perserve until the end

¿Qué inspiración, no?

Did you know?  In spanish, ¨Endure to the end¨ is ¨peseverar hasta el fin¨, which I perfer.  

Let´s persevere until the end!  (The trick is, there really is no end... wooaaah, didn´t think of that before, did ya?)

Hello!  Here are some photos of the last two weeks.  

Last Monday the elders and two hermanos from the rama helped clear out our back yard.  The Elders also moved our fridge from the living room where it was hooked up for a few days... and today Hermano Caceres and another hermano are working on replacing wires that connect our electricity to the box outside... it´s been quite the adventure with our electricity.  I will save the details for later.  

This week we ended up stopping by the Artigas family (the hermano whom we taught how to conduct and teach a family home evening) and he happened to be making homemade bread!!  He was a baker back in the day.. so I luckily had my camera and filmed and took some photos of the process!  They are so great.  I love watching them work as a team.  

I am making bon o bons, and we have this huge pumpking/squash that a member gave us that I use as a grinder to crush the cookies into powder. Then we mix in butter and dulce to leche and roll the mix into balls.  Us hermana misioneras in the mission call them baptism bon bons, and we always make them for baptisms (the elders had 3 baptisms on Saturday).

lasting impressions

Wow, this past week passed by way too fast.  I can´t believe we are almost in February.  I have a lot of mixed emotions about my time left in the mission... 

So we are finding more people that are SO ready to live the gospel!  My favorite experience this week was when we went to a neighborhood where recently we haven´t been finding people at home, but my companion Hermana Flack felt we should stop by just in case and contact the homes where I didn´t find people previously with my last comp.  Well, there just happened to be a little lady outside a house I hadn´t contacted sweeping the sidewalk, and she immediately let us come in (score!) And to our surprise her husband and daughter who were already in the side patio rushed inside to grab more chairs.... LDS CHURCH chairs!!  ?!?!  We didn´t say anything, but I was dying to know how the heck they had the same chairs that are found in all of our churches here.  Turns out the father works in construction and worked on one of our chapels in Cordoba, and his employer had extra chairs that were discarded due to rips in the leather, so all over Argentina there are dozens of church chairs in non member family homes!  Sweet!  The father told us that he learned a lot about our beliefs and is very grateful for the help and love the members gave him and his family.  Because of the good impression these members left on this family, we were easily invited into this home and saw a great need in their eyes to learn more about the Book of Mormon and how the gospel blesses families! 

Favorite experience No 2: On Tuesday a man stopped us in the street ¨Hey, are you from the Church of the... M...Mmmm ?¨ ¨Mormónes?¨ I said, and he said his friend in Paraná (the capital of EntreRios, about 3 hours from us) suggested he find the mormon missionaries because they could help him.  His friend and co-worker is a member (actually someone that Hermana Flack knows from her last area!) and introduced him to some principles of the gospel, and he was just coming from our church in search for us. ¨I have passed by two times and it always seems to be closed!¨  haha, I am very glad we found him in the street.  We have taught him twice already and he wants to be baptized!  Holy moly batman.  I know that his friend was inspired to show him how Heavenly Father´s plan is for all of us, and his friend gets bonus points for already having given him a Book of Mormon and some pamphlets.  

Now I see on the flip side of the connection between a member helping a friend and being lead to the missionaries.  As members when we are not full time missionaries, the Lord is waiting to give us opportunities to help our friends find the right path to eternal happiness, but it depends on us to start the conversation, be aware, and honestly not over think it.. The power of a simple invitation and leaving a good impression on our acquaintances and friends, as you can see by these examples, is very powerful.  I hope I can remember this after I am no longer wearing my name tag everyday (tear : ( ) and can simply invite more of my friends not of my faith to know more about what makes me so eternally happy.  

p.s.  I just read what I wrote and my wording is strange, forgive me, I don´t know how to fix it except to start typing in spanish!  HA! 

Que tenga una buena semana.  Les quiero mucho, y siempre acuérdense que son instrumentos en las manos del Señor, si lo permiten.  (I hope you have a good week!  I love you all a lot, and always remember that you are instruments in the Lord´s hands, if you permit it.)

xoxo hermana miller 

one more thing...

ok ok I had to mention just a little bit more, I can´t hold in my excitement! 

From the church news room  Response to Mormon Missionary Age Announcement Remains Enthusiastic and Unprecedented : ¨In the weeks following the missionary age announcement, the Church reported that missionary applications had increased dramatically (from 700 applications per week to 4,000), with women comprising more than half of the applicants. While the number of post-announcement applications is still double what it has been in the past, the total number of men and women who have applied since October is now about equal. Prior to the announcement, approximately 15 percent of missionaries were young women.¨

http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/mormon-missionary-age-announcement-response 

In our mission, we also have two new sister missionary ¨assistants¨ who will be traveling constantly to do divisions with us so that we are all on the same page in how we teach and work, so we can all more effectively train the next generation of sister missionaries! 

woot! 

revolution

There´s been a lot of talk and excitement going on lately about the mission.  As you probably have heard, there are thousands of more young missionaries who are now entering the field, thanks to the First Presidency´s inspired decision to lower the age from 21 to 19 for women, and 19 to 18 for men.  Our mission is going to expand, and in the last couple of months President Giuliani has been asking our zone leaders about where he can place sister missionaries.  We´ve heard that by april we will have 50 more! And that almost every sister missionary will be training next transfer (we are 24 right now)!  I was thinking that I wasn´t going to witness part of this new revolution, but it looks like I might be part of passing the baton to these youngin´s, who will be expected to train immediately after their training to help out the NEXT slew of the Lord´s angels!  Woot!!!  I honor these young men and young women who jumped to the call to serve.  They really are the chosen generation, and I feel like their big sister, preparing the way for them.  We are in the middle of some exciting times people... just think about all the changes that have taken place in just the past three or four years, with mormon messages and the increase of website use to spread the gospel, among many other things. 

 I could go on and on about this, but we have an apartment to clean, oh and wonderful people to teach!  : )  

 Love you!  Love the work!  Thank you for your Christmas cards!  I got them all on Friday!  

xoxo Hermana Hill Mill 

knowledge is power

Hey hey!  Hope you are all happy and well!  Things are moving along here!  We are working with a lot of the recent converts and helping them grow stronger in there testimonies.  I am especially excited for one family, Family Artigas.  They are a husband and wife in their sixties, and they haven´t been able to progress as much as they´d like to with their knowledge of the gospel because they have health complications every once in a while.  I have been visiting them constantly since I arrived in August, and I think we are getting closer to having them help us teach their children, who are not members of the Church. 

We taught them the what why and how of a Family Home Evening the other day, and I was very taken aback by the father´s reaction.  He took in everything very attentively, and after we finished showing him the FHE Manual, he paused and thanked us for bringing this to his attention.  He said he never knew this was something that the prophets ask us to have, and that he will learn how to do this and help his family because he knows this is important.  I was so touched by how touched he was.  And then on Sunday when we asked him how his lesson prep was going, he seemed very concerned and wanted to make sure he was preparing right and asked us to stop by.  When we arrived we saw him sitting in his chair outside in the back with his nose deep in the pages of the FHE Manual.  He said ¨I now know how to prepare a lesson for family home evening.  You need a photograph of a baby, a dog, and a plant.¨  ???  He later explained what each represents, things that need nuture and care... he was explaining an object lesson that comes from Lesson One in the book that explains to the families the purpose of FHE. It was great!  He was trying to remember every point he possibly could, and said he still hadn´t picked a topic because he has spent his weekend reading the introduction that explains what is a family home evening. We reassured him that what he was doing would be a perfect lesson to explain to his children and grandchildren who do not go to our Church.  He was satisfied and determined to read more the following day.  

I love seeing people´s hunger for knowledge! I am so happy that this hermano understands the need to bless his family, and I wish all people we teach could be moved by the things our prophet and apostles ask us to do. 

Knowledge is power.  And the best knowledge is the knowledge that comes from what edifies and strengthens the soul, the kind of knowledge that helps us remember our divine nature and our divine duty here in this life. 

xoxo hermana hill mill 

ch ch ch changes

Hello all!  I hope you all had a wonderful New Year{s!  I can{t believe that it is 2013.  I remember when I recently received my mission call and my mother and I were chatting with people about when I would return and whenever we said [spring 2013[ it sounded like ages!!  And now it is here!  I hope this year brings you all lots of great adventures : )

Well we had a few changes here in our zone... I am with Hermana Flack who is from Orem Utah and she just recently completed nine months in the mission.  We also have a new district leader, Elder Goodman from Arizona.  My companion is very relaxed and always happy, which makes me happy.  We are excited for this week, we are going to teach some new people and she{s going to show me some tasty dishes she{s made here on the mission. 

Before transfers Hermana Franco and I went down to the river with Elders Vergara and Groberg during a huge storm to take pictures.... yup we are crazy, and it made for a good memory! 

I am so grateful that these past few weeks we have been getting a lot of rain.  This weather has been quite enjoyable, and I don{t mind when the heat and humidty returns temporarily because I know it{s a sign that another storm is coming. 

I am loving more and more this area.  I love seeing the help and care from the members regarding fellowshipping our investigator and her children.  We watched The Testaments in the church this weekend with her (a film depicting Christ{s visitation to the Americas after his resurrection), and when we finished the girls said [Can we watch another movie next week?[ and the mother has lots of questions about how the Book of Mormon was translated, so we are going to watch more about Joseph Smith.  It brings me such joy to see the hunger in their eyes for the gospel.  I love looking up scriptures and answering their questions.  They want to know not just to know, they want to know because they are feeling the truth and things are starting to fit in piece by piece of how the gospel works in their lives, and I feel so privileged to watch the process!  It also helps me recognize how my hunger for knowledge has grown, how I understand more fully how the Atonement works in my life daily.  

I hope you are all well.  Thank you for your letters, you may or may not have an idea of how happy a missionary feels when they get a letter from a dear friend or relative.  You help me keep up my energy and focus, even though I miss you all, I sometimes have moments where I think [but... what if I refuse to leave?  Can{t I just be a missionary forever?[  Forgive me, but that{s how I feel sometimes!  I love this work!  It may move slower than we want at times, but nothing can frustrate the work of the Lord... we are part of something so grand! 

p.s. yes, that is a carpincho/capybera/ROUS/rodent of unusal size.  They are apparently very tasty...

xoxo hermana hillmill 

too much fun

Too much fun...  

This Christmas was a blast!  

Nativity Branch Activity

Christmas Conference... missionaries surprised us with spray cans of snow

Singing in the terminal in Paraná

Christmas Eve in La Paz:

Singing on the Radio! 

Singing in the Plaza

Eating Asado (bbq) , and we are toasting with sparkling cider fyi.... 

Watched the Princess and the Frog and ate homemade cinnamon rolls Christmas morning!

I love our zone and our mission.  

Other news, this week is transfers and my mini missionary Hermana Franco goes home to her family on Wednesday, and I just found out that I am staying here in Santa Elena and will be with Hermana Flack!  I´ve met her a handful of times, she was trained by Hermana Tourtillot, so I am pretty excited!  I have a feeling I will be ending my mission here in Santa Elena!  This transfer is 8 weeks long instead of 6 weeks, so I have 14 weeks left.  Crazy.  Gotta make the most of it!