#10

Okay, so I had literally one of the BEST DAYS OF MY LIFE THIS WEEK.  This week was pretty much the best week of my life not even exaggerating.  MANOLO, NOELIA, AND DANIEL WERE BAPTIZED!!!! I don´t think my joy has ever been so full as when I watched them each come up out of the water, clean and pure and ah!  Oh my.  It was literally priceless, when i look at those two beautiful children (Noelia is 10 and Dani is 9) I literally see missionaries, they both want to serve and they are so intelligent and kind and wonderful...I know they will continue in righteousness.  The Lord has been preparing this family for years to embrace this gospel.  Ah, and now they´ve entered into the gate and wow, I am happier than I´ve ever been because of this!!!  I have never felt joy like this before.  It is something beyond anything I could imagine!  When they bore their testimonies afterward, Daniel said, ¨When I came up out of the water I had joy, I felt like I do when I read the Book of Mormon.¨ Oh my, what an example to me!  We should all realize the blessing we have of this gospel, and be filled with joy as we get to live it!!!! Ah. I love Heavenly Father, and now i have my own, personal testimony that He is preparing the hearts of the children of men to recieve His gospel, it was by His grace that we came to know this wonderful family and now they´re on their way to being an eternal family by being sealed in the temple!  I am so grateful for members who are anxious to share the gospel with their friends- that´s how we came to start teaching them, it was because a member of our ward is their family friend and now look, THEY´RE BAPTIZED and happy and grateful that they can now fully embrace the blessings Heavenly Father has for them!  I´m so grateful.

Also, this week Hermana Andrew, our third companion came! She is from Ohio and ah, she is hilarious! I am not gonna lie, i kinda wanted to go my whole mission without having to do a trio, but I love it!!!  It´s awesome, a little hard to organize time but so worth it!  It keeps things interesting having three of us around, and we all get along really well!  It´s a party, and we teach well together too, i think! Ha, Hermana Andrew studied spanish for six years before the mission, she has been here for 7 months and she is fantastic at speaking!  I thought maybe i would be quieter with my spanish and have less time to talk during lessons, but I´ve been trying harder ever since she came and i mess up a ton, and i´m not really sure if i´m making much progress but I go a little further than i used to in trying to just have conversations with people and such, i love it!

Ah, also this last week was so dang hard!!! Our Elders left!  Elders Bird and Sharp and Church and oh my, i was about to cry.  Ha, Manolo and his family invited us all over for pizza the night before the transfers and it was a blast!  But after dinner we were teaching a lesson so the elders had to leave and that was going to be the last time i saw them, so I was so sad!  As i shook hands with Elder Church he was all, ¨Don´t cry Hermana..¨ and I told him i was about to, ha, then he said, ¨This is the mission, you´re gonna have to get used to this.¨ Hahaha ahhh i hate goodbyes. And Elder Sharp is my mission dad since he was my first district leader, and he helped me so much! So at the start of our lesson I´m not gonna lie i was pretty down, but then that was the night that we brought up their baptism date for the first time since we set it with them in our first lesson, and they said yes they still wanted to be baptized and wow that turned my mood around fast!  Then i was still about to cry but for joy and gratitude! Haha, oh the highs and lows of the mission..it´s so much fun and unexpected sometimes!

And yesterday Manolo, Noelia, and Dani recieved the gift of the Holy Ghost and it was powerful.  I didn´t understand much but the spirit was super strong and it was an incredible moment! 

Last night was a little weird, we visited a member and I felt like I understood and could speak a little bit and after our lesson with them I was on a high!  I was so happy and excited and just plain joyous about life.  So then we went to visit another member.  The wife is wonderful, i love her so much! Ha, but her husband jokingly said I was ugly, and trust me, I can take a joke, i laughed and knew he was kidding and I thought it was funny!  But then he said it like seven more times and I was just like, okay....not really funny anymore.  Then he was calling his wife fat and I got ticked.  (By the way this guy is large and not the best looking guy so i was just confused as to how he felt comfortable tearing other people down for their looks.)  I was so mad i could barely see straight.  My comps started to share a spiritual thought and i just sat there mad and silent, then he was like, ¨Hermana Miller (insert something in spanish that i didnt really understand or listen to)?¨ And i just turned to him and was like, ¨i dont really understand and i dont have much to say¨ then i tried to bear my testimony on how we´ve made convenants with God to help and serve one another and that includes helping people in our own families, then i turned to my comps and in english said, yep that´s all i have to say.  Oh man it was tense.  And my comps felt bad cuz they could tell i was mad and sad.  But yeah we finished the spiritual thought and were about to say the prayer, and I wasnt really feeling the spirit super strong, because i let my bad feelings get in the way of that, and he turns to me and is like, ¨i want hermana miller to say it.¨  I said I didnt want to say it and told Hermana Andrew to say it.  And please dont think i act like this often, I am always willing to say the prayers even if it´s grammatically terrible and I am usually good at holding in my feelings because i recognize that i am here to represent Christ, but last night...wow it was rough.  I was just like, why is he calling me ugly and calling his wife fat and his missionary daughter fat and being a jerk ahhhhhhh. I was so frustrated.  But he insisted that i say the prayer, so i said i would. I have never said a more sincere prayer at someones house than that one.  Wow, i felt the bad feelings sort of leave me and i felt heavenly father´s love for me and for this wonderful woman in our ward.  I would like to say i felt an overwhelming Christ like love for this man in our ward, but i didn´t- obviously I´ve still got a lot to work on. Hahaha.

But it was just crazy, cuz the day before i had told Hermana Andrew that I am more confident in myself here than i´ve ever been in my life.  I´ve never felt more inadequate and i´ve never repented so much but i just love who i am trying to become and I know I am being molded into what Heavenly Father wants and needs me to become.  Ha, and I´m just more confident about everything about me all around to tell you the truth.  So it was just interesting that a day later this would happen, but it was cool.  Because i went into their bathroom, looked in the mirror, and the evidence was right there that i´m not ugly. HAHAHA i´m kidding that´s not where i was going with this, but i did give myself a little pep talk.  I know Satan´s just trying to work on me, and it was great because i know that my confidence comes from knowing who i am eternally.  I am a child of God, I have really internalized that here.  I am trying my best to follow Him, and regardless of my weaknesses He loves me still, and I´m working on becoming better but for right now I´m trying and that´s what counts!  It was great, feeling a little torn down, but realizing i have a testimony of my divine nature and literally I feel even better about myself than i did before last night!  Because I know I am a daughter of God, and everyone else is also a child of God, and I know as I try to turn to Him, during those hard moments, and during those confident moments, I am changing.  I have to pick myself up and keep going because other people need to feel this joy i feel, this happiness of knowing where you came from, what your purpose is here, and where we´re headed.  And that Heavenly Father is here all along the way, so we don´t have to do it alone. 

I love this city! Almería is holy ground to me.  I am grateful i get to walk these streets everyday with this gospel message in my heart and my Heavenly Father and Savior by my side!

Love, Hermana Miller

Romans 8:18