Hello everyone!!

    Wow it's been another GREAT week! We had Zone Conference last Wednesday and President just blew us away! I'm soo lucky to have him as my mission president. Speaking of mission president, the new mission president was announced and in case you didn't hear. The new president will be President Clayton (I don't remember his first name :/) apparently he is the nephew of M. Russell Ballard and a spiritual giant as well. He'll arrive here in July at which time President Donaldson will be released. In the Zone Conference though we discussed the "8 Fundamentals" and how we are starting a new pilot where we will spend an extra 30 mins in the morning studying 1 of the 8 fundaments for the week, so it will be an 8 week program. The 8 Fundamentals are: Our missionary purpose- the Doctrine, teach people not lessons, revelation through church, revelation through prayer, revelation through scripture reading, role of the Holy Ghost, how to begin teaching, and we invite- they commit- we follow up. So by the end of these 7 weeks left, I'll have the fundamentals down... just in time to end my mission :/ But so far I've really loved studying these fundamentals, it allows us to bridge everything that we've learned and be more effective teachers.

    So we met Brandon at the historic site last Thursday and he LOVED it! He was just in awe the entire time. Literally like a child in a candy shop, it was awesome! In the tour he commented on how we can't go to war without our sword (referring to the importance of the Book of Mormon!) Just stayed at the historic site for 2 1/2 hours just playing, and reading EVERYTHING. When I mentioned the theaters, he turned with a HUGE smile on his face and with excitement he asked, "There's MORE!?!" he was fascinated the entire time. Haha it was so fun! And while he was there, we had a short lesson with him where we planned his baptismal program- he didn't want to wait! Later that night I asked Ryan (his roommate, the member who invited him to come to a church activity in the first place) I asked him how he felt about baptizing Brandon, and without looking up from his gold panning, he simply said, "honored." I love those two! I am just so lucky to help him make this covenant. I can picture him being baptized, confirmed, go to the temple, and in a year exactly, report as a missionary-- he will be such a GREAT missionary! He is so knowledgeable with the scriptures, oh and you should have heard his testimony he shared at his baptism.

   His baptism went GREAT, everything just fell in it's proper order and went smoothly. Sister Stott, Elder Vaughn, Elder Hendrichson, Sean (our ward mission leader) and myself sang for the musical number... I wouldn't say it was great, but it was good! Sean decided to join us last minute, which really made it! So it was all the Helix ward missionaries, and my first time singing at a baptism. So towards the end of the service, Brandon had the opportunity to share his testimony.. it was solid. He stated that he "knew the bible and the Book of Mormon are true, and I'm grateful I found the true church. And all by Ryans invitation to me.: He then continued to invite everyone to invite their friends to do missionary work- quoting  President Monson. He testified of all the essentials, the BOM, Joseph Smith, the living prophet, and the restoration. Hearing his testimony strengthened mine, and I'm sure everyone else that was in the room. It is just so incredible to see how he has changed already in these short few weeks. The gospel truly does change lives. This is the gospel of transformation. http://lds.org/pages/lifting-burdens?lang=eng this is the video that we watched while Brandon was changing, this is probably my favorite mormon message!!

   Well so I'm really out of time to keep going- I have so much more that I want to share with you! But this is Sister Stotts last pday so there is a lot to get done for her to be ready to head home... and of course we want to have enough time to have as much fun as we can, while we can! I hope you all have a great week! I love you all soo much!

Love,

Sister Miller