President Castillo emailed me about the hurricane and said that from what they have seen here in Dajabon it is only expected to rain heavily but shouldn´t be a big deal. He told me that he would let me know immediately if it becomes stronger or anything weird happens with it. So no need for you to worry Momma. We have plenty of clean water in the house and lots of rice to keep us alive if anything does happen :) For the moment it is just cloudy here, not raining or anything. Well this week was pretty normal. We as always here in this area have been struggling to find new people to teach. One of the people we are teaching is progressing a bit though. She came to two sessions of conference and liked it so that was cool. On Wednesday we had an activity to try and find more investigators. We watched part of Meet the Mormons at the church and told all the members they had to bring a friend. Not too many of the "friends" showed up haha but a few new people came. I was able to watch conference in English. It was awesome and I enjoyed it a lot.  On Thursday night president Castillo called me to tell me that I will be training a new missionary this upcoming transfer. So the next morning at 5:30 am we left on a bus for Santiago so that I could attend the trainers meeting. I am pretty excited for it. I think that it will be cool to have a new missionary and help him get used to the mission.  We also got the news that they will be closing the other area of Dajabon and that area will become part of my area. I am pretty sure that makes my area the largest in the whole mission. That was definitley unexpected but now my new comp and I will be the only two missionaries in the branch.  They also told me that I am going to be a district leader now.  Life goes on and I am always trying to improve and find out what I need to do to be able to help this area improve. I love you lots and all of the family. Be safe, smart, and enjoy everyday of life!

Elder Mifflin

September 19, 2016

 Well another week down. It is crazy how fast time is going by. I can’t believe that I have already been here for almost a month. This week was pretty good overall. During the whole week we have been able to invite about 5 different people to get baptized and they all accepted it so that was pretty cool. As always the big problem is that they still don´t go to church haha so we are working on that but at least they understand our purpose. On Wednesday we had a conference with multiple zones in a place close to the city of Santiago that is called Navarrete (like the last name of my old comp). Elder Martinez of the seventy talked to us and I was definitely able to learn a lot of how I can improve. He is a super cool dude. But yeah it takes about 2 hours and 15 minutes to get to Navarrete so we had to leave about 6:30 to make sure that we got there early. The conference ended about 3 and we actually had to take a bus to Santiago to be able to get a bus back out to Dajabon. In the end we had a very uncomfortable bus ride and got home around 7:00 so that took up pretty much that whole day. Then the next few days were pretty normal, working and teaching and such. On Sunday all of the commitments that people had made to us fell thru but we did have a lot of less actives come so that was good. Then today as you will be able to see from the pictures that for the first time in a long time we actually did something fun for P day. We left our house at 4 am to take a bus to Monte Cristi which is on the north shore of the island and is the area of our zone leaders. From getting off the bus around 5:15 we walked for about an hour to get to the base of the morro. From there it took about 20 minutes to hike up it. It felt really good to hike a little bit and the view was awesome. After climbing that we went down to the beach real quick to see the ocean. It was really cool to finally be able to see, hear and smell the ocean after having been on an island for more than 1 year without seeing it. I also took my shoes off and jogged a bit on the sand and it felt so good. I wanted to jump in so bad but don´t worry I didn´t do it haha. After that we went to the church in Monte Cristi and played basketball and soccer. It was a pretty awesome day overall. 

Elder Mifflin

September 5, 2016

Well if I could find one word to describe this week it would probably be....hot. It has been so dang hot here in Dajabon. The DR in general is way hot but it is worse here for sure, I sweat so much everyday.  I am still getting to know the area, sometimes I have no idea where we are haha but little by little I am learning all the streets and where the members and investigators live. We don´t really have very many investigators unfortunately. We are working hard on finding new people though. We do have 1 investigator who is progressing a lot. She is really cool and it has been fun to teach her. She should be getting baptized this upcoming Saturday so hopefully all goes well there. We are also working a lot with less actives. That is a huge problem here in this branch and we are kind of "sweeping" over the less actives to see if we can reactivate any of them.   In the boundaries of this branch there are about 1000 members but we only have about 40 active.  We are also visiting the members to strengthen them.  We are going to progress though little by little.  All is well and the mission is pretty normal for the moment. I love you guys a lot and as always I miss you all. Good luck with everything!

Elder Mifflin

August 29, 2016

Well I did end up getting transfered to a new area this week. I got sent to a place called Dajabon,  on the border of Haiti more or less close to the northern shore of the island. My area literally goes up to the river between the DR and Haiti so I can see another country from my area. It took about 3 hours to get out here from Santiago so I am about as far away from the rest of the missionaries as possible. Everyone has told me that it is hot as can be in Dajabon ,but so far it has rained everyday since I got here. The house here is absolutely terrible.  The electricity and water goes out a lot so that is bucket loads of fun. Speaking of buckets, when there is water, the pressure isn´t good enough for the shower to work so I have to bucket shower everynight now.  Four  missionaries live in the house,  one from Mexico, another from Argentina and my comp is from Guatemala. I am his "step dad" of the mission because he just barely finished his training with his "dad". His name is Elder Gonzalez. The area seems ok. It feels like it is a little bit dead haha so there is definitely a lot of work for me here. It is a branch so that was kinda weird to get used to again having such a small amount of people in church.  We do have some really solid investigators so I am optimistic about the future. Our area is really big again just like my last one. There are a lot of Haitians here and a good portion of them do not speak Spanish very well. I would try and learn Creole but it is the weirdest language I have ever seen so I don´t think that will happen.  I am still learning the area and getting to know the members and investigators.  I hope that all is well back home. I love you all!  Good luck with everything!

Elder Mifflin

pictures

August 10, 2016

Well another week has passed by pretty darn fast. Crazy to think that it is already August 8. This week went pretty well for me though. As always we have been working quite a bit. We have been able to find some pretty promising people and have some success with the people that we already have.  We had a baptism this weekend! She was an investigator from Rafey that I had been teaching  since I was in Rafey back in March and now she lives in my area again, so we got to keep teaching her. I was able to perform the baptism so that was cool to do that.  Sunday was also her birthday so we bought a cake for her and went over there last night and had spaghetti and cake. It has been a long time since I have had cake and it wasn´t that good haha but the spaghetti was super tasty. In other news the Bishop asked us to sing a special hymn this Sunday and requested that we wear our suits. I don´t have one but borrowed a jacket from Elder Joseph. It was the first time... and the last time that I will wear a jacket on the mission. It was so hot. It didn´t help that there wasn´t electricity in the church during sacrament meeting which means no fans or AC!  We had 6 people there again and it was the second or third time for a couple of them so that was really cool. In other news something wasn´t paid right or done correctly in the mission office and so the water company came and cut our water supply. We haven’t had running water for 5 days. It sucked haha nothing but bucket showers and dirty dishes that we couldn´t clean because it was a waste of our reserve water that we have in a tank outside. I also have a lot of dirty clothes haha but as we were leaving the house to come here they were outside of the house putting a new pipe in so we will have water when we get home. It made me feel like I was camping haha although I think camping is more comfortable.  I am not quite sure if I will be leaving or not this upcoming transfer.  If I do that means I only have 16 more days here.   Life is good and is moving along.  Also fun fact, English and Spanish are mixing into the same language in my head so when I am thinking it is about 60% English 40% Spanish.  I love you lots and tell all of the family that I love them too.  Good luck with everything.

Elder Mifflin