God Bless Us! God Bless Us Everyone!

I hope you all had an amazing Christmas!!

Mine was awesome. :) First, we went to church and sang in the choir and heard the cute little primary sing as well. :)

Then we visited some people and then skyped our families! It was great seeing my family. :)

Then two less actives invited us over to their homes for Christmas dinner, which was great, and it really helped them too. Hopefully we'll be able to see some good progress with them.

We also received a lot of media referrals this week, which I love, and we started teaching one of them! Her name is Evalyn and she is a sweet heart. :)

The weather this week was in the 60s to 70s. :) Smiley face.

I can't think of a better time to spend my last week as a full-time missionary than during the holiday that celebrates the birth of our Savior. I know He lives and guides this work. I know He loves His children and has the perfect plan for them. He continually calls us to come unto Him and as soon as we take that step of faith, He will lead us. I know that as we continuously read His word, pray for help and guidance, repent, and renew and keep our covenants, we will have His spirit with us, which guides and changes us. I am so grateful for it.

I am so grateful for this gospel and for the opportunity I've had over the last 18 months to share it with others. It is priceless, and the things I've witnessed and learned are priceless. I know this church is true and is led by God through a prophet today.

Sister Miller

Jaelyn's Baptism!!

Hey! Guys! It's almost Christmas! What?!

And guess what. :) There's still no snow here.

This week was pretty eventful! We found two new investigators (one was a former who went to church quite a bit when she was investigating a year or so ago); we went on exchanges and I went with Sister Robinson, one of my MTC companions!; we traveled down to Logan County (the epitome of coal-minin' West Virginia) for a district meeting; and hmmmm, let's see, what else.... oh yeah! Jaelyn Chatterton got baptized! :D She was an unbaptized child or reccord. She is 11, and her mother wanted her to be baptized so we taught her. :)

So, as every missionary knows, things always go wrong when there's a baptism. Our headaches started promptly at 12:10 pm that afternoon. :) Jaelyn's Grandpa was going to baptize her, but was going to be late because of other things that went wrong, so we had to call everyone who was a part of the program and make sure that they were all ok with pushing it back. They all were, thank goodness. Then everything was going wrong with the Chatterton family so they were 20 minutes late, the person who filled the font turned on the cold water instead of the hot water (poor poor Jaelyn), there was miscommunications about who was going to print the programs so there wasn't any, and then there was no paper for the printer when we finally got some made up. :) There was a good turn out from the ward though, but unfortunately Jaelyn has social anxiety and almost didn't go into the font when it was time to be baptized!! Sister Donahoo and her mom and I were in the bathroom with her trying to calm her down, and we said a prayer with her. Then her Grandpa came up her stairs and led her down and gave her a little pep talk in the font to help her. She had to be baptized twice too, poor thing! When it was all done, her mom was crying she was so happy. :)

I know that God was so proud of her for making that covenant to follow Him, and I know that the Gift of the Holy Ghost will help her so much in her life. I know that Jesus Christ is our Savior and that He will lead and guide us along our way. There's some stumbling blocks, and a lot of things will go wrong, but everything will work out. :)

Merry Christmas everyone!!!!!!

Sister Miller

I Know That My Redeemer Lives!!

This week was Zone Conference with our Mission President! Every year for Christmas for Zone Conference his little treat is we get to watch a full length film as part of it (last year was "Meet the Mormons") and this year we watched a movie about President Monson's life. I love how seriously he takes spiritual promptings. He is an excellent example of what can be done if we just do what the Lord wants us to do. So many lives can be blessed and so much joy can come from it.

The week before, our Zone Leaders called us and started out by saying, "Ok, we have a proposition for you.... just... hear us out..." :P President wanted there to be a musical number at all of the Zone Conferences so the Elders were asking us to sing at it. We sang "I Know That My Redeemer Lives."

Jaelyn is doing really well and is on track to be baptized this week! We're super excited for her. She is such a sweet heart and I hope she and her mom will work to go to the temple together after she turns 12. :)

It snowed for the first time on friday!!!! Ah!!!! I need it to hold off for another two weeks! :)

We have been working a lot more with the auxiliaries in the ward and they are becoming much more involved, which is awesome. :) Using the Christmas initiative like crazy and Sister Donahoo and I both bought ear-warming headbands. :) Brrrrr

Only two more weeks until Christmas! If you all haven't seen the Christmas initiative yet, check it out RIGHT NOW! It has a fun count down of service that you all should do!

Have an awesome week!

Sister Miller 

White Christmas!!

This week we finished the White Christmas Book of Mormon reading for our mission! It was one of the greatest experiences I've had reading the Book of Mormon. I decided to mark two things: whenever it talks about covenants/baptism/temples, and anything that could relate to missionary work. I marked way more than I thought I would!

From marking covenants/baptism/temples I found:

-the temple is mentioned way more than I thought it would be! Something I thought interesting too was that several times, when people would gather, they would gather at the temple. It was the heart of the city.

-The Book of Mormon is proof that God keeps his promises.

-God made a promise to everyone who will ever live in the promised land (the american continents) that if they would keep his commandments, He would prosper them. That promise is fulfilled over and over in the Book of Mormon, and still applies to us.

-Baptism is so important!!!!!

From marking anything that could relate to missionary work I found:

-Nephi was a master goal-setter, and he taught me a lot on how to be one myself.

-Captain Moroni taught me how to be a leader, and would have made an excellent Mission President.

-Alma the Younger was a Preach My Gospel Missionary. (I'm pretty sure that when the apostles wrote Preach My Gospel, they just read what Alma the Younger did and put it in a book.)

-Charity is crucial to this work.

-Never give up hope. If you give up hope, you're giving up on Christ. Even Moroni didn't give up hope.

-Faith is a prerequisite to miracles.No miracles could happen without faith.

-If you follow the Spirit, you will always succeed.

-The scriptures teach so much better than we do.

-And so much more!!!!

The Pulley family also invited us over to watch the Christmas Devotional. I thought it was fantastic! If you haven't seen it, go watch it right now! If you have watched it, let me know what your favorite things were!

This week was also the ward Christmas dinner. My first one on my mission! :P Last year I was transferred a couple days before the branch's dinner, and the ward I transferred into had already had theirs. :) It was fantastic. :) The ward gave us lots of leftover cake. My goodness. #cakefordays

This has just been a very Christmas-y week! I hope you all have a great one and good luck with whoever has finals!!

-Sister Miller