Conference Weekend

Ciao tutti!!

So this week has been good! Next week is the last transfer so I will be getting a new companion, and maybe moving cities??? but probably not because it doesn’t make sense with my companion going home. But I love it here in Ancona, and I really want to stay to help this branch and the members grow! I have a real love for everyone here and I am so blessed to share this time with them and grow in this gospel together! 

The other good thing about this week was conference! I LOVE CONFERENCE! To be honest before the mission I didn’t really understand or get excited about conference, but being out here on the mission, doing the lords work everyday, I have come to realize the amazing blessing we have in these days to have a prophet and 12 apostles to give us guidance in these extremely challenging days! I am so excited and blessed to know that we have a prophet today to give us the guidance we need. If you think about it, its awesome! I love it! (plus its in English so us missionaries love it) but I have not seen it all yet but what I have seen i would like to share some thoughts. First I loved what elder Hales told us in the very first talk about General Conference, he said "the greatest blessing that will come to us from General Conference, will come AFTER." meaning we have to act! as I have said it is an amazing blessing to have this opportunity to hear the message and the guidance from the prophet and apostles, but without action this guidance is just another good story or uplifting thought! In these days we need the guidance, and we have it if we listen and use the guidance we receive from our leaders! So with that, what did I get out of conference that I need to act on! well as Anziano Dube said, we should "never look back," but " look at what we still have to do." i personally can get content with what I do, or what I have done. But I need to remember that there is still so much more to do. The work of God here in Earth is to grow his kingdom, to every nation kindred and tongue. That’s a lot of people, but when we work in the service of God and always have "faith looking to the future" as Anziano Dube said, we can succeed! We will succeed! But we need to have faith and act, not just listen! I personally hope i can stay worthy enough in my life that I can continue to do the Lords work so that every people, kindred, and tongue can feel the lords love! I will have faith and look forward to the opportunities I receive to help others. 

The other message I received and I wanted to share is one of hope in this life. I feel many of the talks touched on the struggles people can go through! Life is hard.... in fact it sucks sometimes! For me personally I have seen many people that I love struggle, hurt, and fall; but as Uchtdorf said, " we can always rise up. We can do it!" Rise up and follow Jesus Christ" I know the reason we can do it and rise up over everything is because we have a Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! We have a literal Savior, that knows each one our struggles and pains personally! i love the quote from Anziano Holland " If the bitter cup does not pass, drink it and press on!" Our Savior, Jesus Christ, drank of that bitter cup. And he pressed on through every trial in this life, and he did it perfectly! So when we fall, rise up, and know that you can do it! Trust in Christ, Trust in the eternal atonement that he has finished for us! I know that through the guidance of our apostles and prophets we can come closer to our heavenly father and Jesus Christ! and I know that as we come closer we will find hope and we will find faith to look forward and press on, because that’s what they want for us! Through faith, prayer, and repentance we will overcome any and all trials, I know this! I have a testimony of the love Jesus Christ has for me! I am so grateful for what he has done for me! He is our savior! And the church that i am a missionary for, is his church! The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints! 

I hope you all enjoyed conference as much as I did! and I hope you take advantage of these blessings that can and will come after conference if you act in faith! i love this church! i love this mission! I love you all!

ciao! 

He did't caption these. I think they speak for themselves. Oh TYTY. 

Ty....this is a little...weird? We still love him!

Picture Perfect Missionary

Birthday dinner feast for Elder Miller

"Crab that Mommy and Felicitas made for me for my birthday feast" 

Elder Miller and Elder Warnick posting in their newly purchased Italian pants. Notice how tight they are. He is really trying to fit in, and loves it!

Elder Miller and Elder Warnick. This is not his companion but he is "a really awesome guy." They both got a "super sweet deal on these Italian pants," so they are posing in them. 

More posing with Elder Warnick

Baptism "Me and Elder Warnick thought it was funny...yeah"  (He is talking about the hand holding not the baptism.

This is everyone who came to the baptism "big turn out I know" (quote from Ty)

Rubik's Cube and Yoga

Ciao Tutti!!

To be honest this last week wasn’t to eventful, but it was still a good week and I am still having a lot of fun on this Mission. The first cool thing I learned this week, and i call it a miracle, is that i can now do a Rubiks Cube! its pretty great! some missionaries use it to give an object lesson about the loss of the church and authority on the earth after Christ died, and how through Joseph smith everything was restored and we now have the Authority and Church on the earth again today. Its actually a pretty cool object lesson, but I didn’t want to learn it for that reason i just wanted to learn it cause it seemed like a cool thing to learn on the mission. So Italian and Rubiks Cube, those are the two things I’m content with learning on the mission. To prove i can do it ill try to attach a video of me doing it, i hope it works!

(The Video did not come through yet...I'm excited to see him prove it)

 The other cool part is that we will have another baptism this coming Saturday! Her name is rose and she has a really strong testimony of this gospel and the Book of Mormon. It was weird how she even came to this point of baptism. It started with the last baptism we had of the young men, Augustus and Dennis (both are still awesome by the way). But when we gave both of them the Holy Ghost Rose, the person getting baptized was there. And i had never met or seen her so i thought she was family of the boys, but she wasnt!... so we got her number but I didn’t think much of it, then I tried to call another person in our phone that week named Ruth. But I called rose by accident and didn’t know it till she picked up and I didn’t recognize the voice. So we met with her that day and she told us how and why she came to church. She said that she just woke up that morning and said I’m going here, (our church) and I don’t think she had ever been to our church before, but anyways she just decided to show up that day! so that was a cool miracle, but the next really cool part was when we gave her a Book of Mormon, we told her to start from the beginning, so she did but she said she didn’t understand it. so she closed it and decided to pray, and after she prayed she just opened the book to a random page and started reading. She opened to Alma 7, which if you don’t know is all about the atonement of Jesus Christ. It pretty much is the most important thing! But she told us that she instantly started crying and instantly understood the purpose of this book and knew of its importance! And then the next Sunday was fast Sunday and as an investigator she decided to stand up and give her testimony on the Book of Mormon! so hat the short version of her conversion story. I feel like I haven’t done much during this whole process except watch the spirit and the power of this gospel work in her life! She is a great lady with an amazing testimony. So this Saturday I will baptize her, it will be exciting for her! I’m excited.

But anyways thats my mission life for now! write me so i can know what all of you are doing, i love you all and always pray for you! the gospel is true! the Book of Mormon is true!!

Ciao! Anziano Miller

“This is our yoga activity! our ward mission leader puts it on, (this is our second yoga activity) its pretty sweet! Us missionaries tend to suck and to not take it serious like our ward mission leader.”

“this is our primary and our one young women at cultural night. we played uno”

"Have Faith!"

Ciao Carrissimi!!!!

First the missionary life and Italian life are really great! I suggest both ways of life to everyone, you learn so much and have so much fun! So first what have I learned this week... well I learned that regardless of your abilities with faith and hard work God will provide a way! I’ve been trying to work really hard and push myself, even if my companion doesn’t want to, to at least talk to someone. I really want a new investigator! and I want them to be Italian! so I have been praying and really expecting to find someone new to teach. So as I have been working and talking I have really found a lot of interesting people but no one really interested, then this last week we received a referral from another city of a lady. so we set up an appointment, and I think it was one of the best lessons I have ever given. First she was really interested and understood everything we were saying, so that was awesome! but the cool part was she felt the spirit and she just kept talking about it, and saying this is how she know when things are good and true, when she feels like this! It was a really cool lesson, and then she wanted to know a lot about genealogy! so we gladly explained and helped her get started! Soo how does that relate to hard work, well I felt like I worked hard! and as a result God blessed my efforts with an Italian referral, so to me that’s an answer to a prayer! I didn’t find her with my physical work but I feel like it is a huge blessing from the work I put in! so yeah the gospel is true!

what else... I’ve been into gelato lately!! I eat it alot and have tried a lot of new flavors! that’s a random thing but yeah I love gelato.

Oh and we have 2 new Anziano in our branch and in our house! Anziano Lovvett from California and Anziano Warnick from Utah! Its a great change of pace to have Americans to talk to, also its a great help to our branch and to Ancona! Now we have new young mens teachers and a new teacher for the youth! I know they will be a big blessing to me but more importantly to Ancona!! 

Ok not much else! we have some baptisms coming up so pray for those investigators! Ill keep praying for you. Have faith! Trust in the answers we get! and respond!

ok ciao!

These are solos I did at the monument in Ancona! pretty sweet I know, also i don’t know if you can tell but the pants I’m wearing are really Italian haha meaning super tight!