His Vision is Bigger and Better

Family and Friends!! Oh how I love and miss you all. 

It has been a good week here in California. 

One of my favorite moment while teaching was Ricardo asking us how to hep his seven year old son Damien pray. (I thought that was natural instinct that all Father's were programmed to know that... apparently not but he picked it up pretty quick). 

All My Companions & I

I got to go on another exchange with Sister Sorensen = happiness! Although I was super stressed out about our whole day being in Spanish appointments. BUT the gift of tongues is totally real. I was able to communicate and understand every single person. Even old Manuel (the grandpa with the cowboy hats who looks to Sister Johnson to translate normally). It was a miracle I tell you! I can't do that every day, but in the lessons and do or die moments I always have been blessed with the strength and ability to do the things I have been asked to do by the Lord.

Sister's Conference this week was fabulous!! I took more notes than ever and just felt it was perfect timing and what I needed  to hear. We talked about the process vs the product and how you have to enjoy the process or the product doesn't matter. Do things that motivate and inspire you and your product will always turn out. I also was blessed with some personal experiences while there that were just so touching. Sister Olson a Senior Sister came up to me and gave me a hug and privately told me that she and Sister Ball (another Senior Sister) have been praying for me personally for 7 months. When I saw her 7 months ago I would have never thought she would still even remember me... how wrong I was. I hadn't seen her in the last seven months yet here they have been praying for me every single day. Talk about feeling some serious unrestrained love. That is the type of love we can only get from Christlike people loving the way that Christ does. Also while at Sister's Conference based on a conversation with a prior companion I found out a major reason that I had been in a certain area months ago. That area was a struggle for me in all Spanish, and so often I felt like I was worthless there unable to contribute and communicate. But after talking with this sister I know that I was there at least in part for her. My experience and examples, unrelated to the work we were doing, helped her to initiate the repentance process in her life (totally unbeknownst to me until this point). It has been literally months since I served there or with her, and yet I know that I was a crucial part in a major change in her life. How grateful I am for those glimpses into moments of successful endurance and seeing some of Heavenly Father's reasoning for things. 

Driving home from that conference was a little bit of a stressful night... It was late (past curfew), we were in Fresno an hour and a half away from Coalinga, I was on exchange with a Sister from another area who wanted to drive but hasn't for over a year, we had no GPS or map, I didn't know the way back to Coalinga, and then we get right to the part of the trip where there is no more civilization and it is all farms and THEN the gas light comes on in the car we had just got traded that day during the conference. I don't think I have ever prayed so hard to just make it to a gas station, and a shell has never looked so good with Gas at $4 a gallon. hahaha. But Heavenly Father always looks out for his children and we made it home safely. Lesson? Don't stress... it works out how it is supposed to anyhow!

Zone Trip

Another great moment of this week came in sacrament meeting when one of the youth bore his testimony and quoted part of a conversation he had with President Gelwix at the Hanford Stake Priesthood Meeting this week. President told the young man he was lucky to have to hard working sister missionaries in his ward and asked what he thought about it. The youth responded that we (Sister Johnson and I) are legends. Then President told him it was because of our faith. I thought it was a great moment. haha (Although I do rather like to be the behind the scenes type of person instead of in the spotlight, but the fact that he used the word legend was just too funny). 

Finished reading the Pearl of Great Price this week!! Yay. I have now made it through all of the standard works on my mission! 

General Sherman

Trip to the Sequoias this morning! Pretty awesome. There was snow there, but I got to see General Sherman (that HUGE redwood tree... the biggest tree on Earth). And we hiked around a little before getting pizza for lunch. Good preparation day. 

LOVE YOU!!! 

Love,

Hermana Miller