Hello Family and Friends, 

I am really happy right now. This is because our zone reached 14 baptisms this month! That means that all our zone will have lunch with President Castro. One of the awards that our mission president offers is this lunch at his house if there were 2 baptisms for every companionship. Seeing that our zone has 7 companionships that means we needed 14 baptisms and we got just that. Our zone is very united and determined. We expect to maintain this rhythm throughout the coming month.

We had a spiritual experience this week that I would like to share. So as I have mentioned above our zone was fighting to reach our goals that we had set at the beginning of the month. Our zone had already reached 8 baptisms from the prior weeks and 6 were lacking. We knew that 4 were already set in stone for this past Saturday, but there were still 2 missing. 1 of these 2 had been baptized by Elder Machado but wasn't confirmed the following day because the young man was influenced by his family and decided that the church was not for him. Elder Dos Santos and I knew to get these last two baptisms that this young man would have to be confirmed somehow and that we would need to find someone else to be baptized this Saturday! This person had to have received all the missionary lessons, gone to church at least 2 times, and is living all the commandments in order to be baptized this Saturday. 

It was Wednesday afternoon I said a prayer to start our day. I remember saying in the prayer that we needed to find this special person who was already prepared to be baptized. When we left the house we had no doubts that we would find this person. Long story short we went visit a family of members that lives on the hillside. We discovered that they have a daughter that is 9 years old and that had never been baptized that had gone to church multiple times in the past, had received all the lessons, and was living the commandments. Prayer answered! The girl told us that she did not want to be baptized so we taught her a lesson about how Jesus was baptized and we challenged her again and to the surprise of the family this time she accepted. I had the privilege of baptizing Tainara Saturday night. 

 

 

Later in the week we fasted as a zone to reach our zone goals and that young man that had been baptized but not confirmed was confirmed Sunday so we got 14. I am not happy for the fact that we will be recognized by the president as a zone, but for the fact that our zone united with one purpose in mind and we accomplished what we had set out to do. It was really gratifying to me.

I am looking forward to general conference this weekend. It is such a privilege to have a living prophet and the chance to hear from him and the other leaders of church. For sure we will all receive personal revelation from their inspired words. One thing Elder Bednar told us when visiting the mission is that when taking notes don't write what the speaker says but what the Holy Ghost whispers to you through that speaker. Thus you will be writing your own set of small plates or in other words the spiritual aspects that will help you throughout your life.

 Lots of Love,

Elder Miller