the end :,)

 Oii boa tarde tudo!!! I can not believe that I am writing my last email as a full-time missionary! The time passes so quickly (whether you are a missionary or not), so remember to enjoy every moment!! I am so grateful for the past 17.5 months because I have become a completely different person. I learned what it means to lose myself in the service of my God, and although I'm still far from perfect, I know that with Christ, I can continue improving every day!!! I gained a greater understanding of the Atonement of Jesus Christ, that He suffered not only for my sins, but also my shortcomings and weaknesses and failures so that He can help me change and become better when I humble ask for His help. I know that Christ is the solution to every one of my struggles, and I am so grateful for the opportunity I had to dedicate 100% of my time and energy to helping others gain this same understanding!! Words cannot explain the gratitude I have for every moment of my mission - from almost peeing my pants from laughing too hard to hearing people pray for the first time to crying next to my bed during my nighttime prayers to the days my cheeks hurt from smiling all day!!! I have a testimony that this is the gospel of Jesus Christ and that His Church is restored here on the earth, and that following His teaching and participating in covenants with His is the only way to have eternal joy and peace!!!!! 

I'm so grateful for the baptism of our friend Edson on Saturday, he bore his testimony Sunday saying that his life has changed forever because of the gospel, and  I can say the same about my life!!!

I hope you all a wonderful week, see the tender mercies like fresh cut flowers and clear night skies and the constant sound of the gas car driving by and the Holy Ghost guiding 2 last minute sacrament meeting talks and the ability to take the sacrament and try again every week, every day, and every hour!!! I love you all but know that God loves you more!!!

Te amo!!!

<3 sis mill

I LOVE BEING A MISSIONARYYYYY

 words can not explain the gratitude i have for my opportunity to be a missionary!!! there are hard day, times when people don~t answer our phone calls or the door or simply say that they are not interested in talking to us, but there are also family home evenings with our potential members,  learning how to run a family home evening and seeing their eyes glowing with the light of christ and watching their testimonies grow and my heart just wants to explode because i am so excited!!!!!!!!

God is a god of miracles, see them all this week like a last minute change of flight plans and fresh coconut water and new sandals and fast and testimony meeting!!! I love you but God

 loves you even more!!!!!!

te amo!!!!

<3 sis miller

God answers prayers!!!

 The work is accelerating!!! sorry these past few weeks i haven~t talked a ton about our members in potencial, but they are all progressing and Saturday we actually had 2 baptisms!!!! With all the craziness these last 2 weeks we weren~t able to make a zoom link, but it was so special to see Ramilly and Alex make covenants with the Lord and start their personal conversion!!! Ramilly is a 9 year granddaughter of a returning member, and her heart is golden. Oh my goodness, whenever we went to her house she would run up to us and say "Sisters!!" So cute <33 Alex has been progressing the last few weeks, and then 2 weeks ago a member called us and said that his wife had visited Alex's stepmom (a returning member) and Alex said that he was getting ready to be baptized!!! We immediately called Alex and he was like "yeah I got an answer to my prayer and I want to be baptized, what day is it again?" MIRACLES!!!!! But also not a huge miracle, simply the Spirit working and the Lord doing His work ;)

Life. The only constant is change!!

 Wahoo everybody hello hello!! What a WEEK!!! I won't go into all the details, but let's let's say that the Lord has a plan, and I I trusting in that plan even though it looks super wacky in my vision right now, I am trusting that the Lord's plan is bigger and better than I could imagine! My dad shared an analogy once that our lives are like a tapestry, and we can only see the side that is being weaved aka the messy side with random colors and stitches everywhere, but when the Lord is finished we will see the other side and it will be a beautiful tapestry!

This week we saw so many miracles, the biggest being two of our friends that want to get married!!!! We have been teaching them for weeks now, and this week they told us that they are going to the official place tomorrow so prayers the date won't be too far in the future!!

This Sunday I had an experience when the Lord's timing was PERFECT!!! I was sitting in a sacrament meeting and feeling super overwhelmed, so I prayed for help to know what to do, when the Spirit told me to have COURAGE and forget myself and my fears, and just talk with everybody!! After the meeting I started talking everybody's ears off, and during the next sacrament meeting I felt the Lord's peace and comfort telling me that I was doing everything I needed to do, to just keep going!!! Then during relief society, (tender mercy: sitting next to our friend who is the same age as my sister Aubrey who gave me the biggest hug hug reminded me of aubrey woot woot) we talked about a talk Elder Holland gave last conference about the peace the world can't give, but that we can find in Christ and the Spirit testifies to me again that the Lord KNOWS ME and wants to help me find that peace, all I need to to is ask and then ACT  in faith!!!!

Hope you all have a great week, see the little tender mercies like flying kites and little kiddos and hugs and bunk beds!!! I love you but God loves you even more!!!!

<3 sis mill

God provides a way

 We don~t always understand why things happen. But God always has a plan, and through our faith we have the ability to create MIRACLES!!! Sometimes, these miracles are not what we wish or hope for, but they are miracles nonetheless. I am so grateful for my Savior Jesus Christ who knows exactly how I feel when I make mistakes, when I feel down, when the choices of others hurt my heart, and He is always there with open arms waiting for me to come to Him!! I love my brother Jesus Christ, and I hope that this week you each can learn a little more about Him and walk a little closer to Him :) Keep going, keep smiling, and know that you have a whole team of angels on this side of the veil as well as on the other side that are cheering you on!!! and if you need a pep talk, just send me an email ;)

God is good. God is peace. God is love. Recognize Him this week in the little things like thunderstorms and falling in the rain and ice cold cokes in glass bottles and laughing with new friends!!! I love you, but God loves you even more!!! 

Te amo!!!

<3 sis mill

here is a rough translation of the scripture that inspired my email (but i only have it in portuguese in front of me haha) 

Mos 8:18 And behold God provides a way for men, through their faith, to work grand miracles and behold he works them to be of grand benefit for their children <33

Email e fotossss

 What a week of emotions! It was incredible to be able to go to the temple with Muzama (a man who I was blessed to teach and nelp né baptized), and to see Alessandro (sweet older gentle baptized last year) participate in these ordinances for his ancestors!! The peace and spirit in the temple, and even on the grounds/in the garden, is so sweet!! I absolutely love the temple and know This truly is the gospel of Jesus Christ and He is here to help us return to the Father and experience this never ending joy!! (Mosiah 2:41 I think) if you live close to a temple that's open right now, please go for me!!!! And in 7 weeks when I get home, I'll go too ;)

 This week also had some challenges with some of our friends not being interested and teaching in unity, but after some talking and prayers and fasting, we are set to find the elect and focus on those ready to receive the restored gospel!!

Sister Zap is doing great, I really hope we get to stay together for my last transfer because she is teaching me so much about how to love and serve as the Savior would!! Sometimes that means we do things out of order or change the time spent with people, but focusing on the Spirit I know we are representing Christ! 

Hope you all have a wonderful week and see the tender mercies like cheap ice cream and the sun for drying your hanging clothes and walking in the rain and a living prophet and cell phones!!! I love you all but God loves you even more!!!

Te amo!!

<3 sis mill

Ps sorry if I haven't responded to your email, i would blame it on our internet not being great, but it's really cause I haven't been looking at my email much haha but thank you so much for your love and i promise to give you all a big hug when I get home in November!!!!!

-less rhan $1 for a large ice cream cone with toppings, mcDonald's here is 10x better than I the US just saying  

-drenched on our way to the church to watch conference!!

-leaving the church with more snacks than we arrived

-SÃO PAULO TEMPLEEEEEE  love it with my whole hearttt 

-friends Muzama, Alessandro, and my cute  comp Sister Zap!

-good friends Alex and Matheus

-felt like we were on a TV show doing a face-to-face with the youth in our stake, wahoo!! 

prayers and prayers and prayers

 wow wow wow what a week!! lots of good, a few tough situations, but we made it through and hopefully became a little bit better because of it!! yesterday was a really tough day for me, one of the hardest on my mission, feeling inadequate and unuseful and pretty down on myself, so in the afternoon I decided to do what we always tell our friends to do, to talk with our heavenly father. I took a few minutes to compose myself (aka hiding in the bathroom lol) and then knelt down and offered my whole heart to Heavenly Father. There were quite a few tears and my thoughts were a mix of english and portuguese and confusion, but i asked Him to please help me feel loved. help me know how i can represent christ, how i can love and serve, and know that i am doing what i need to be doing. and instantly I felt a warmth around me, almost like a hug!! I usually feel the spirit through thoughts and feelings in my heart, so to feel this almost physical manifestation of god~s love for me was new, but it was exactly what i needed to feel!!

 i KNOW that God is real, that he is  my father (and yours too!!!) and that he loves each one of his children more than we can understand. Sometimes we have to go through trying experiences to rely on him, to develop attributes to become more like him, and to understand how some of our brothers and sisters here on earth feel in their own difficult moments. Our day was still a bit crazy and there were still moments I felt i wasn~t being the best version of myself I could be, but I KNEW that God was aware of me, and that he was helping me in every moment. please don~t forget how much god loves you and wants you to talk to him. Please, every person reading this email, talk to your heavenly father tonight.  if you can.... at this very instant, do it!! If not, the next moment you have alone, please talk with him! tell him how you are feeling, whether it is happy or sad or confused or upset, he wants to listen!!! and i promise, as a representative of Jesus Christ, that if you talk to him TODAY, he will answer your prayer in the way that you need to be able to feel his love and to grow into the wonderful person he knows you can become :))]

i hope you all have a wonderful week, look for the little tender mercies like straight lines and new paper and random bursts of laughter and seeing old friends and hugs from little kids!!! Know that I love you, but God loves you even more!!!
te amo!

<3 sis mill