bah hum bug

Hello! I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!   Our weekend was so great.  We started off by traveling to Funes on Friday night to stay with four other hermanas so we wouldn{t have to travel as far on early Saturday morning to Rosario for our Christmas Conference.  We Hermanas wanted to make things festive, so we decided to spice up our contacting by going caroling!  Just fyi,  Argentines have NO idea what caroling is, unless they have seen it in an American Christmas movie.  At first we couldn{t believe the number of people who said [No thanks, I don{t want to hear anything from you! We{re not religious[  My companion wouldn{t let that fly, she said something like [dos minutos, nada mas![ (two minutes, nothing more!) and had us start singing.  I think we saw a handful of Scrooges and Grinches turn into happy Buddy the Elf {s that night.  It is incredible how a simple Christmas hymn can put a smile on a face that was pretty grumpy minutes beforehand!  We even had a lady film us on her camera, and another had tears in our eyes.  I know without a doubt that they were feeling more than the spirit of Christmas while we were singing! 

The conference was wonderful.  We heard talks by President and Hermana Giuliani and our Assistants to the President.  I really loved La Hermana{s message about Mary, the mother of Jesus.  In Luke when the angel Gabriel visits Mary, she is told not to have fear.  Hermana Giuliani told us hermanas in a separate meeting that morning to remember to never have fear and never be desanimadas (hmmm... meaning.. defeated/down?).  She knows there are so many things we worry about - our investigators, our number of lessons we teach, the number of people we find and contact, how effective our studies are, how good our castellano (Spanish) is, what kind of missionary we will be when we are finishing our mission, what we will do when we get home... and above all of these preoccupations we need to rely on the Lord.  I am learning the amazing power that comes when one prays to know the will of the Lord.  We have the agency to pray for whatever it is we want, and with our faith and actions we can receive answers - this we all know.. but something even more powerful and humbling is when one asks the Lord to know what is His will, and to pray to have the ability to accept it and do according to it.  To place his desires in front of ours is a miraculous way that the Lord can some day fulfill our biggest dreams. We have to remember to not have fear and to never give up! 

Love you all!  

Hermana Miller