#43

This week has been a bold one.  We´ve really been trying to find some new investigators and we´ve had some cool experiences! 

We´ve been bold with our investigators. Really just telling them if they seriously want to know the truth they have to read and pray about the Book of Mormon.  One of our investigators is incredible, and she loves talking...a lot. Sometimes it´s hard for us to get a couple sentences out because then she interrupts us and goes off without pausing for like forever at a time! It can be frustrating, but this week we really tried to get our message clearly across to her, it was cool. She LOVES God. He is so much the center of her life, I love that about her.  She told her son, ´´I love you, but I love God more.´´ It should always be like that, since everything we have is thanks to Him. But yeah, she told us this last week that she promised God she would dedicate her life to Him, and that she wouldn´t join any congregation, so we just boldly told her that this is the true church of Jesus Christ, and the ONLY way to happiness. The only way to fully come to know Him, and that she needed to pray and kind of reevaluate to see if this is what He wants her to do. We just want to find people who truly have desires to come to know God on an even deeper level, and we think we may have found a couple!  

We decided one day to go out to one of our little pueblos, it´s called Altea, and ah, it´s GORGEOUS. But so beautiful.  We decided to go in a direction that we just felt good about, and of course it was full of these steep hills that no one was on and I was like, what a fail haha. But as we were up there it was so cool, we met this one lady who had lived in the U.S. for several years, who apparently speaks english (even though we just talked to her in Spanish..) but she was so nice and really clicked with Hna García because she had lived in New Mexico, where Hna García´s family is from! It was cool, but she lives in Madrid for most of the year, so we just passed her reference, but it was fun meeting her!  Then we were walking down the cutest little street, and I stopped to take a picture, and this man in his car comes to a full stop and is like, ´´Do you want me to take your girls´picture?´´ and of course I don´t like putting people out, but I was thinking then we could talk to him and hopefully get his info! So we said yes and he got out and took our picture and told us one year ago he met the missionaries in a city we are like an hour away from, Alicante. And he said he had a debt to them, because he told them he´d go to church but he didn´t, so I told him he´d better make that debt up and come and he gave us his number! So hopefully we´ll be able to make him a new investigator. Haha then also we were walking down the street and this young, tall guy was on the same side walk as us walking towards us, and I wasn´t gonna contact him, but then Hna Garcia saw me looking at him and was like, ´´Are you gonna contact him?´´ so i thought she was like, encouraging me to do it so I was like, ´´oh man, sure.´´ and we stop him right in a place where the sun was shining so bright and we just basically immediately introduce ourselves and start telling him about the church and it was so funny! Because I was just standing there, with my hands on my forehead, shading my eyes from the blinding sun, asking him about his beliefs, and when he told us he didn´t believe in God I just started testifying of the most basic beliefs I have, that we are children of God and I know He loves us. The guy was so nice and I think we really touched his heart. Not enough to get his number but enough to where I think he´ll remember his funny, random experience with two young American girls craning our necks up at him because he was so tall, trying to tell him that God loves him.  I was really grateful we talked to him, but it was funny because after we were walking away, Hna Garcia told me she had asked me if I was going to contact him because she wasn´t going to, haha, so we were both grateful for the mix up! If we had communicated better we wouldn´t have talked to him, I think the Spirit helped us to get a little mixed up!

We had many other interesting experiences, we´re teaching one of the newer members parents, who are really elderly and nice but half the time I´m not even sure if they really get what we´re trying to tell them. But it´s sad because the mom of the member, and the member dont really have any faith in the dad! It really frustrates me, they just tell us when we say we want to invite him to join in the lesson that ´´he doesnt understand´´ and ´´he´s to hard to really believe in this´´ and i´m just like, ´´No he´s not! I know we´re breaking down his barriers with every word!´´ and it is just a good reminder for me to always remember, no one is ever too far gone for God. He can turn weaknesses into strengths and mountains into valleys and hardened people into humble truth seekers.  We can´t ever give up on any of our brothers and sisters.

Ah, we also went to this little nation festival here for like a half an hour to see one of the little girls from our ward sing, she´s literally like a professional. I would be shocked if she didn´t make a record. But it was cool because right before she sang they had a bulgarian group dance and sing and also a group from España, and it seriously almost made Hna Garcia and I cry! Ha, i felt like a fool almost crying, and I looked over at her and I could tell she felt the same, and we were like, why is this happening?! But we decided it´s because we could feel the Spirit, testifying to us that everyone all over the world is a child of God.  And I love the people here, there is just such a mixture of culture here! And like, people that have actually lived there, I don´t know, like the U.S. is a melting pot but most people´s ancestors have been there for several generations, and these people are living here in Spain, and they´ve come from all over the world and I just love it!

And we used our comp studies to finish watching general conference!!!! BEST THING OF MY LIFE. But seriously. Elder Jorg Klei____ (dont remember how you spell it) gave one of the best talks I´ve ever heard in my life. Ah, I just loved it! And I especially loved when he said, ´´Try to smile and gaze heavenward.´´ What good counsel for all of us! 

I love this gospel more than anything. I love my God, His mercy and the gift of His son. I´m grateful for the Redeeming power of the Atonement. I´m grateful for the enabling power of the Atonement.  It´s what keeps me going, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. 

Thank you all for your love seriously I am so lucky to have the support I do! 

Love, Hermana Miller

2 Nephi 12:2-3

Celebrating Hna Garcia´s one month mark with Gelato!

Teaching one of the recent converts that moved here, Jose Manuel some Inglés! This kid is the best.

Rainy night in Alicante

#42

Hey! So this week has been crazy and fun and wet!  It´s been raining quite a bit (which is nice because things have been cooling down). Last week we went to Alicante on Monday night, because our bus to Zone conference in Murcia left at 7am! 

So we went there and met up with Elders Flint and Weenig and I asked Elder Weenig to give me a blessing. I felt a lot of comfort and peace and Heavenly Father´s love, I´m so grateful for worthy priesthood holders and for blssings that I know come directly from Heavenly Father through His authority!  Then we start walking to meet up with Hermana´s from our district, Hna Lyons and Hna Carmen, and it starts drizzling rain, and then once we met up with them and started walking it was literally like a movie! All of the sudden it started raining just out of nowhere (it was like when you´re watching movie´s and say, yeah right rain does not just start pouring THAT suddenly- but it did)!  It was beautiful! And we had already showered 2x that day but it didnt matter! We just walked slowly and took it all in, getting absolutely soaked! It was one of the most beautiful moments of my life, i was on a spiritual high from having just recieved a blessing, then I was walking down the gorgeous streets of Alicante, late at night, lights glowing everywhere, in the pouring rain, saying ´´hola´´ to everyone we pass, everyone asking where our umbrellas are, thinking we´re crazy! Haha. It was wonderful. Then we got back to their apartment and drank hot chocolate. It was a great night!  Then we got up at the crack of dawn, I straightened my hair in vain cuz it rained more before we got to zone conference and I ended up looking like a homeless person anyway, pero bueno.  But yeah then we went to zone conference, where we get instruction from president Deere and his wife and the ayudantes! It was INCREDIBLE. I for once knew lots of people there and I just had a blast talking to everyone, especially one of my best friends Hna Merrill! It was so fun, when I saw her I just ran up and attacked her and freaked out, then I saw this Elder and started freaking out to him about random things and Hna Merrill was like, ´´You haven´t changed at all!´´ and I was like shoot well that was a 10 month fail jajaja. But anyway. President Deere talked about the Atonement, and it was amazing. He said that ´´the goal of the Book of Mormon prophets was to teach us about the Atonement.´´ How powerful is that? That should be our goal while reading it, look for the truths there about the Atonement and Christs love. AH, I just love my mission president. I feel uplifted and edified every time I´m in his presence, and even when I just read his words- He is wonderful!

And oh man, we were running around all week talking to everyone we saw about general conference, inviting them to hear the words of living prophets! We had some funny experiences too.  Saturday night we were walking home, and there was this staircase that´s kinda steep, and right by it there´s a ramp, well I saw these three young girls and I didnt want to ask them to move so I start going down the ramp and claro I´m a clumsy person so I fall. Haha I immediately burst out laughing and they gasp and start asking me if i´m okay! So they were 14 yr olds and we start talking to them about the gospel and ah, they were so cute! Totally made the fall worth it to get to share a little bit of the message of the restoration with them haha.

Ah, I´ve learned so much this week, but it´s all just in beautiful memories that are hard to express. But things are going well here. 

General Conference! Man, I only got to see 2 sessions so far but i´m obsessed! It was weird, there was some confusion and we watched the womens session yesterday and one of our investigators came! The one from Nepal! So that was awesome. Then after our branch president didnt know how to work it or something so everyone (there were like 8 of us from the branch there watching it) went to our ward mission leaders house and ate food (his wife´s from Ecuador so you know it was incredible- I´M OBSESSED WITH SUD AMERICA). Then we went back at 6pm to watch the sunday morning session live. Of course we´re dying to see the rest so we´re using our pday to go to the church and have a conference day to catch up on some of it, so we´re excited! I was in love with what President Uchtdorf said about us putting up umbrellas to block God´s blessings from raining down on us- totally changed my perspective completely! I have told many people on my mission that God is holding all these blessing´s in His hands, and He wants to give them to you but you need to act first. But I realized with the Umbrella analogy that, of course, God loves us and is constantly showering us with His blessings! We ourselves are the one´s who choose to put up our umbrellas, and not allow ourselves to recieve those blessings! Well I watched it in Spanish haha so I might be off on what he said but that´s what I got out of it. Yeah we watched both sessions in Spanish, which I really liked and could actually understand all of it, I thought I probably wouldn´t even though I´ve been here for a while, ha, just sometimes the translations are rough for me. But I understood, but I´m looking forward to watching the rest in Inglés!  Lot´s of my questions and prayers have already been answered with the 2 sessions I´ve seen so I´m excited to see the rest!

Love you all!

Love, Hermana Miller

Proverbs 29:18