Brother Keith got BAPTIZED!!

Bom bada bum bum bum!! 📣

Happy day. :) I'll send pictures. 

Nothing too chaotic happened at this baptism... but something always goes wrong at a baptism, so this one's was that the programs didn't get printed and everyone was late. :) And the brother baptizing him didn't know the prayer very well so it took him several tries to get it right. :) But it was done! Yay!

We also picked up a couple investigators and talked with a few families that we hope to bring to the gospel. :) We went on exchanges with the Blacksburg Sisters and I went to Blacksburg. We tracted a lot and taught a family that came to the baptism! I love the sisters I get to serve with. They are awesome. :)

Stake Conference was this week and our recent convert spoke!!! He was so nervous but he did a fantastic job. He's the greatest guy ever. Everyone loved him. :)

We have a few people on date who we think are pretty promising. They just need to come to church. :)

Sister Quesenberry is getting baptized on Saturday!! We're super excited for her. And we're also having a fireside on Thursday. We're wearing out this ward. :) Baptism, fireside, baptism, in 2 weeks. Whoops....

Super excited for the work here!! There's so much to do!!

The Church is true everyone!!

Sister Miller

Brother Keith!

Meagan Linger, me, Stacey Murphy. :)

Brother Keith Is Getting Baptized!!!

Hey everybody!!

Guess what!! Brother Keith is getting baptized on Saturday!!! I'm so excited!!

Brother Keith has been taught for about a year now (he was actually found by one of my MTC companions). He is 65 years old, had to overcome his 3 pack a day smoking habit, had to have an elevated interview with our Mission President, and has been taught on and off. He has now been smoke-free for a month and a half, has been to church for more than 2 months, and knows this church is true. Before his interview with President, he said that he didn't feel ready for baptism. He wanted to get baptized, but he felt like he still needed to do some stuff first. We both knew he was ready for baptism. He has made so many changes to his life and has progressed so much. We did want him to feel comfortable with baptism before getting baptized, so we just told him to tell everything he was worried about to President and he would help him. We figured President would interview him and say that he needed to do some stuff for a few more months and then he would interview him again.... but they came out of their interview on Tuesday and surprised both of us when President asked him when he was going to get baptized and Brother Keith said "Saturday." :D We couldn't stop smiling oh my goodness we were so happy. 😁

Everyone ever born has the potential to go to the Celestial Kingdom. The question is whether or not they're willing to work to get there.

Brother Keith is awesome.

This week I had my first exchange with one of the sister companionships in this zone. We are over three companionships here and I love them all. :) I went on exchanges with Sister Mortensen in Bluefield (VA/WV) and it was awesome. We found an investigator and put her on date (I love putting people on date) and ran through a serious rain storm to our car. We were soaked.😅

And we are preparing Sister Quisenberry for baptism as well on the 2nd of July. She is awesome too. :) We had a lesson about the temple and she was so excited to go!! 😄 I love the temple. And in that lesson, we ended up bringing her next door neighbor who is less active and he was able to bear his testimony on the temple and I think it was super awesome for him. Everyone needs to go! The temple is awesome! All you people in Utah should go this week. :)

We found a couple new investigators this week as well. One of them is a religion minor in college and believes in all of them.... :P He's hilarious and asks really good questions. Good thing the Spirit's the one that teaches!

We're also currently teaching someone who's agnostic. I've taught agnostic people before, but in my experience they haven't kept their commitments or really desired to learn much, let alone come to church. But this one comes to church every week and has read the whole Book of Mormon.... but she's still agnostic. She's mostly learning just to learn. Not to gain anything spiritual. But we think there's a part of her (however small) that wants this because... she keeps her commitments and still comes to church. We have been studying and praying so hard to know how to help her and the last couple lessons have been good for her I think. We're helping her to apply what she learns so she can learn-to-become instead of just learn-to-learn. 

Something that this experience has really helped me with is understand how the prophets teach in the Book of Mormon. I understand what they've taught, but now I need to look at why they chose to teach a certain topic to certain people and how they teach it so I can learn from their example. I'm looking at the Book of Mormon in a totally different way and I am learning a lot. And it's funny because sometimes I'll see that someone in the Book of Mormon does something that Preach My Gospel tells us to do. Go figure. ;P

I love this gospel. I know it is the gospel of Jesus Christ and it is the perfect way for us to have eternal joy, eternal knowledge, eternal growth, and eternal families; starting with that first step of Faith. I KNOW that faith allows miracles to happen. I KNOW that God is our Father in Heaven and He watches over and helps His children. When we have faith to act on that knowledge, He lifts us.

I hope you all had a great Father's Day!!!!!

Sister Miller

After we ran through the rain storm!!

Sister Mortensen, Sister Flandro, Sister Farnsworth, and me!

I'm In Christiansburg!

Hello everybody!

I am now in my third area on my mission! AND in 4 days I will have been on my mission for a whole year. 😱 Crazy!

Christiansburg is in southern Virginia (don't worry though, people still have the accent) and the people here are so nice. Looking on my mission areas I think God was easing me into the bigger wards. :) First with 15 people, then 80, then 150. :) You'd think I would be ok with bigger wards since, you know, I'm from one. I actually think I like branches better. Go figure. 

The ward here loves missionary work and that is soooooooo niiiiiiiiiice. We had 14 member presents this week, and I think the most I'd ever had was 6 in a week. I love member presents because their testimonies are so wonderful and powerful. They add so much to the lesson. Still getting everyone's name wrong but that's not surprising whatsoever. :) Sister Farnsworth is awesome. :) She is from Logan, Utah and is teaching me so much. :)

Our most progressing investigators are Brother Keith, Brother Mattox, and Sister Quisenberry. Brother Keith has his interview tomorrow 😄 and Sister Quisenberry's date is coming up very soon. Brother Mattox is hilarious. I'm so excited to teach him. There's a lot of potential here and I'm excited to serve here. We picked up a mom named Rosie who is very nice. She's from Puerto Rico and has a couple sons. I hope we get to teach the whole family!!

Still have no idea where anything is but I pray that I will know the area soon. It's not as big geographically as my last two areas, but it's much more populated so it feels bigger.

Saying good-bye to everybody in Buckhannon was so sad. :( I will miss that place dearly. Locusts and all.

Hope you all have a great week!!

Sister Miller

Sister Farnsworth

Transfers!!

I totally forgot to tell y'all that transfers was this week so I wouldn't be emailing until Wednesday.... oops. This week was awesome!!!!

But, first thing's first, I'm getting transferred Christiansburg.... I don't know what state that's in but that's ok! We totally spaced asking where Christiansburg even was but I'll find out tomorrow when I get there. :P My companion is going to be Sister Farnsworth. It's another Sister Training Leader area so I'm still going to be a Sister Training Leader and will see Sister Cutler at Mission Leadership Council meetings. :D Yay! It will be an interesting transition to another zone because the zone I'm in right now is tiiiiiny (like, 8 companionships total) and the zone I'm going to is laaaarge. I'm totally sad to leave Buckhannon. :'( It's awesome. I wonder what lies in Christiansburg. :)

In other news, I ate bugs this week. :D They were actually really good. The member we have in this ward from Thailand loves the locusts here because they are actually super expensive in Thailand so she loved that she could just go outside and catch as many as she wanted for free! She boiled them, fried them, and put soy sauce, salt, and pepper on them. Yum!! I had to not look at it while I ate them though because... they look like bugs.

The Ordanez family came to church again!!! Oh my goodness, adorable story: one of their sons, Angel, who is eight, saw that everyone was going up there and talking into the microphone (testimony meeting) and wanted to do it too. So our member fellowshipper brought him up there and he stood up and he was about to say something, when he froze and he couldn't think of anything to say. So he just went back to his seat. :P His dad (the less active member) was so proud though!! He was smiling so big, it was adorable. I don't know if he ever imagined his children going up to bear their testimonies in church one day.

Remember my story last week about Maria? We picked up her husband yesterday. He's the best!!! I'm so excited for them and am so sad that I won't be here for their whole process but that's ok. I love them so much!!! And we saw Maria's mom again and she was telling us about some other concerns like if she'd be with her sons again or if she wouldn't because they weren't very religious. We gave her a plan of salvation pamphlet and will hopefully see her again soon. I love her too. :)

We had Mission Leadership Council this week and Elder Perkins of the seventy was there!! It was awesome! He told us a bunch of stories about his experiences with the Prophet and Apostles, because he's with them basically every day. 

Then he taught us about how to help different kinds of missionaries that we're over and what being "bold" means. Which, I'm really glad that he explained that because everyone has been saying that we need to be bold... but not overbearing... but didn't really say much on how to do that. So now I know!! Being bold means asking someone to do something because you are confident in THEM and in the LORD. Being overbearing means asking them to do something because you're confident in YOURSELF as a missionary and are just telling them what to do. But if they see that you're confident in THEM and in their abilities to do the thing that GOD wants them to do because we are confident that it's GOD asking them to do it and that HE has provided a way for them to do it, then we can show them our love for THEM and the LORD. :) Boom.

The Elders' investigator is getting baptized tonight!!! We have invited so many people to it and I am sooooo excited. :) I love baptisms.

Aaaaaalright, letter's long enough. Love ya'll!! Have a fantastic week!!

Sister Miller

 John the Baptist ain't the only one!!!

 Sister Cutler, Me, Sister Rogers, Sister Marsh, Elder Adams, Elder Crook, Elder Hollawell, Elder Pappenfuss, Elder Wilkinson, and Elder Spinks.

We need to learn how to take funny pictures... obviously none of us know quite what to do when we're taking a "funny" picture.