From Elder Miller April 26, 2010

Dear Family,

I can tell you each had an eventful and exciting week. My week was great, too!

Reece, congratulations on being ordained to the office of an Elder in the Melchizedek Priesthood! That is a very special step in your life and as Dad spoke with you about, you have some other very important steps coming up that you can really look forward to. I am happy that you are having a great time and want you to know that I will be there with you in spirit and in thought at your graduation. I love you Bro.!

Remi, It was really cool to hear about your service project for the day of service on Saturday. Because that is something nation wide (possibly world wide, at least for members of the church) I felt connected to you and our family since I was able to help out as well. I will tell the whole family more about the project our ward helped with later in my e-mail. We got your storm last night and this morning. That was some pretty intense lightning! One of the lightning strikes hit really close to our apartments because I saw the flash and the sound came at the same time! I hope you enjoy the end of your school year as well. Keep working hard. I love you, Remi!

Mom, I enjoyed hearing about your work and young women's calling. That's neat that your ward friends know people that I do! (Brother Charles "Chuck" or "Chip" Barrett is the one you were referring to.) It is a small world when you're in Christ's Church! I hope work continues to go well for you. I have a favor to ask of you. Remember a year or more ago when you mentioned in your e-mail that you would pray specifically for my companion and I to have baptisms and confirmations. I remember having a lot of those in a row at that time and that is the best part of missionary work- getting to see everything you've been teaching God's children be fully accepted and come into play at the waters of baptism. Will you and our continue praying specifically for baptisms? Thank you. I love you!

Dad, Awesome job on your graphic design work and your seminary calling. It is great to hear that you and our family having great success in Lakeland. I can definitely see the blessings that God has given our family with the move! To answer your questions about the upcoming transfer: The things I will teach the new missionary I am training, among the basics of missionary work, will definitely include the importance of Faith and Hard work in every thing we do, patience with companions and investigators alike, and loving every aspect of the work. I will teach him what doesn't work: negativity, laziness, and anything less than love. I do still remember my first days in the field, and I will help him to have hard working, tiring days that are full of love for the people, excitement for the work, and lessons for life. I will have patience with him because I remember how tired I was when I first came out and I understand that it is a big change from the "real world" and even from the MTC. I look forward to helping another Elder in his embarking on this great journey of service and love for God and His children. I have been keeping in touch with my converts and I will be attending Danny P's endowment session soon! I also hope to see Eddy and Kathy's sealing for their family after my mission. I will continue to keep in touch with these wonderful families. I love you Dad!

Something that president Darringiton reminded me of in his e-mail to me this week is that, "A person with a “sincere heart’ really wants to know and a person who has “real intent” is willing to act upon that spiritual prompting. These two things are keys to conversion." I have found this to be true as I have worked with many people towards having their own conversion. These are key points for those we are working right now.

This week we invited three of God's children to be baptized by His authority on the earth today. Two of them, Larry and Darleena, said that they would like to make that a goal at some point in their life and tonight we will be inviting them with the Lord's invitation to be baptized on May 22nd. I pray that they will experience true conversion and accept the Lord's commitment for baptism! The other person we invited, Christie, did not accept baptism into the Lord's Church. Our plans as guided by the Spirit are to introduce her to the F. family who live near her and have a Family Home Evening together in their home with Christie. We will also continue to bear testimony of the truthfulness of our message and continue inviting her to read and pray with a sincere heart and real intent.

I wanted to also tell you about the service project I helped out with this weekend. We helped Habitat for Humanity put up sheet rock and paint the outside of a house for it's future family. We were able to work alongside the family who were going to be the home owners and that was extra special because we could see the immediate influence of our efforts. To see pictures of myself, other missionaries, and our ward members working on the house, check out habitatmartin.org for the link to their flicker site where they will have pictures from Saturday's project. The pictures should be uploaded within a couple of days. Hope you can find them!

On Sunday Elder Engemann and I both spoke in Sacrament meeting. I spoke on immortality and Eternal life and he spoke on Charity. I feel that the spirit really guided us and the Lord helped us prepare our talks. The youth speaker wasn't able to give his talk and Elder Engemann spoke for 10 minutes so I ended up needing to speak for 25 minutes. It went really well though and I had plenty of material to fill the time. This was the first time that I tried simply making an outline of the doctrine I wanted to cover and then just speaking from the heart and by the spirit. I really enjoyed doing it that way.

We had a great zone conference! I thoroughly enjoyed the doctrinal message of the Plan of Salvation because it helped me to better understand the doctrine for myself, to know how to teach it more effectively, and to strengthen my own testimony of God's plan of happiness for us. I am grateful to have such great leadership and guidance on my mission from President Darrington. Next conference will be our last with him.

There is so much more that I wanted to share with you this week but because of lack of time I will write the rest to you in a letter soon. Hope you all have an amazing week! I love you!

Love,

Elder Miller