Feels Like Home

Hello wonderful friends and family, I hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving!  Although I didn´t have any Turkey on Thursday, my companion and I definitely had a feast of our own. 

I must share with you an amazing experience from this week.  We are teaching a family of four, a young married couple with two children and one on the way.  The mother was recently baptized a few months ago and loves when we come over to visit and re teach her gospel principles.  Her husband has a baptismal date, but we recently felt that he wasn´t too enthused with following through.  He is an extremely hard worker, he works on his house that an organization similar to Habitat for Humanity is helping him build, and because of his hours is not available to hear our lessons very often.  BUT, we are very determined.  We taught him the importance of keeping the Sabbath Day holy, and what is so interesting about this man is that he gives us amazing answers, the kind you would hear from a life long member in a gospel doctrine class!  Yet he was not applying these answers to himself.  We kept praying and praying that he would change his hours on the house and come to Church.  Last Sunday we knocked on his door and he didn´t answer.  We later heard from his wife that he was convinced that we were Jehovah´s Witnesses, haha!  We invited him to a family home evening Saturday night in the chapel along with two other brethen in the ward, in hopes that he would feel more comfortable in the building and form some friendships.  We taught an object lesson with cut outs of the Plan of Salvation, and he came right after we finished!  Again, being the determined hermanas we are, we reviewed the lesson again, and I think he really understood how important it is to keep the commandments in order to be with our families forever. We were so happy that he came and prayed that he would come to church the next day.  Sunday came, (yesterday) and we only saw the wife and children sitting in the chapel.  We felt a little down, but still had hope that he would remember the lesson.  A few minutes after the sacrament was passed, my companion whispered in my ear ¨He´s here!¨  He came and sat with his family, and we just watched with beaming faces as he listened to the speakers and sang the hymns with his family.  I will always remember yesterday as the day I first cried in Argentina!  It may seem like no big deal to some; seeing someone come to church.  But it was so amazing seeing all of these priesthood holders go immediately up to him after the meeting to welcome him.  He was smiling and seemed comfortable! 

Our branch is SO small, and we have big goals to help strengthen it little by little.  It was interesting watching everyone after church- it seemed like a slow motion moment, watching families with big smiles hugging and saying goodbye to each other.. sounds like any other Sunday, right? But  I felt like for a brief moment I was seeing every person as Heavenly Father sees us.  And I had this really strong familiar feeling, and I thought ¨This feels like home!  How can this be when I have only been here a week?¨ and then I realized that the Church feels the same all around the world because of the Spirit, and home feels like home because of the Spirit, so that is why Church feels like home!  (sounds like ¨if a=b and b=c then a=c¨, ha)  I am so grateful for the love of these branch members.  They have so much faith amidst their small numbers and have high hopes to edify and build up their kingdom!

I will try to take more photos of the area.  We are counseled not to bring our cameras around as we draw attention to ourselves, but I will try next Sunday to snap some shots of our church building and some other great things around here. 

I love you all so much!  I am sending letters and postcards this week.. they shouldn´t take more than a week or two, but I am sorry to say that I receive mail much after it arrives in ARG because I am an hour and a half away from the mission home.  Dear Elder does work though!!  You can send it via email or have it printed at the mission office for me.  Isn´t technology great?

Alma 7:23 

Love Hermana Miller

Hermana Garrett and I during our Thanksgiving feast! 

We had french toast for breakfast

For dinner we ate a packed lunch Hermana Giuliani made for all the missionaries at our training meeting on Wednesday = two ham and cheese sandwiches (I decided to toast them on the stove!) potato chips, orange juice, m&ms, and Alfejores= the chocolate round piece of goodness.  It´s their popular candy bar here, always in that shape. Lots of different flavors.  The best is the Oreo!

The gelato here is great.  We ordered and they delivered in ten minutes!!  Too convenient!  Must not make this a habit!  We ordered three flavors, dulce de leche, cookies and cream, and strawberry.