Yee Hah! from Melbourne March 22, 2010

Dear Dad, Mom, Reece, and Remi,

Thank you very much for your e-mails! Hope you got my e-mail with my new address. I have a question for you before I tell you about my week. I just wanted to double check with you to see when I need to sign up for classes again and also how I should go about doing it? Some of the other missionaries going to BYU-Idaho thought that class sign-ups were earlier so I just wanted to make sure, did you say they were in July?

My week was great! Very eventful! Guess who I finally got to meet? The Saxon Family! They are really nice. I got to go over to their home on exchanges with Elder Mansfield and their whole family, including all of their grown and married children who were there visiting. They shared with me some really cool experiences from Brother and Sister Fullmer's mission. Wow! India seems like a very exotic and crazy place. I am so glad they had such great experiences there. Who knows, maybe I will get to see them if they come out to visit here. Tell Sister Fullmer that I finally got to meet her sister and sister's family. :)

On Friday we got to go to the Rodeo (thus my subject for this email). :) Bishop drove us out to the Deseret Ranch in his 07 Mustang and we had a lot of fun with him. My favorite parts of the rodeo were the Bronco riding and also getting to see a lot of friends from the Daytona ward. I even got to see Dylan E., a young man that I taught in Daytona. He got baptized in January and his brothers are being baptized this weekend! It was really nice to be able to congratulate him. That was definitely a tender mercy of the Lord. I am glad we got to go because we had a lot of things happen that almost kept us from going. That morning I woke up with really bad allergies and my right eye was swollen from it. Must be all the pollen. I am doing better now, though. And right before we were leaving for the rodeo we got a flat tire and had to put on the donut in the church parking lot and then had a kind member, Brother C., help us fix the flat so we could drive down to meet the bishop. Thanks, Dad, for teaching me how to rotate the tires because that definitely helped us change the tire fast!

Our zone had a lot of people preparing towards baptism in March and all but three have now either had to be moved to April or dropped due to struggles or concerns. We had a couple, the T's, preparing towards the 27th that we are overcoming some struggles with so we will be resetting the date for those two as well as four others we are working with towards April 10th. This has happened with a lot of the investigators in the zone and sadly this doesn't help us reach our baptismal goal this month. Please let me know if you have any suggestions on how to help our zone be successful. :)

We had a very positive exchange with the Melbourne Elders this week. Elder Mansfield and I set a date with an older gentleman named Brother R, for the 27th of this month. His wife is a member and he has learned about the church from her and others for many years. We shared with him the message of the Restoration and after we had finished he said, "You know, there is not a lot that you could teach me that I haven't already learned before, but I feel it is time now that I move forward with this." He beat us to his own baptismal invitation! He is excited to be baptized this Saturday and I am glad that Elder Mansfield and I had such a good exchange!

We are working with the T. family still. We met with them last night and really did all we could to help them feel the spirit. We invited them to pray very specifically to ask God about baptism and joining His true Church and they both agreed. They are so nice and the gospel is exactly what they need in their lives. They really enjoyed Church when they came so that should be a good sign for them to help them know what they need to do. I know God will help them find their answer.

We also recently had an amazing Saints Unified Voices referral experience: Two days after the Gladys Knight Fireside we contacted Lillie and Laura, two close friends who are also friends with their dentist, Brother G., our ward's High Priest Group Leader. Brother G. brought them along with many others to the fireside and they really enjoyed their experience there. Lillie said, " I had heard a lot of things about this church before I came to see the choir and now I realize that none of those things were true." She and Laura are now taking the missionary lessons and are soaking up everything they are taught about Christ's restored gospel on the earth today. When we taught them the Plan of Salvation they were so anxious to hear the answers to the questions: Where did we come from, why are we here, and where are we going, that they said, "just skip the intro, we want to hear the answers!" They came to church for the first time yesterday and really enjoyed it. They were very welcomed and afterwards many ward members took the time to explain to them the different parts of sacrament meeting. They are coming again next Sunday and really look forward to it. Tonight we are teaching them the Gospel of Jesus Christ and inviting them with the Lord's invitation for baptism in April.

I pray that our zone will continue to have these amazing experiences with referrals from the Saints Unified Voices choir and that we will soon see the fruit of our labors. Thank you for your support and your letters. I love you all!

Love,

Elder Miller