"There is no physical rest, but there is spiritual rest in Christ"

 Thanks to one of our friends this week for spitting the words of wisdom in the subject line during one of our lessons! As a missionary you are working all day, and even when we use Zoom for hours and with 8 hours of rest a night, it's still a very tiring work! I thought I couldn't be more tired than I was at byu, but I hit the pillow HARD every night at 10:30 here haha but I couldn't be happier to be tired at the end of the day! The scripture that's motivated me all week is d&c 4:2 "Therefore, o yea that embark in the service of God, see that ye serve him with all your heart, might, mind, and strength, that ye may stand blameless before God at the last day". I know that as I forget my own worries and give myself completely over to God, He will use me to help others come unto Christ!!! And nothing is greater than that!

This week was wild one! I made a goal to be bold in my testifying and man did the Lord put me in situations where I had the opportunity to chose to be bold or to back down. One of our friends this week was going through some stuff that I felt very underqualified to help with, but after a long time listening to her I felt the Spirit prompt me to besr my testimony and even though I didn't know what to say, I bore my testimony of Christ and the Spirit filled my mouth with the words I needed to say!! This was one of the scariest things I've ever done, but I was able to feel the Spirit stronger than ever before in my life!! When we trust the Spirit, miracles happen!!

Speaking of miracles, thats what this whole week has been full of! Literally everything felt like a miracle! The warm air outside and the questions our friends asked during lessons and our studies being exactly what our friends needed, ah God is so good!!

So sorry for how scattered this email has been but so I dont forget I want to write some of the things we did this week! 

-Lots of service from painting a shed to planting some plants to mowing a lawn! 

-Some zoom lessons with recent converts where we got listen to their sweet and simple testimonies

-a lesson with another bishop in our zones daughter in the online MTC right now

- teaching Giovanni-THEE MOST PREPARED man ever, thank you to the missionaries that taught him in 2014 because he is now ready to be baptized and commit to live the gospel!!

-teaching a recent covert family living in Brazil IN PORTUGUESE (rough times but we made it)

-bible study eith Dave, a Vietnam vet and ready for the apocalypse with alllll his toilet paper haha

-food not bombs free food giving out in downtown columbia

-getting to know the members at church from 6 feet apart with our face masks on :) 

Hope you all have a great week and see God's hand in your life such as Pete the beetle that lives in the corridor next to our apartment, google maps, and frozen grapes!! I love you but God loves you even more!!

Te amo!!!

<3 Sis Mill

MARAVINCRIVEL!!!!

I said during class this week that fofa (cute) is my favorite word in Portuguese but I changed my mind, it's maravincirvel! This is a mixture between marvelous and incredible and i think it's the only word that can even come close to summing up my experience in the CTM! Other than supercalifragilisticexpialidocious that is haha

In all honesty, I can't believe my time in the CTM is over!! There were some hard days for sure, days when I sat in class for 20 minutes wondering what in the world my teachers were talking about, but there were even  more days where I was nodding my head and raising my hand to answer questions, questions I didn't realize I could understand until I was in the middle of answering them! None of this is my own doing, I'm not a great studier and I definitely haven't memorized all the words and phrases I meant to, but because I was trying my hardest to do what the Lord asked of me, He has blessed me with even the smallest bit of the gift of tongues! Tonight we had a CTM wide devotional on Zoom, and one of the benefits of Zoom is being able to change the language translation (in certain meetings that is haha), but after listening to the first few minutes in English I saw my teacher was the translator for Portuguese! I thought I'd seen him for the last time the day before so I couldn't help myself and I listened to the rest of the devotional in Portuguese with my teacher translating in his native tongue. I didn't understand everything that was said, not be a long shot, but I was able to ponder more my testimony of the gospel and to feel the Spirit bear powerful testimony to me of the truthfulness of this gospel and the Lord's love and plan for me!! I KNOW that plan includes learning Portuguese even if I don't know how He will have me use it yet and I'm so excited to see what the Lord needs me to do and learn in St Louis! It was a tender experience for sure and one that I won't ever forget :) 

This week was probably the craziest of the CTM! Our teachers encouraged us to use as much Portuguese as possible this last week so class became a little crazier trying to explain and understand everything fully in Portuguese but I learned so much!! I'm finally starting to understand the grammar, at least I think so haha, and one of our fun activities this week was learning about the food in Brazil! So if anyone has any good recipes or restaurants for me to try when I get home, regardless of if I go to Brazil or not, I am now super hyped about Brazilian food! I am sad to be leaving my mom's cooking and to be leaving my family, but I know that we will all be blessed by this time apart! I'm so lucky to have gotten an extra 6 weeks of laughing with my sisters and walking around the neighborhood with my parents, and even though this isn't the experience I was expecting it was exactly what I needed! Man this is getting sappy, sorry guys haha but I love my family so much and I'm so so grateful for all the sacrifices they have made for me while I've been doing online MTC as well as each of their shining examples to me of living the gospel every day!!!! 

My biggest take away from classes and devotionals this week was to strive to be a little better every day! We can't be perfect in this life, and we can't fix all of our faults in one day, but we can make tiny adjustments every morning to be a little more loving, a little more patient, and little better at listening, a little more diligent in our scripture study, a little more like the Savior. I know that as we strive to become a little better, Christ will strengthen us through His Atonement and help us to become the person that we want to be AND EVEN MORE!!!! I've seen Christ multiple my efforts not just in the CTM but throughout my whole life and I know that He will do the same for you if you ask him!!

Finally I couldn't complete this email without saying how much I love and am going to miss my district. I was pretty skeptical about how close we would get only doing zoom classes twice a day rather than being around each other 18 hours a day, but luckily I was proven wrong! I absolutely adore each person in my district for different reasons and all of them have helped me become a more devoted disciple of Christ and taught me about how to be a better missionary!! And we have had some GREAT times full of laughter and broken Portuguese and story sharing and absolute confusion as well hahaha wouldn't have wanted it any other way :) peep the video at the end for a look at how much we've all changed in just 6 weeks ;) 

Hope you all had an amazing week and were able to see God's tender mercies in your own life!! Little things from pretty sunsets to glitter tattoos to jimmy johns take-out in the mountains :) I love you but God loves you sooooo much more!!!!

<3 Sis Mill

                                one of the elders serenading us with empty root beer bottles

Jett's 8 birthday (we made him a dog cake)

Family Hike

district 23b baby :’)

Sometime you need to remember longer than you think

The quote of my email this week was from a devotional we watched in the CTM this week about how missionary work is changing but that it will continue in new and exciting ways!! These new ways might take a little bit of adjusting and getting used to, but that we need to "remember the things which the Lord hath said" (1 Nephi 15:11) including that He loves us and will always support us if we turn to Him, but that sometimes we need to remember that for longer than we think. Sometimes we need to have more patience and remember the little good things that are happening as we make our way through challenging times toward worthy goals!! The Lord ALWAYS remembers you so you should always REMEMBER HIM!!! oh so good!!

This week was another great one! We started having our classes mostly in Portuguese this week which has been challenging but also helped me learn so much more about the language!!! Still not a master at all the grammar tenses (did you know there are 12 tenses in English as well as Portuguese?? who knew!) but I'm slowly picking up more and more and the Spirit is great at communicating what I'm trying to say ;)

Because we are learning SO MANY things every day, sometimes I can feel a little overwhelmed. Those of you that know me well know I have two instinctive responses to this: tears or laughter. Or both! This week I definitely experienced both, but a lot more laughter than tears, and most of the tears were from laughter so that is so so good!! During afternoon class one day we were going over past subjunctive conjugations and translating a story about Joseph Smith one sentence at a time. I was translating it in my head as our teacher called on people and was not doing too hot. Then he called on me to do the next sentence and I quickly looked it over, and BLESSED, I knew how to do this one so I unmuted my mic and started translating, but after only two words I doubted myself and said "wait umm" and then just completely lost it in a fit of laughter!!! I was expecting the teacher to just call on someone else while I was laughing but he was so patient and just waited 2 WHOLE MINUTES for me to control myself so that I could finish translating the 6 word sentence! And then we we got to take a 5 minute break to get a drink and go to the bathroom hahah but I think it was definitely for me get in control of myself haha what a kind soul :) That story just about sums up this week, other highlights included spending another day with Sis Hassler (YAY!!), seeing a girl from my BYU lacrosse team, and driving to Moab for a qick p-day full of hiking!!! 

Hope you all are doing well and I encourage you to thank someone that inspires you for their influence in your life :) Love you all!!

<3 Sis Mill

action shot of sister hassler and i in action, thank you mom

learned about the brazilian flag and culture wahoo!!!

some fun names changes this week

millers take on moab, 4th of july + corona edition