#46

Can I just say I just absolutely love this?  I love it so so so so so much. La Obra Misional. I am just so grateful for life.

This week was INCREDIBLE.  So first of all, last week I had my first concilio, which is leadership council. It was super fun! I was stressed out because on Friday I knew we would have to tell our zone what our leaders were telling us in the concilio, so I was taking notes like crazy!  But yeah, first of all, Hermana Cameron and I went and walked around this gorgeous centro in Málaga, and took pictures next to cathedrals and pretty buildings and had so much fun! Then we met up with some of the zone leaders from the mission and walked around and shopped a little, then headed over to Fuengirola- where the mission home is!  

I got to see tons of awesome people I know that I haven´t seen in a while, and I also got the chance to meet tons of new missionaries! It was fun. Hermana Deere cooked us café rio, which is the best! It was fun and yummy. Then we listened to the AP´s talk, and Hna Deere and President Deere also talked. They talked a lot about obedience and getting people to church. I really wanna focus on these two things, which is what our mission if focusing on especially this month! It´s awesome because getting people to church has always been so hard for me, this last week Hna Cameron and I hit our mission´s standards- minus having people in the church (given it was stake conference and we went all the way to Granada, so I think that didn´t help our situation, but still!). So yeah, this month our mission has a goal of getting 250 investigators in church on November 30th! Y vamos a lograrla/alcanzarla!

Also Tuesday I got the best birthday package ever- thank you SO MUCH family!

Speaking of Spanish, so Friday we had zone meeting and we had to give a talk on what the AP´s talked aobut, and since the AP´s are in our district, they of course were there to hear it, ah talk about pressure, I´m just like, they´re right here and they did it perfectly and now I have to try to copy that in front of them! Needless to say I prepared a lot, and in the end we did alright! Hna Cameron is just great at public speaking so she did an incredible job, I just tried not to hold her back too much haha. It was awesome because right before, we were doing interviews with President Deere, and man he is just amazing! He really made me feel calm and realize that I just do my best, the Lord called me here and He´s who I work for, He´s who I´m trying to represent.

We met tons of new people this week and found several new investigators! Mostly we found them by contacting potential investigators (people we contacted in the street) and teaching them and they happen to bring their friends or we meet their friends/family members at their house! We´ve seen many miracles.  One of our goals was to set more baptismal dates, and we were able to set a couple this week with some very prepared people!  

Also I got the chance to go on an interchange this week, my first one! Her name is Hna Arce and she´s from South Carolina and I learned so much from her! We taught this one young girl who is so prepared! She brings up things she´s heard in church and is like, ´´so can you explain more to me of what this is?  should i be living ___ law?´´ she just wants to make sure she´s doing everything the Lord asks of her, and she hasnt been baptized yet and already has her mind set to the temple! What an example for all of us.

And, TENDER MERCIES. This weekend we had stake conference in Granada! And I saw tons of people from my Almería ward!!!!!!!!!!!! Ah it was incredible! I saw Manolo and Manuela and their kids (the family that was baptized in February!) and tons of other friends and it was amazing! I also saw the amazing Hna Andrew again, it had been like 6 months and I freaked out to say the least! I also learned a lot from the speakers in the conference haha. They really focused on small and simple things and having consistency in them. The stake president gave 3 suggestions, 1)When was the last time you told your wife, husband, kids, and other family members ´´I love you, and I need you.´´ 2) When was the last time you bore your testimony of this gospel in front of your family, in day to day living? 3) Be firm and constant in small and simple things (family prayer, family home evening, family scripture study) and he said we shouldnt let our kids leave the house without having our family kneel in prayer to send them out into the world. 

I love all these small and simple reminders that are the keys to living a happy, Christ centered life. I want them to be engrained into my soul. God is good. Jesus Christ lives. Joseph Smith was His vessel to restore His church once again, and we have all the tools we need to return to live with Him after this life!

I love you all and want to say thanks for your prayers in behalf of the missionaries, they are felt and I am so thankful for faithful prayers!

Love, Hermana Miller

3 Nephi 27:19-21-- we´ve shared this with a lot of people this week, and really focused on talking about the doctrine of Christ with everyone! One thing I´ve really realized these past couple weeks is that Christs atonement can cleanse us every day through the Holy Ghost. It doesnt only happen one time with baptism, or even only every week with the sacrament, everyday we can feel that blank page, renewing power that comes from The Atonement of Jesus Christ, what a blessing! Also Hna Cameron said something that really impacted me, she told some members that when she prays at night, she thinks back on her day, and goes through the gospel of Jesus Christ (Faith in Christ, repentance, baptism, recieving the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end) and makes sure she´s lived all 5 of those steps everyday. I started doing this and I love it! Really helps me give an account to the Lord and myself of what I´m doing each day.

#45

Hey Hey! So this week has been crazy and emotional and wonderful! I spent my last couple days in Benidorm well, I absolutely LOVE my little family there with all my heart. I feel bad for the people who don´t get the opportunity to serve in branches during their missions, I got so close to all of them, and I seriously just felt so good being there, I love the Benidorm branch.  But also, something we realized is that there is SO MUCH WORK THERE. Benidorm kinda gets a reputation for being a tough area with not a lot of work, but once we tried breaking out of the cycle of visiting the same people every week it helped us to see that that area has tons of potential, and I know Hna Garcia is doing so well with it up there! The last night I just spent hours and hours cleaning and packing...I never got the chance to sleep but it was okay! Hna Garcia got super sick and it was so sad, and I still hauled her around all Tuesday night to say goodbye to people, she´s such a trooper!  But yeah, so I spent all night doing that, and then the next morning we headed out from Benidorm at 7 30am. It was actually funny because I called one of our investigators Tues. night to say goodbye to her, because we werent gonna have time to go to her house, and she told us she was going to Alicante Wednesday morning too! So we were on the same bus and that was fun. And then from there in Alicante, me and some other missionaries headed out towards the direction of Málaga! It was a fun bus ride, and even though it´s 8 hrs it never feels like it to me. I love it! I think I slept for like 45 mintues so that was good.  I got to know some more missionaries, and it was a great, beautiful ride.  Then when I got here to Málaga, I met Hna Cameron, who is so great! Oh my goodness I freaking love her already. She´s from Idaho and is so cute and athletic and smart, and I´m so excited to be working with her. I have learned a ton from her already! During the week of finding, the week where all over the mission we really focused on finding new people in our areas to teach the gospel to, her and her companion found over 30 new investigators! So we´ve got a lot of work ahead of us! She is ending her mission December 10, so I´ll be ´´killing´´ her.  I´m sad I´ll only get a transfer with her, but hey, I´ll just be grateful for it! 

It´s a little nerve wracking because since she´s ending so soon, I´ll only have a transfer to learn this area. And most likely I´ll get a companion who´s never been a S.H.E. (sister training leader) before. We also do intercambios (interchanges) like, once or twice a week with the Hermanas in our area, which includes Granada, Almería, Fuengirola, and the 4 companionships of Hermana´s here in Málaga. I´m excited to work with all of them, they all seem awesome! But yeah, for the first couple week´s I´ll be the one to leave the area, since I don´t know it well enough yet, and after that I´ll stay here for intercambios, which means it´ll be on me to know the area well enough to work it without anyone else´s help. Hahaha it´s rough. But i´m excited, it just means I have to try harder than I ever have before! I seriously am just trying to memorize streets and houses and keep my eyes alert. Ha, and church, oh my it was great! It was so different, I´m used to our lil branch of 40ish in Benidorm, and here there are 2 wards that go to the same church building (there are 4 wards total in Málaga), and our ward alone has like 150 people that come weekly! Um yeah, I have a goal of knowing everyone´s name by my 3rd Sunday here, so yesterday I was just talking to everyone, and as I was fasting I just had the most sincere prayer in my heart, asking Heavenly Father to help me memorize their names and faces. I just know how important working with the members is, and I want their trust and I want relationships with them like the ones I have with the members of Benidorm.  I know it won´t be the same, cuz it´s not the same size and there are other missionaries here, but I know with the Lord´s help He´ll expand my mind and help me do things I couldn´t do on my own!  Also knowing Spanish a little better is helping me out too, jaja.

It was so great, my first night here we had english class and a weekly noche de hogar that we do with ward 2 (i´m in ward 1). Hna Cameron and I had the lesson, and she had decided we´d teach lesson 1, the restoration. I´ve taught that a million times but I was so nervous, also, unlike giving talks in Benidorm, there are other missionaries there too which for some reason always makes me more nervious (for this reason I need lots of prayers this week, because at zone meeting Hna Cameron and I give talks in front of only other missionaries...in Spanish, haha I know I´ve been here for 11 months but I´m still way scared. Not to mention our zone is the biggest in the mission. Seriously your prayers are very very welcomed!)  but it went well. There´s this cute return missionary in our ward who gave us a paper after that said ´´Advice´´ and had notes on things we could do better. It was cute and I had a great time getting to know the members and missionaries!

Then on Friday we didn´t do anything for Halloween #lame. There was a Halloween party for the young single adults that the Castillos (senior missionary couple that I love!) put on.  We taught a lesson in the church to one of the recent converts in our area (His name is Michael, he´s from Nigeria and speaks english! It was so weird, we taught a few lessons in english this week which was 1) a little difficult just because I´m used to using spanish words to explain the Book of Mormon and the gospel and 2) made me think that i´d probably be a better missionary in english and then realized even more I got sent to Spain to be humbled through this language and to learn, which i have). But yeah this guy is amazing! He has such a strong testimony. He met the missionaries here this summer and was baptized in 10 days, and is golden! Ah, I really do love our ward and investigators. We were very blessed this week to have people put in our path! More than a few times we were in the houses of less active people, and investigators and they had family there, or friends walked in and we were able to introduce them to the gospel. 

Tonight we have concilio, which is like a meeting with the zone leaders and sister training leaders and ap´s at President Deere´s house and I´m excited! I´m excited to learn and see friends from all over the mission! Thank you for your prayers and wish me luck! 

Love, Hermana Miller

Mosiah 4:16-21

#44

Okay so this has been the craziest, most exhausting, best week! 

So first of all, thank you again for all the birthday wishes! I literally had the best birthday of my life! It was incredible. So as I said we went to the Alicante castle, and that was incredible! Then later that night we went to some citas and found some potential investigators, then we went to a Noche de Hogar with Lourdes and Hugo (our ward mission leader) and Ventura and Adolfo (recent converts) and a couple other members and it was amazing! We talked for a while, then shared the mormon message ´´Fathers´´and talked about God and family history and it was awesome. Then after we ate dinner and then they brought out my favorite- cheesecake! And sang me ´´feliz cumpleaños´´ and it was an amazing moment. Looking around, surrounded by my family here in Spain, everything felt very complete and full. It was a beautiful moment, my first day meeting Lourdes and Hugo I hoped I would get to spend my birthday with them- and I did! Then after I teared up and thanked them, I have so much love for them, and I know they love me. It was an amazing day! 

And this week was the week of finding, as a mission we had a goal to find 888 new investigators- and we saw SO MANY MIRACLES. We found 14 potential investigators and 9 new investigators and met and talked with many other people, I learned so much! We really went through our area book and found new people that were really investigators from years ago!

In our english class there´s a woman named Maria, and she´s incredible, ah i just love her! She´s not a member, last week we shared Romans 8:35-39, and talked about Jesus Christ.  She was like, ´´Jesus es como la gasolina divina´´- the divine gasoline.  I laughed so hard, but it´s so true! He´s what keeps us going. And that´s what I´m really trying to remember right now, because Saturday President Deere called and I´m leaving Benidorm. Friday night I just broke down (before we got the call) and was bawling in the bathroom, I just cant imagine leaving this place. I can´t lie, I was a little aprehensive to come, but honestly these past six months have been some of the best of my life. I have met literally life long friends here. One of the older members we visit a lot told me he felt like I was his daughter or little sister, ah and I´m just like trying to smile through the tears, I just love these people! And church was the hardest! oh man. I was planning on being pretty strong, but then an hour before church the branch president called and said, ´´Hermana tengo buenas noticias- tiene un discourso hoy!´´ So yeah, the good news was my unprepared talk hahaa.  I decided to get up and share my story about why I decided to become a missionary, and testify of Jesus Christ.  I shared a few scriptures about how we feel weak, and I talked about how Christ atoned for our sins, but He also felt our pains and weaknesses and inadequacies, and how applying the Atonement in our lives daily helps us overcome the depressive feelings that come from our weaknesses.  It was amazing though, because as I was talking I was probably just rambling on, and then our branch president hands me a note that says ´´tiempo!´´´and I knew I was supposed to end.  But then I suddenly felt like I needed to share an experience I had on my intercambio Saturday (Hna Heaton came to Benidorm and Hna Garcia went to Alicante to work for a day). We were knocking doors, and suddenly a 19 year old girl opened the door, and there was a dog barking and it seemed a little stressful but she let us come in and we had one of the most incredible lessons I´ve had on my mission.  We talked about her family, and she told us she hasn´t talked to them in months, they´re having issues, she just works here in Benidorm.  She was telling us how she used to believe in God, but for the past few years she´s lost that belief because people in her family that have passed away and there have been a lot of hard trials that have happened in her life. We just testified that God has a plan for her, and that through Jesus Christ she can find healing and peace. She was like, ´´okay, share this message with me then, I need help!´´ and then we pulled out the Book of Mormon and she was like, ´´Wait, you guys are mormons?´´ and we told her yes, and she told us she went to school with a mormon, ´´Eric!´´ And i was like, I´m sure it´s the Eric in our branch, and turns out it was! And she was like, ´´He taught me about your church a little. I haven´t seen him in a while but I actually have plans to hang out with him tonight!´´ It was incredible, seeing how the example of people just living the gospel and sharing their basic beliefs prepares people to recieve the Gospel later!  As I shared that in sacrament meeting I felt the Holy Ghost fill the room and everyone seemed more alert, and I cried and thanked them all and told them their efforts are not in vain.  Although not all of us will have the opportunity to see the fruits of those efforts, they are there, and one day we will be able to see what came of the good we did here.  It was really incredible too, because with this young girl, she told us she hadnt prayed in a long time, and she was embarrassed to do it. We explained that it´s simple and just a conversation with God, and when she prayed at the end of our cita, Hna Heaton and I were almost in tears. We could feel Heavenly Father looking down on that place, so grateful because He´s been waiting to hear from her for a long time. Ah, it was amazing!

Then we had a great experience after church, one of the members who has been telling us for weeks that she really wants to share the gospel but just doesnt know how, invited one of her friends to church, and after we went to her house to eat and we laughed and talked and then watched the Testaments and talked about Christ visiting the Americas and the Book of Mormon and the member invited her to listen to the missionaries and she said yes! And mind you, this woman has had member friends for years who have tried to get her to listen to the missionaries, ah it was just such a miracle!

Also, since we were going through old investigators in the area book for the week of finding, we found a list of people who went to english class a while ago, so we decided to pass by and reinvite them all to attend the class again! Well we passed by this one man, and we buzzed the outside buzzer thing, that you talk through the speaker to them (i have no idea what the name is) and there was some miscommunication and we thought he was the guy we were looking for but he really wasn´t, but he said he would let us in his building to talk to him face to face about our free english classes. Well we also invited this Ecuatorian man to our church (that was the next day at 10) and he said he would come, AND HE REALLY DID. It was hilarious, being like, there are investigators we´ve worked with for hours and begged them to come to church, and then we talk to this man for 5 minutes in his doorway and he comes the next day with his little 6 yr old girl. It was beautiful! 

So yeah. Week of milagros.  And last night we met with a guy named Romeo, he´s 25 and so legit! Haha, kinda like a gangster, but who told us he wants to do the things in this life that will please God, and I could feel that he meant it.  I love seeing these people with a real intent to find the truth!  And last night we met with Ventura and Adolfo in a park and played uno and drank bifrutas (milk-fruit drink) and ate brownies and had such a good time. I am gonna miss these people a ton, but I feel priveleged to have served with them here in this blessed city of Benidorm.  

Oh yeah. I didn´t even say where i´m going! I´m going to Málaga! My comps name is Hermana Cameron, and Hna Grant told me when we were together that she absolutely loves her, I´m so excited to serve with her! I think we´re in ward one. And also I get the opportunity to be a sister training leader, which means I get to travel around several cities in Spain and work with several Hermanas in this mission doing intercambios! I´m scared out of my mind. I feel really inadequate. But when i got the news, i just went over into a corner and told Heavenly Father that I didn´t choose this, and that if He was going to call me to it I was going to need His help. And although I´m still super nervous, I know He´ll provide. I need to improve my spanish. I just need to improve overall as a missionary. And I know this will be a good opportunity to do it! So yeah. It´ll be good. And good news, this means I get to do intercambios in Almería! So yeah, I´m going back there and I´m stoked!  But yeah. I really do need prayers at this point. And always. But especially now.

Love, Hermana Miller

Jacob 5:47,71-72

#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

#41

Hello everyone! 

This week has been one of the craziest. But so fantastic and I´ve learned a lot.

So last week we saw lots of milagros.  We went and visited several former investigators and had some success! We went to this one lady and she freaked out, she is from Nepal and she´s lived here for like 11 years though so she knows spanish well.  But she wants to practice english because she can speak it pretty well as well. So she told us she´d love to come to english class and also meet with us to talk about the gospel. It was awesome! So we went and talked to her and she´s just so cute and kind and we love her so much!  And last night it was so cool, she was telling us how she prays, and she always walks around with a prayer in her heart to God, and she told us, ´´but I do it in Nepali, not in english, I don´t know how to pray in english..´´ and I just told her, ´´It´s okay, God speaks Nepali.´´ The Spirit was so strong, and just testified to all three of us that God is our Father and I know He loves and listens to all of us, regardless of our race, religion, lo que sea.

Also we were talking to someone about questions he has about the Book of Mormon- which is so good! It´s so good to have questions. And we had answers for the questions, so we were answering them, but really Hermana Garcia taught me a lot that night. She really just testified to him that we can talk to others about our questions, that´s a great thing to do, and we can help each other out with our questions and doubts, but in the end we really need to take our questions to the Lord. He can answer all of our questions, and in a way that will really satisfy our souls.

We also went to a less active woman´s house and man, I´m serious I just love the people here! They never fail to surprise me.  I´ll just preface this story with the fact that we´ve been exhorting her to read the Book of Mormon for months, and every once in a while she´ll read a little bit but she´s very open with us about the fact that it´s not easy for her to read it and she´s not the biggest fan haha.  But this last week, when we went to go visit her she told us, ´´Hermana´s I have something strange to tell you.´´ And then she went on to tell us that she had had a nightmare and when she woke up she just suddenly had the instinct to grab the Book of Mormon and start reading it.  It just made me so unbelievably happy to hear that!  I love love love seeing that change, and of course it´s little by little, but seeing other people learn to turn to God in every moment...it just helps me to want to do that in my own life. To get to the point where it´s just so natural in times of fear, doubt, joy and sadness to turn to God, who´s always there with a listening ear. 

Then the crazy stuff.  So last Friday we went to a Noche de Hogar at a member´s house, and their friend was there. She has come to church once and has been in our noches de hogar a few times. Well she just broke down to us and told us she´s moving to Paraguay and she wanted to be baptized before her trip- her bus left Sunday night.  Yeah, and let me just say this- I am the LAST missionary who wants someone to be baptized unready. I don´t want people to be baptized just to set them up for inactivation. But we prayed about it and I just felt like she needed to be baptized, that we needed to do everything in our power to prepare her for baptism. So against all logic we go over the requisites for baptism and the next morning,Saturday morning, we just head over and start teaching her all of the missionary lessons.  It was rushed and weird but the Spirit was there, I could feel it and so could Hermana Garcia and this woman.  It was such an interesting experience! Not gonna lie, I felt like we were just throwing huge gospel commandments at her without enough explaination, but she was willing to do anything. She was like, ´´Yeah I drink a little bit of coffee everyday but I´ll give it up to be baptized.´´ It was crazy and cool and stressful. But then, as she was packing everything and we left to go to another cita (with the intention of going back to finish teaching everything that night) things just started feeling off and not working out.  We talked to our leaders and al final, said a prayer to our Father in Heaven.  Baptism is a big deal. A life long commitment, and even more. I didn´t want to mess up either way. I didn´t want to have her get baptized unprepared, but also if now was the timing of the Lord I didn´t want my stressedness or lazyness to get in the way of her not being baptized if now was the time.  So we decided now probably wasn´t the best thing for her, and we took that decision to the Lord. Once we prayed I felt a very peaceful and calm feeling, and knew that the witness I had recieved the night before from the Holy Ghost hadn´t been wrong, she does need to be and will be baptized. I think I needed to feel that, to feel that anxiety to teach her about the Plan of Salvation and Joseph Smith and the Restoration of Christ´s church and His gospel, so as to prepare her for that future day, when the missionaries teach her in another country and she remembers those feelings and witnesses of truth that she recieved from the Holy Ghost that crazy morning here in Benidorm.  That experience has taught me a lot and I´m so grateful it happened and that I got to experience it with Hermana Garcia- I´m telling you that girl works well under pressure! She´s awesome!

Also the man that we taught last week about the Book of Mormon, who was the former investigator, this last week showed up to the church when we happened to be there getting ready for english class and he asked for a tour of the building! It was a cool experience and fun. 

It´s been raining for the past couple days here, and on Saturday night, we were walking back from an investigator´s house, and we passed by the building of one of the recent convert´s, Ventura and a member José was with him with their families. They asked us if we wanted to come in and eat and then they ordered chicken and yummy food and spanish bread and we went in and ate and shared a message and it was just so fun! As we thanked them for being so kind to us, Jose told us that we´re like family here in Benidorm. And it´s so true, sitting there, in an unplanned cita eating dinner with our little Benidorm branch family on a rainy night just felt so homey. I love this place and these people! 

Also, we started the Book of Mormon as a mission last Monday, and oh man can I just say how much I love that book! I seriously can´t believe it was a struggle for me to read it before. There have been times in my life where it´s been like a chore. I remember reading it because I knew it was what I was supposed to do, but now I can seriously say that my soul delights in them. My question this time around reading it is how can I better learn to listen to the voice of the Lord and recieve revealation. Today as I was reading 1 Nephi 15, it amazed me the things I learned from it that I never have before.  This doesn´t really have to do with my question, but as I was reading verses 30-32 it reminded me of the conference talk in April 2014 by Randall R. Ridd I think, ´´the Choice generation.´´ And how it says that every thought we have, and every action and deed literally, physically has an effect on our bodies, that is plainly visible to God.  And Hermana Garcia and I were talking about how the physical ordinances we do in the church literally have a physical effect on our bodies, and how incredible that is when you think about the sacrament. Because honestly, the sacrament means everything to me, and I know there´s importance in the emblems of the bread and water, but today we talked about how those literally, physically heal us.  How as we participate in that, it literally changes our physicality and cleanses those marks that we made throughout the week by our unworthy thoughts or deeds. (I hope this isn´t false doctrine eh he...). But really, this gospel, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is just something so real and incredible that it´s without words. I just love it!

But anyway. Life´s so good. Hermana Garcia is great and I´m seriously so blessed to be her companion.  We´re having a good time out here in the boonies of Benidorm!

Thank you for the letters and prayers, I seriously need all the help I can get so I appreciate every one!

Love, Hermana Miller

1 Nephi 15:8-11