostly been in the process of finding new people. That has always been the hardest part of the missionary work but it is cool also. We have met a lot of cool people over these last 3 weeks and yesterday found a small family that seems very promising. The bishop was released the other Sunday and the ward is still with out a bishop so we are waiting to see what happens there. We are also working a bit with the members because the ward is actually pretty close to becoming a branch.  Freddy and his family and also Lizmari are all doing very well. They should all be going down to the temple on Saturday for their first time so I am excited about that.

Elder Mifflin

May 8, 2017




Well this week was very good and very interesting. First off we did end up having transfers. Elder Reyes left to go to a place that is just outside the city of Santiago. I sent you some pictures of the little goodbye party that some members had for him. It was cool and we ate cake. He is pretty close by though and should be able to come to the baptism of Lizmari.  I was pretty bummed that he left though, him and I got along really well and worked together well also.  I was hoping that he would stay for one more transfer but as normally happens with the transfers things did not turn out the way that I wanted, but there is always a reason.  My new companion is a Dominican named Elder Medina. He has about a year and four months in the mission.   The week was very busy and as always were have been trying to find new people to teach that are actually interested in our message.  We were also working hard with Raidelis and Lizmari to get them ready for their respective baptisms. On Saturday I was able to be the one to baptize Raidelis which was cool. It was the fulfillment of one of my mission long goals of baptizing a family of at least two parents and one child. The three did not all get baptized on the same day but either way it has been really cool to be able to teach and help this family. It has also been a great privilege to teach Lizmari. She honestly is the best investigator that I have ever had in terms of understanding and willingness to put in time to read and learn.  I will baptize her and confirm her the next day so that should be awesome. I have never actually been the person to do the confirmation so I am excited and nervous. Yesterday after church we ate at a members house and I ate so much that I was full for about 6 hours. It was super tasty though so it was worth it. Today was our p day Santiago and we decided to go. I bought some souvenir type things and also set things up with a member that is going to make a case for my Spanish triple combination. By pure chance I "ran into" a guy in the street named Jonny. I taught him while I was still in Pueblo Nuevo and he was later baptized after I left to go to Dajabon. It was cool to talk to him and see him again. I also ate at the member´s house that lived next door to us and always cooked for us. It was cool and fun but a very tiring day. Time continues to go by quickly.  Very soon we will be talking on Skype for the last time and the month of May will be half way over.  I hope that they leave me here tranquilo to "die" or to finish the mission but who knows. 



Elder Mifflin



May 1, 2017


 My comp is doing well and even though he can not walk as far as normal we have been able to leave and work at about 80% of normal.  Due to not leaving the house for about 3 weeks we have had to focus a lot on finding new people but it has gone really well for us so far.  We also have two people that should be getting baptized in the month of May. The first is named Raidelis, she is the daughter of the couple that got married and baptized and her baptism will be this upcoming Saturday. The other one is a girl named Lizmari who has been one of my coolest investigators on the entire mission. Never have I taught someone that has progressed and learned everything so fast or that has had such a big desire to change their life and live a new lifestyle.  She should be baptized in May.  We do have transfers on Wednesday but I highly doubt that I will leave. I would imagine that I will finish my mission here in this area, at least that is what I am hoping for.  I can feel myself slowly getting closer and closer to finishing the mission. I have less than 90 days now and it just keeps going down faster and faster.  It should be an awesome 90 days!  Also fun fact for you; Do you remember seeing a baptism that I had in Santiago last May that was my first time actually performing the baptism?  That girl turned in her mission papers about a week ago and should be receiving her mission call soon so that is awesome.  I am super happy about that and I am excited to see where she will go.  I love you all!
Hablamos el otro lunes 

Elder Mifflin

Saturday, April 29, 2017

April pictures






April 2017

 The kitchen has still been a mess with a cockroach issue we had to get rid of, and a near fire of my comp’s electric fan.  The work is going well though and highlights include helping a couple get married and then baptized this month.
Also, general conference was awesome and it was my last of the mission.  Other experiences included emergency surgery for my comp (he is ok) and long hours in the hospital with him.  Another cool thing in the midst of the all the down time is that I called a member from Dajabon and asked him about how things are going over there.  I am very happy to report that many of the less active members that I worked so hard with are now active and have callings.  That was very good to hear after not being able to see too many of the fruits of the work while I was still there.  My comp still cannot work normally so I was only able to teach a few lessons last week.  The good thing though is that the lessons that we did have were awesome and very important.  So even though we have not necessarily been working super hard we have been seeing miracles here!  Life is good and time is going by fast.  Love you all!



Elder Mifflin

Tuesday, March 28, 2017

March 27, 2017

I did end up getting transferred. It was a weird transfer. My comp and I both left the area and they moved the other two Elders that were in the same ward with us into our area. I was pretty shocked by it but oh well such is life. It was unfortunate that I had to say goodbye to the people we were teaching after only knowing them for a short time. Anyways I am now in a city called San Fransisco De Macoris, it is in the northeast corner of the country. So I have been getting to know everything over again. My companion is named Elder Reyes and he is from El Salvador. I have now had companions from 7 different countries during the course of my mission. The area seems to be going well though. We have some really cool investigators and have already found some cool new people while I have been here. The apartment was absolutely disgusting when I arrived. There were maggots on the floor and every little thing in the kitchen was covered in sticky ish. I have had to do a lot in these last few days to clean it up including spend most of the day today cleaning out the kitchen. All is well though. This mission continues as normal. Now that I am an oldy of the mission, adjusting to a new area/comp/people is not very hard. As I said we have met some really cool people over these last few days. I also had a really cool experience on Saturday. In the mission when we are contacting and pass a really rich house it is normal for us to ring the doorbell even though they always tell us to go away. On Saturday we were contacting and rang the doorbell of a mansion in our area. To my complete shock the guy came outside and talked with us and then invited us in.  It was easily the nicest house that I have entered into in my whole mission and probably the first house that I have gone into that has been bigger that my house in Utah. He is a member of another church but the lesson actually went pretty well and he said that we could come back.  But yeah that was my week in a nutshell.  Good luck with everything and I love you. 


Elder Mifflin