My heart is in Ecuador/Arizona. A mission blog for Hermana Miller: Week 5 email (11-2-2019)

11.2.2019: One month down, say what? Things are starting to get crazy around here! We are beginning our last full week at the MTC, or "week six" which means we’ll get to teach seven lessons this week! It's a lot, but it will be awesome.

We had snow this week in Provo!! It is so cold, which is especially terrible in my Amazon Jungle clothes – haha. I didn’t really bring winter wear because I won’t need it in Ecuador.

We began meeting with our new TRC amigo this week. His name is Octavio. The week before we had some TRC amigos in our actual class and one of them was named Oscar. So, when we walked into our appointment, it was Oscar!! Wait..what?? Yeah so it was confusing. Anyways, to make a long story short, he is an identical twin, which we didn't find out until we left the appointment and ran into Oscar haha. I don’t know why he didn't tell us before that he was a twin, but we all laughed about it later:) Octavio is awesome, he has such a strong desire to know truth and to do what's right. His family isn't thrilled about him meeting with us, but he just said, "They're not going to stop me, this Joseph Smith is one cool guy." Isn’t that so awesome?

One really great experience we had this week with him was that he said part of his issue with his family was that they had a lot of questions and points that weren't made very kindly, and he wanted to be able to defend the things he is learning with us, but he feels like he can't because he doesn't have his own testimony yet. He kept saying the word "desire". He wanted to know what was true. Coincidentally, (or not :) a scripture I'd been studying earlier that day had the answer: Alma 32:27. The spirit was strong as he read the verse aloud and then looked up in surprise. Then he asked us how he could feel what the verse described, and again, I told him the Book of Mormon could answer his question, in the very next verse. He read 28 aloud and then laughed and said, "wow, you guys are good!" I just grinned and replied, "Yo pienso que Dios es bueno!" It was so much fun.

I know that the Book of Mormon is the word of God. It isn’t a collection of a bunch of nice ideas for other people. The Book of Mormon has applicable principles for me, and for you! How wonderful that is, that right at our fingertips is THE manual for becoming more like Jesus Christ. I'm learning so much as I study with themes and questions in mind, and I feel closer to God through scripture study than I ever have before. God is so good. I love being a missionary:)

Hermana Miller

Sadie got to see a few friends from Nampa this week in the MTC, Truman Benjamin, and also Kamele Hoopii.... she said hugging Kamele felt like home. (and I think it was a great thing for her too, because Kamele had only been in the MTC a few days when they saw each other)