October 13, 2014

Hello Sweet Family,

 

This week was pretty good :) It's been really chilly the last few days, and the leaves are starting to change. It's a beautiful time to be in the countryside! I swear, I fall more and more in love with Virginia every day. We have been blessed with so many miracles lately, big and small :) Heavenly Father is so good to us!

 

Tank is doing amazing! We had a lesson with him at Sister Sandy's (the lady with the hairless dog who is full of joy.) We were a bit nervous at first, because the dog started jumping all over him and her mom was yelling, "HI! HI! HI! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! I HAVE A MOWHAWK! I HAVE A MOWHAWK!" Hahah but eventually the dog went in the kennel, and there was some degree of reverence :) The lesson was great! Sister Sandy was really able to testify, and it helped him out a ton. He is so golden, I still can't believe it! His testimony is crazy strong, and he shares it with every person he can. I can't remember if I said this last week, but we had to push his baptism date back to January 1, because he's still on probation. He is sooo prepared, so we thought it was going to be hard for him. He just thought about it for a second and said, "I think that's a blessing. God is just giving me more time to learn so I can be more prepared."

 

Yesterday, Tank brought his friend Clyde to church. It was sooo sweet. Clyde has some mental disability, so he gets bullied a lot. It's really sad. Tank spends quite a bit of time with him, and it was just awesome to see the way he showed him around the church yesterday. He was introducing him to people, helping him with the hymns, and explaining how things work. We got to teach him afterward, and man! I just love him! He has such a special spirit.

 

The other day, the spirit totally lead us to the sweetest lady named Barbara. Her 91 year old grandmother was a former investigator, and Sister Anderson had a feeling that we should go see her. I knocked on the door, and someone yelled "come in!" Well, apparently I wasn't the person they were expecting, because when I opened the door, the people inside looked horrified! Barbara quickly stood up and shoved me out, saying "oh no! you're not my kid!" haha.

 

A few seconds later, she came outside and apologized, then invited us to sit down and talk. She is just going through an extremely hard time right now... she's taking care of her grandmother and her brother who is in a wheelchair. Her boyfriend of 15 years recently left her, her dog died, and her next door neighbor just passed away. Her heart was just broken. I love the healing part of the Atonement. We read Alma 7:11-13 with her and talked about how the Savior understands how she feels. Several months ago, Haylie emailed me about when Sawyer had his first virus. She said it was so hard to see her little baby go through it, but she knew it needed to happen for his immune system to grow stronger. She stayed up with him all night and never left him. I told her this story and explained to her that God is her Father. We have to experience pain in this life in order to become stronger, but he is there with us the whole time. He is perfectly compassionate and stays beside us the whole time.

I'm excited to meet with her again, because I know the gospel can really help her.

 

Another little miracle. We visited a less active member we had never met before, Sister Arno. Apparently, she works 70 hour weeks and is rarely ever home, but we happened to catch her! She said, "I know I haven't come to church in a very, very long time, but I just finished reading Jesus The Christ for the second time last night, and I've been talking to my husband about coming back." She's great!

 

Well, I'm sorry my email last week was super lame. I think conference got everyone all hyped on missionary work, because I had more emails than I've ever had! That kind of took up all my time.

 

But, whether my emails are super lame or super great, know that I love you, and I think of you :) Your prayers and letters mean so much to me, and they really help! Keep being fantastic, and have a great week!

 

Love,

Sister Miller