♥ love from Arizona week 47 (8-24-20)

Hello, everyone, it's still 115 degrees and I'm still on a bike, but rumor has it that that might change! Keep me in your prayers! 🤣 Sol and Vanessa were baptized on Saturday, it was such a happy day! They were really so so prepared, and all they needed was for us to give them the lessons. Nonetheless, I feel really blessed to have been a small part of their journey. Now they've made covenants that will bless them for forever and help them find an inner peace that truly can't be found any other way. How cool is that? Now that Sol and Vanessa have been baptized, we are going to have to find some more prepared people. :)

 We had kind of a funny experience the other day, biking around a trailer park looking for service opportunities, and this one guy with a long ponytail and bangs (haha maybe I should've let that scare me off) was cutting down a ton of stuff in his yard. He was using a leaf blower and couldn't hear me and evidently couldn't see me waving to try and get his attention.... lol. Eventually he did, and he walked over, turned off the blower, and looks and me and says, "Talk!" If I wasn't a missionary trying to make a good first impression I would've given a piece of my mind... (my comps afterwards laughed and laughed, they were just waiting for me to let loose on the guy...10 months in the mission still hasn't totally tamed my fire temper haha)  Anyway, I said, "Hello, sir, we are out looking to help people in their yards, and we would love to help you clean up all these branches everywhere." Then he went on a rant! "Nobody CARES anymore! We don’t want your kindness, your help, or you around here! Worry about yourselves and let other people worry about themselves. The world is changing, just give up, get out of here, and go home!" Then he moved his hand and brushed at us like we were a couple of flies and turned around and walked off. Oof. That hurt a little bit at the end of two fruitless hours in the glaring Mesa sun in the middle of what was actually a really hard week. But as I reflected on it later, and talked to Heavenly Father about that mean old man (and about how grateful I am for the gentling influence of the spirit that stopped me from grabbing that long gray ponytail and whipping him back around... just kidding. God must get a kick out of my prayers.) I realized how sad that is. That guy doesn't have any hope for anything, and I feel sorry for him.

When all is said and done, it is HOPE that gets me through the day. Hope that God lives and we are in His hands. Hope that there will always be people that DO care. Hope that this next person might answer the phone. Hope that even if they don't eventually someone will. Hope that even when I feel so frustrated and unproductive, the Lord is using me to accomplish His purposes. Hope that tomorrow will be an even brighter day. And guess what the source of all that sustaining hope is? Jesus Christ! How blessed am I to know that He is a source of endless hope?!  One of His favorite names of mine is” High Priest of Good Things to Come”. I 100% believe that there will always be good things to come. I love this quote, "The future is as bright as your faith." Mine is a God of hope! Its scary for me to imagine what it would be like to face this time without hope that God knows better than I do and that like our sweet prophet has taught, the blessings that come from enduring hard things well are real and eternal. I'm trying to keep an eternal perspective, after all, mortality is just a blip on the timeline of eternity and our eternity is going to be wonderful. If that feels hard to believe, or if you feel like your hope and faith is feeling a little shaky, read the Book of Mormon. You weren't expecting that, were you? :) I don’t know how it works, but when you open the Book of Mormon, it's like putting on a pair of glasses with the prescription: "It's not as bad as you think it is. Look, this guy and this guy and this guy and his family did it, and so can you!" Its just a diary of success stories and if they ever turn our journals (here's a plug for journal writing!) into scripture a couple thousand years from now, they'll see that God didn't abandon His people in ancient Israel, neither will He abandon His people in the pandemic of 2020. Some days I just bumble onward and think, "Good thing He's got this." :) We got this! One day at a time and with lots of time on our knees. I'm so glad to be a bearer of the greatest news of all time: there is ALWAYS hope. Even for Mr.ponytail.

Love you all, you're in my prayers!

Love, Hermana Miller 

♥ from Hermana Miller week 46 (8-18-20)

 It's been a crazy busy week and all of my spare moments were spent remodeling the guest house of the member that we live with so that it can be ready for more missionaries to live here.  With all the influx of reassigned foreign missionaries, there is great demand for missionary housing. So by next transfer, we’ll have 3 sets of sisters: our trio, and two sets of English speaking sisters in this home… It’s gonna be a party. :) To get the extra garage apartment ready, we gutted the whole thing and patched it up ourselves...tore out carpet, repainted and are putting in new baseboards.   We are pretty proud of it and all the fun handy skills we learned while doing it. Besides that the chickens are still thriving, even in the heat, and our garden is growing.  I still haven’t fallen in love with being on a bike, and this week have had a lot of issues with tires, but it’s okay- it’ll work out.  Maybe next transfer I’ll get to ditch the bike, who knows?

 

Our investigators, Sol and Vanessa are getting baptized on Saturday! We are so excited! Please keep them in your prayers this week so that can go smoothly:)

 

 Sure love you all and am grateful for your sweet emails and can feel your prayers. 

Lots of love from Mesa, 

Hermana Miller 

Happy 20th Birthday Hermana Miller~

It was hard to not celebrate with you today, but I know it was a good day with a flood of emails.  You said your companions woke you up with blasts of confetti strings, made you buckeyes (chocolate peanut butter balls) for dessert.  What you probably wanted  most for your birthday is for people to answer your calls- and I hope that happened.  Happy twentieth Birthday sweet bug... you will always be our miracle #1

 

♥ from Hermana Miller Week 45 (8-10-20)

Hello! 

I have nothing to report except for that the Lord won't stop showering us with blessings! Every day we see miracle after miracle, and tender mercy after tender mercy, and it just blows my mind! God is so good and the gospel is true! :) with that, this week we were able to put another person on date for baptism in our area, which brings us to a total of 4... and we are pumped! She was someone we called on Monday (we had her phone number in our contacts from previous missionaries) and so we just called her up, got to know her a bit, taught her a short lesson, and set a follow up appointment. So then on Wednesday we called her and taught her about baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost and what a life-changer that is, and she's like, "I would like that." And so we said, "Well, you can have it! Will you follow the example of Jesus Christ and be baptized?" And she said yes! It was so awesome, and when we hung up, we jumped up and down and screamed because we were so excited! Really, the Lord has just blessed and blessed and blessed us and I'm so humbled and grateful to get to help Him gather his children. It's the experience of a lifetime. 

This week I wanted to share a scripture from the Book of Mormon that touched me this week: 

Jacob 5:22 And the Lord of the vineyard said unto him: Counsel me not; I knew that it was a poor spot of ground; wherefore, I said unto thee, I have nourished it this long time, and thou beholdest that it hath brought forth much fruit.

Sometimes the Lord puts us in tough spots, but He knows that, right? After all, besides the fact that He is all knowing, He is also on a mission to save and perfect YOU. And so sometimes that means the process is hard and painful. But here the Lord very straightforwardly says, "I know what I'm doing, you dont need to tell me how to do the job." Sometimes I think some of my prayers are spent informing the Lord that something must be wrong with the plan He's got going on, because it's just too hard, too uncomfortable, too inconvenient, too unexpected, or just too hot haha. But here the Lord reminds us that he knew that it would be hard, uncomfortable, inconvenient, unexpected, or hot, but he also knew the end from the beginning, and if we are willing to go to work in the plot of dirt (whatever that means) that he has allotted us, we will soon find a plentiful harvest. I know this is a good analogy because my garden out back is sprouting, even in Mesa's August heat! :) But seriously, He has got this. Trust Him. Do your part. Work hard, give it all you got, and you will see the Lord bless you with all that you stand in need of. He says too, in that verse, that he has nurtured you a long time to be in this place. Think about that for a sec. How has God prepared you to flourish in this moment, to reap a bounteous harvest in what appears to be unprofitable ground? When I think too long about it, I start to get a headache haha. Surely there is a God in heaven who loves us and has a perfect plan for each of us and isn't going to stop that work until YOU are safely home in His arms. I KNOW that's true. 

Love you lots, Hermana Miller  

 

♥ from Hermana Miller week 44 (8-4-2020)

 

Hi everybody! This is a short one, because we biked 11 miles today in a Mesa August and I'm beat!! Don't worry, half way through we stopped at a Dennys and got smoothies. But it has been a great and crazy week! Hermana Ayre and I got a new comp, named Hermana Clegg, she's  so wonderful and the three of us have so much fun. We built a pretty legit garden for the sweet lady we live with and painted her chickens' toenails. (Don't worry, I've done that before and I know what I'm doing😉It also helps us tell them apart) We put another friend on date for baptism this week! It was cool to see service opportunities lead to someone having their heart softened enough to meet with us long enough to get to that point. She is Alejandra, and she is doing great:) The work is good and I'm living my missionary dream. Also, I hit 10 months yesterday, crazy! The time flies. Craziest/best 10 months of my life. I'm blessed and happy to be in Mesa, it's a great day to be a missionary💙  

Love, 

Hermana Miller