Airport and Home

CI VEDDIAMO PRESTO!!!!!

I pack tonight Wed. Night . I go to the mission home Thursday morning at 9am. SEE YOU SOON!!! Sorella Miller

Monica speaks Feb. 27, at 11am in the Millville 3rd Ward Red Brick Church.

From Provo exit the canyon and turn Right (East) at 3200 South. (Millville, Nibley sign)

Continue on 3200 South (crossing RR tracks) straight East to T stoplight (SR-165)

Go Left at the T and make an immediate next RIGHT (at the Maverick) 3100 South and continue East on 3100 South to Main Street.

Turn left on Main Street. Church is on Right.

Turn Right on 100 South Parking is behind church.

Travel time 2 hours...relaxed drive 2hours 15 mins.

The Best Year and a Half of My Life..Also the Absolute Hardest...

Ciao Famiglia,

Well, here I am. This is the last full week as a full time missionary. Just full of so many emotions, but honestly I am pretty numb all at the same time. I feel like I should be like crying all the time, but I'm fine. I am working hard.

Yesterday we went on splits. I took the other greenie out. I told her I had a goal to talk to at least one person on every transportation. We talked to the first lady of the day on our train ride into Rome. We talked about the nature of God, how we view God as a merciful, loving God. She had been taught in Catholic schools since she was a little girl, that God was an angry God, and we should obey the commandments or we go to hell, more or less...She said she started having nightmares when she was 6, about this mean, wrathful God. We talked about how in the last few years her life has changed, since she came to understand who God really is. We had to get off before we could get into details as to why this chang3e of mind came about....Then, the day went on. It was a great conversation. A woman who was a Dr. newly married, in her early 40's.

Yesterday was a day full of overcoming our fears so to say. I told her look, we aren't getting off the metro until you initiate a conversation. Ha ha, she was petrified and just couldn't open her mouth. But, after about two laps back and forth to the end of the line, she did it. We moved around at every stop, we would sit next to someone new each time, or stand by someone, ha ha It was great. It was a great reminder of how awesome it is to just be like, well, we have nothing else to do, I could stay on this metro all day!

To finish the cool Dr. woman story. Then, coming home last night around 8:30 we saw the same lady come walking on the train. It was like the sweetest miracle ever. So then we were able to continue our conversation the whole way home. WE ended up giving her a Book of Mormon, and maybe one day we will hear from her.

Patrizia will not be getting baptised this weekend, nor will Michela..

the family told us they weren't interested after the first encounter.

The biggest thing I am coming to realize lately is just reflecting over and over on the last year and a half, and how much I have changed. In ways that I didn't necessarily expect too. Yesterday with the greenie and listening to her talk, I realized it. She said "sometimes I just wonder why I signed up to do this! To wake up early, to walk around all day and talk to people, to have to talk to people on the bus, to not be EVER comfortable, ugh, I just feel like I don't understand why anyone would want to do this!" Wow, how much have a changed. I had similar thoughts at the beginning too. I am grateful to have come on the mission. At the beginning I just looked at it too much as a sacrifice. I had things I didn't want to give up.. Slowly but surely I have come to see that I have gained to much in return for my little sacrifice I have made. It's been the best year and a half of my life. Also the absolute hardest.

We ran into some Americans the other day and they were SO so excited to talk to us. The wives started crying when i told them I only have a few days left ha ha and then I started crying too.

Well, not much more to say except I love you all and am super excited to see you so soon.

Vi voglio un mondo di bene,

Sorella Miller

...MONICA

Ps. mom, can I get a hair appointment like next Saturday or something????

I LOVE ITALY!

Subject: I LOVE ITALY.

Ciao famiglia,

Sorry not much time to write, I will do a little cutting and pasting here in this letter.. sorry not a whole lot of reason to write a long letter anyways, the time is so short.

That is so cool about that family, wow, good job! Honestly some of the hugest miracles I have seen in the mission are with less actives coming to again feel God's love for them. Here are some sweet Scriptures I read this week on love. Simple but powerful study. Romans 8: 35-39 1 Corinth 13:13 Moroni 7 : 45 John 3:16-17 Isaia 53: 3-5 . Read em'

This week was a lot of finding once again. Never done more street contacting in my life than here in Rome haha but its great. There are always tons of people to talk to at lest, and there is great scenery.

We are trying to have frequent contact with our investigator Patrizia. Between us and the Anziani teaching her, we think that her faith in Jesus Christ is really improving and she is gaining a stronger testimony to gradually make it towards her Baptismal date of February 19th. We are planning on teaching her this Saturday with a member with us who she has been able to establish a good relationship with. We are not able to see her as often as we would like since we are so far away, but we are doing our best to help her always have things to do, like give her conference talks, and the specific assignments to read daily from the Book of Mormon, and pray daily.

With Michela, we are planning on introducing to her to more of the people her age at church this week so that she will have more of a support system besides just us two missionaries. We are hoping to be able to have her boyfriend present at the lesson this Saturday. WE are trying to ask her more specific questions to be able to know her specific needs, and then follow the Spirit to be able to meet her needs. Unfortunately Satan is really throwing a lot at her lately that is causing a lot of distractions, and taking away her time from being able to read, but she is still reading pretty faithfully the Book of Mormon every day, and we are able to at least do "phone lessons" with her almost every night.

We have this family that we found last week who has 4 kids, who we have been working with to try and get in their home to do a lesson with both parents present. She is always home, but he unfortunately is extremely busy, however, we were at least able to get them their Book of Mormon this week, because he had said he wanted to start reading that.

•Describe your work with new members and less actives.

We were able to have an incredible experience with a less active family last night named the Rivera family. After about 2 hours searching for their house, we finally were able to see them, and miraculously both of them were at home, along with their daughter. This family is from the Philippines, but have been here in Italy for about 9 years. We were able to really have a lesson in which the spirit was incredibly strong, and he was able to remember again what it feels like to feel the Spirit. We know that that lesson was inspired, so that he would be able to remember the importance of not just reading the Book of Mormon, but COMING TO CHURCH:Through us being there, he had floods of memories come back from HIS mission, in which he was able to remember how HE at one point was the missionary pleading for the less actives to come back to church. He was in tears, with a strong desire to repent. Even if we said few words, the spirit answered his questions and concerns. He was concerned a lot about members not doing their role in fellow shipping, but by the end he understood that salvation is individual, and we must EARN our own salvation. it was a powerful lesson, not only for this family, but also for me. We can never think that we are OK. This was someone who obviously had a STRONG testimony at one point, but got out of the habit of going to church. Just once is easy to miss, then it just got easier and easier to come up with eligible "excuses" to just keep on not going. They were anxious to start implementing habits they had lost, and wanted us to come back soon. It was a great experience.

•Talk about what you and your companion learned from evaluating your stewardship on Sunday evening. What do the numbers tell you? If you fell short of your key indicator goals, briefly explain why, and what you and your companion can do to achieve them next week.

This week we have seen a lot of miracles, but we are also anxious to implement changes, in order to make this week go better than the last. We weren't able to have as many less active lessons as we would have liked. We have worked a lot out of the other Sorelle's area book, and have tried contacting a lot of less actives, but unfortunately weren't able to have any lessons, besides the one last night. We did an area book activity in which we said a prayer, and each went through the ward list and picked two less actives to go to their homes and find. We are going to be doing this in the next few days of this week. We would also like to do more service for these people, and have them be able to feel our love for them.

As far as our progressing investigators, we would like to find more ways to do more specific and direct commitments. We think that this will be able to help investigators progress, and be able to MEASURE their progress by following up with these commitments.

We would like to have more OTHER lessons but really focusing on teaching when we find, and finding when we teach. As we do this we think we will be able to immediately find those who are ready to receive the message. We want those we meet on the street to be able to immediately feel the spirit right there on the street and have the desire to feel that same spirit again.

We would like to find new investigators by being more creative in our finding techniques. We are trying to do role play every day and work on our approaches, and quickly relate everything to the Restoration. We also would like to be very diligent at being 100% obedient, and pray for miracles. As we do this we know that the Spirit will truly be our Senior Companion each day.

To get more people in church, we are still trying to do a lot of our finding in the area of the church, that way people will have seen the church, and it will be easier to get them there the first time.

Our goal is to be able to do the lesson zero each time with the strong and direct baptismal invite at the end of each lesson. That way, from the beginning they know our purpose, and we can quickly address their concerns. We think this will help us to have more people with baptismal dates.

I love the mission. I love these people. The gospel is true!!!!

I love you all. Have a great week!

ps. can we have BBQ chicken some time soon after I get home????

Vi voglio un mondo di bene!!!!!!

Monica

Sorella Miller

Miracles

From: Monica Gean Miller

Date: February 2, 2011 10:15:00 AM MST

To: Margo G Miller

Subject: miracles.

Caio Famiglia,

Sounds like you are all doing great, I am so glad! Its so true, there are a billion scooters everywhere, but that is everywhere in Italy! Ha ha I have actually been struck by a few scooters in my time here in Italy! Wow, I cant believe everyone is going to be there at the airport, that is nuts, wow, how weird.

So here is what happened to us this week.

We ended up moving out of that apartment that night, and staying at the mission home for a few days. WE had Zone Conference on Thursday and I gave my last testimony. As you can imagine I was basically a wreck the whole time and couldn't keep myself under composure, but I heard a lot of counsel that was exactly what I needed to hear, and gave me motivation I needed to finish strong.

Sister Salyer (my companion) and I have been working like crazy lately, even if it was completely difficult to leave our area, and move to the other side of the city, basically starting from ground zero. Completely. We moved into the other sisters house, so we are now in 4, in our apartment. We left all our work to our elders over in Roma 3, Anziano Garcia and Rapplye. We spent a couple hours going through our area book with them and to be honest it was very difficult. WE were only there for 2 weeks, but it was just that the Lord was blessing us so much with so many people to teach, and we were just getting our feet on the ground. It was really hard to not feel like I was just turning my back on all those people who we had found, and started to work with. I was really trying to exercise faith in the Lord, that this unfortunate event would take a turn for the good.

We were able to move to the other house, we were given a blank area book, and just prayed like crazy to see miracles, through doing our part, and working our bums off basically (that was for you Mom ). Basically its as if we were to open a new city, but the city of Rome ha ha I remember one night last week just breaking down in the car at about 11.30 at night in the back seat of the assistant's car. (we were being picked up at a train station way out in the middle of no where because we got off at the wrong stop and were absolutely lost, alone, freezing cold, and standing there clueless, ha ha can you imagine me?) I remember thinking, wow, the last 6 weeks of my mission i get transferred because some robber breaks into our house, I'm lost 90 percent of the time, my poor greenie has a horrible trainer who just brings bad luck, we have absolutely ZERO investigators, and we are knocking doors for like 6 hours a day. Satan was really pounding on me. HOWEVER, in the few moments of despair like that I have had on my mission, miracles have shortly come to follow.

Let me introduce you to our miracle. This miracle's name is Michela. We actually met her one week ago. She is ITALIAN, 25 years old, Catholic but not practising, and sort of searching for truth (actually, she didn't really realize that she was missing anything until she heard the message of the restoration!) The Lord placed her directly in our path just walking home on our way to lunch one day last Monday. We had about a 15 minute conversation with her there on the street, and were able to leave her with a pamphlet on the plan of salvation. After we finished talking that first day we met her, she told us that it was weird for her to listen to us because a lot of people approach her about "things like this" (religion) and she never feels it to listen to them, but when we were talking with her she said that something inside her told her to just listen to us... A few days later we called her, and she said she had had a great experience with reading about the plan of salvation, and wanted to learn more. I thought, great, who knows...The next day she came to church. After Sunday school (which actually had been a rather strange lesson to be honest...) we went out in the hallway and talked a bit before Sacrament meeting started. She started asking us about how we felt about her living with her boyfriend etc etc. Well, we happened to be conveniently placed next to the picture of the Rome Temple. Somehow we were able to explain about eternal families, and the importance of marriage. Then she started asking us how she could know that all these things were true, she had been presented many different "Paths" if you will, and never felt that any of them were right. She had a sincere desire to know if all this is true. We started teaching her there in the hallways about how we can pray to God, and through the spirit, he tells us the truth of all things. All of a sudden we see a light come into her eyes and she just starts bawling, absolute breakdown there in the hallway outside the cultural hall. She told us that her heart was burning, and asked if we could please explain what was going on inside of her. Wow, talk about finding an ELECT!!! During Sacrament meeting I felt a very distinct impression of a member of the ward who we needed to introduce Michela to. So, after sacrament meeting I went to track down this member, who then was able to talk to Michela afterwards and share her testimony and make an almost immediate bond with. We gave her a Book of Mormon, and she told us she was so excited, and just felt so peaceful. So then, Monday night, we get a phone call from Michela! She had started reading the chapters we left for her in the book of Mormon, and was so impressed with Alma 32, that she just felt the need to call and talk to us. She was like really I don't even know what is going on, I just felt like I needed to call you and talk. Apparently that day, AFTER she had read, she had so many things go wrong, that she was a little confused. She had caused a moto accident, and her mom had surgery. We talked fro about an hour on the phone, leaving her with the commitment to pray to God about 3 things.

1. If Joseph Smith was a prophet

2. If the Book of Mormon comes from God

3. If she should get baptised.

Yesterday morning in my personal study I had another strong impression to call Michela and tell her to read 2 Ne 31 on Baptism, because that night we needed to invite her to be baptised. So, I did. SOOO, Tuesday night, we talked to Michela again (since she lives in our old area, about 2 hours away on the other side of Rome) and she said that she thinks that God answered her prayers, because she had a dream about Joseph Smith, and the Angel Moroni appearing to him!! Wow. Then, we invited her to be baptised on February 19th. She said YES!!! She said she still wants to understand a lot (naturally, its only been like 1 week!) but that she would do everything to make it to be baptised the 19th! She was overcome again by the spirit in our conversation last night talking about following the example of Jesus Christ and being baptised. My testimony is that we can act, and not react. IF we do all we can, are obedient, then we don't need to worry. Put it all in God's hands, and he will do the rest! I know that God works MIRACLES!!!! He is a God of miracles, and just wants to try our patience and our faith sometimes. I was transferred to Rome for a reason (other than just sweet P-days) and of that I am sure. I know he loves us, and that we can be tools in his hands if we allow him to operate us. I love you all and how you are doing well, and doing tons of missionary work, because its the most important thing in the world!!! God prepares his children to hear this message, and he knows where they are. I love being a missionary.

I love you all un mondo di bene,

MONICA

...Sorella Miller

PS. We are now in like the ritzy area of Rome, surrounded by Versaci and Gucci stores. There is a HUGE difference between this, and our old area. WE are still going to church in our other ward because president told us to give priority to Michela for the next 3 weeks at least...

pps we also found a family last night with 4 kids, who wants us to come see them this week. I was like jumping up and down, what else could make some one that happy I don't even know!!!!!!! God guides our every step!!!!

Life Here In The Ghetto of Rome .....

Subject: Life here in the ghetto of Rome ...

Well, Ciao famiglia,

It has been kind of a crazy whirlwind serving here in Rome. We are definitely in the most ghetto area of Rome, and are having some CRAZY EXPERIENCES. We have been able to see the hand of the Lord more than ever before in these last few weeks. I am honestly trying so hard to just work my guts out every day. My companion is probably feeling a little like I'm crazy because I seriously try to talk to everyone that the Lord puts in our path. Its such a cool thing to do, and we are seeing MIRACLES, as far as the Lord just having people fall from the sky, right in our path. This week we were able to see finally our investigator named Patrizia, who is supposed to be getting baptised on the 19th. We went with the Elders Sunday night to give her a blessing. She is recently separated from an abusive husband and has some pretty intense problems. Like I have said many many times before, the mission is a humbling experience, to know that God trusts me enough to send ME, to help his children. I sit there so often and feel so small, and listen to these problems that are so huge, and often feel completely inadequate...Like, ME, I know nothing, all I can do is follow the Spirit, and I can testify that as we strive to just say the words that come to us through the Spirit (with PLEADING for that guidance) the words come, every time. I have such a testimony that life is about never feeling confident, or comfortable. We constantly are reliant upon God, and should BEG for his spirit, and do all that we can to qualify for it. When we do our part, God protects us. He protects us from danger. I know that it is because I have been doing everything in my power to follow the Holy Ghost, that He has protected me this week, and that He has led us to those who are searching.

This week we were going off to contact some contacts. It was about 6 O'clock and we had just gotten off the bus and started heading down the road looking for these apartments. This mysterious "hooded man" walking a dog came up to us and asked us where we were going. We told him the address and told us to go get back on the bus, and NOT go there. We both had previously had some feelings like we shouldn't go there that night, then the Lord placed this man there to reassure our feelings. We went a few days later in the daytime, and we found ourselves in some super sketchy government housing complexes...After a few wacky people coming to the door, we got out quick and decided if there were people there we would find them some other way. When you have thoughts that come into mind, don't EVER second guess from what source the feelings come. The Spirit has guided our EVERY step in this city. It is crazy how intertwined our every action is, because God guides us. I have never seen it more that in the last 2 weeks. But, I can say that it is a result of constantly having that prayer in my heart, feeling completely reliant on that guidance. We cant do it alone. Never doubt the Spirit, just go and do, and the Lord takes care of us.

We found an amazing lady this week named Natalya from Ukraine who owns a flower kiosk. She wants s much o believe in a life after death, but doesn't believe that there actually could be something that good, in a world so bad. Can you imagine just thinking that all there is to life is waking up and going to sell flowers every day in a little stand, going home, making a plate of pasta, going to bed, doing that same thing for 50 years, and then dying, and that's it. That's life. Basta?? The plan of Salvation is a plan that gives us a reason to live, a reason to progress, and it honestly brought a light into this woman's eyes as we explained it to her.

We have had a crazy last few hours. Today I am writing this letter from the kitchen, of the mission mansion, as I like to call it. We had a pretty scary experience last night. We were coming home from an incredibly long day, because we had traveled like two hours (via metro, train and bus) to go visit a less active (who wasn't home when we got there :) ) and we were seriously exhausted. We got to our apartment, and stuck the key in the door, as soon as we put the key in I got this sick feeling, then the lock from our door just completely Fell out of the door....We ran downstairs completely freaked out and called the Anziani to come over. So they got there and they got our door open, to find our apartment had been robbed. It was the craziest thing I have ever seen in my life. Some one had got in and completely destroyed our apartment opened every single drawer, gone through every trash can, every zipper in all of our suitcases, every single thing was dumped and thrown all over our apartment. It was pretty much a sick feeling, and really upsetting. however, we are OK. So we got all of our stuff out of there like the next hour, and the Elders took us to the mission home. We got here last night around 11:30, and we are making a lot of decisions today. President told us we will be here probably until Saturday. Tomorrow we have zone conference, and then he said we will probably finish the transfer living with the sorelle in the Rome 2 house. I don't know what is going to happen, its pretty upsetting to think that we might not be able to finish the transfer in our own area, but I guess we still don't know for sure what will happen. the most important thing is that we are fine, and none of our documents or anything important was taken. We don't know what the motives were, but we are totally just grateful we weren't home when they came. I will let you know next week what is going to happen for these next 4 weeks...Don't worry, I'm FINE!!

Rome is pretty crazy to say the least! HAHA! Hope you all are well, love you tons

Viv voglio un mondo di bene,

Monica

...Sorella Miller

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