Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a great holiday season and is enjoying the winter weather. Down here we experienced some winter weather this week; it rained all day two days this week and that means temperatures were hovering down around a frigid 75. A lot of people we visited said that it was very cold outside. Haha.

A lot of exciting things happened this week. So many, in fact I don't know that I'll be able to share them all in the limited time that I have! To start out with, we had a district meeting on Tuesday morning. A district meeting is when you go to a chapel in your area and meet with about 8 or 10 other missionaries in your area to talk about what you're doing and to practice and to learn more. They are pretty cool. We had driven to this other chapel, Levittown, before, but we didn't know how to get there, because the other time we were following Elders and forgot to take notes on how to arrive. The day before we had talked to an Elder who gave us directions, but they were really bad directions, like "Turn left at the Walgreens and then turn right at the intersection that has a school in the upper right corner (what?!)". There are tons of Walgreens here (seriously, they're like taking over the island!) and of course, tons of schools too. So basically, we got lost. The exciting thing is that we knew we were lost when we accidently ran into the ocean! It was so exciting! My first view of the Atlantic Ocean from here in Puerto Rico! It was awesome. If any one would like to know the area where I saw the ocean, you can probably look online. It was at the Northern tip of the highway 167. It wasn't a beach, it was just rocks and water. Mi compañera said that the water looked really dirty, but I thought it was cool. I'm excited to go to the beach on a zone activity some day (we can do that here! Yay!). It was pretty awesome. Eventually, we arrived at the district meeting (after getting lost two more times. Once in a field with horses and once in a chinese restaurant).

Later that day we went to the Doctor because my foot was very unhappy (remember the fire ants from last week?). We left the doctor and had two medications to pick up at Walgreens and orders to not walk so much. So, we only got to knock doors three days this week. The other days were rainy, so it wasn't such a tragedy. But, our numbers seriously suffered. It exchange for knocking doors we did a lot more member visits and menos-activo hunting. It was fun. My feet are now practically better. I would send fotos, but it really is quite unpleasent.

On Thursday we have planning, so we decided to take the car to Toyota so they could do an estimate on it (the missionary couple in charge of cars and housing told us a couple weeks ago that it needed to be checked and we went on Monday and said we would have to come back another day and leave it the entire day). They told us to come back and pick it up any time in the afternoon, before 6pm. We told them we'd come at 5 or 5:15. We were in an appointment when they started call us. They called like, 5 times, but we couldn't answer, because we were in an appointment. So, when we left, we rushed over to Toyota (the member who was driving turned on her crazy Puerto-Rican mode, she said. haha) and when we arrived at 4:50 they had already closed. Apparently they were calling us a ton because they were closing early because it was New Year's Eve, but they forgot. Argh! So, we were without a car on New Year's day. Wow. A car in missionary work is really a wonderful blessing; it was a lot more difficult without a car (especially considering we don't live in our area). But, the car is back now and everything is good.

The appointment we were in when Toyota called was a really exciting appointment because Carlos, who we were visiting read. This is exciting because it means that now we have a progressing investigator, which is great. Not only did he read, but he also marked verses that he liked in the chapter, which was cool! I am really excited to teach Carlos because he has a family with 4 little girls. We have not taught the Mother yet, but we will (I hope). We thought we had lost them because the Elders taught them before we came, and we couldn't get a hold of them and when we visited once the wife didn't seem interested and even angry, but we visited again and she was ok and we were given an appointment, and they were there when we came. Yay! I'm really excited to teach Carlos because he had a lot of questions about what he had read and seemed interested in what we were teaching.

On New Year's Eve every one had to be in their apartment at 6pm, but we got special permission to be in a member's house instead because they live really close to us. The family is a mom and a daughter that just got baptized 5 years ago and the daughter just returned from serving a mission in Arizona 5 months ago (so cool! A product of missionary work doing missionary work!). We went and my companion taught us how to make pupusas, a traditional food of El Salvador. It was awesome! Really fun and also really tasty. Sarah and Jessica (the mom and the daughter) are really awesome, and it was a fun evening.

One New Year's day we were without a car, but a member picked us up to bring her to her house to make tamales, also traditional of El Salvador. It was so cool! We went to her backyard and got bannana leaves to wrap the tamales in and then made the tamales. It was a lot of fun and actually didn't take as much time as I thought it would take.

As I said, we only knocked doors three times this week. But the cool thing is, that every time we knocked we taught a first lesson and got new investigators. Wow! I love it when people let us in while we're knocking because it is always so unexpected. Even though that is what we want, it happens so rarely that it always takes me a little off guard when someone is kind enough to open their home to us and allow us to share a message with them.

We met Victoria, Arimenda, and Elba, all while knocking doors. I am really excited to return and teach them more. Elba was especially cool. We were knocking yesterday in the morning because our meeting time got changed from 9am to 1pm because two wards meet in our building. There were not a lot of people up yet, but Elba and her son, Armando let us in and we taught them the first lesson. It was cool because she liked the message, and Armando was answering questions and he even prayed at the end (he is only 10 years old). It was a good lesson and I'm excited to return and teach them more.

Last night we were menos-activo hunting close to our house and we found out that the people we were looking for had already moved. However, the man who had moved into the home said that he was interested in the message that we were sharing, but why had we come so late? Haha. We took his name and (since we were in the Elder's area) told him that the "muchachos" would come by sometime to talk to him more. I love it when the Lord leads us to people like that. We thought we were in the area to teach one person, but we found someone else to teach.

Today when we got to the library, there is a check-in desk, where everyone has to sign-in. There is usually a lady there who doesn't like people, but today there was a new one and she asked us if we were the Mormons. We said yes and she said she had a The Book of Smith, and so we started talking and she seemed interested in learning more, because she had originally listened to the message in 1995, but she lives in Levittown. So, we told her that those Elders were coming too to the library and she said she was going to talk to them. :) Sometimes you just have to smile.

I've got to go, but I love you! Keep being great examples and member missionaries!

Love,
Hermana Miller

ps. I just found out that Elder Bednar is coming on January 23 to talk to our mission! CooL! I'm really excited. :)


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