Dissed

We closed our letter to Haley this week with "See Ya Later Alligator."  So she didn't write a letter back she just wrote, "In a while crocodile!"  So no letter but - she is returning this week from her mission to Brazil and will be giving her homecoming talk in church on Sunday, December 28th at 9am. This will be at the LDS Chapel at 830 East Lehi Road, Mesa.  All are Invited!!

Haley Mills, Sofia Pelegrini, Rachael Hauet

I´ll be home for Natal... I mean Christmas!

I had so many things to say, but your email just blew it all out of the water. WHAT AN AMAZING STORY! I was reading the beginning of the story turning super frustrated (as I'm sure yáll were). So I start reading it to my compy like OH NO look what´s happening at home. SO then we get to the good stuff and I just start to cry. I cant believe you guys got to have a baptism this week! (My uncle got baptized) What an amazing blessing. I was thinking when hearing the story about the missionary side of it. How they probably were knocking doors because they had no one to teach. One of them probably tried to talk the other one out of it. They probably knocked 15 or 20 doors that were immediately slammed in their faces, but Heavenly Father knew who was prepared and where.

I'm so humbled everyday of my mission by everything the Lord does for his children. This week we had 17 investigators at church. Really we had 22, but 5 of them left before sacrament (which here is the last hour of church). President said we broke the mission record. I'm not going to lie, as you could probably tell from my email a few weeks ago we have been having a REALLY hard time lately. But I know that God was just preparing this for us. Preparing us to be even better everyday. Preparing us for the "real world" as we call it here.

Highlights:

-One of our investigators at church was the most ELECT Elizeth that I told you about last week. She announced her baptism to the branch, then got a little mad that we hadn´t announced it yet? AKA she´s amazing.

-One of our young men investigators is in love with me and tried to hug me for a total of 3 minutes straight. While the whole branch laughed and I tried to strong arm him as far as I could. THEN, his friend starts trying to kiss me on the face...

-During branch choir practice I didn't see a part of the stage sticking up and I tripped and fell into the pulpit, which then almost fell over WITH me. ALL while singing. The pianist was laughing so hard she couldn't stop for an uncomfortable amount of time. Everyone asked me if I got hurt and I go- JUST MY PRIDE!

-We won a mission contest this last month and now our zone gets to play volleyball and eat pizza with President and his family this week! Its one of the best "death week" presents ever!

-We had exit interviews with President Farnes yesterday in Sorocaba, and he gave me some great advice about law school, and about real life, and about dating (YUCK). It felt so weird to talk about the real world- especially with President.


Speaking of, all anyone can talk about is that we are going home. Everyone asks us how we are feeling and we switch off saying we are SUPER excited and that we NEVER want to leave. AKA we´ve turned bipolar. I bore my dying testimony in church (there are only like 10 members so we all have to use like 5 minutes every month) and I just started to bawl. Not just cry, but BAWL. 

More than anything I have a testimony that God knows best. That He loves me. I have been reminiscing about that day I knew I had to serve a mission and how I cried because I didn't want to and I knew it would be hard.

HA.

It WAS hard.

Sometimes I just wanted to give up. Sometimes, embarrassingly, I did.

Then when I came back with my tail between my legs, to apologize to God, I LEARNED the truth about the gospel of Jesus Christ.

"Remember: the heavens will not be filled with those who never made mistakes but with those who recognized that they were off course and who corrected their ways to get back in the light of gospel truth." - President Uchtdorf

You never forget a baptism, or a reactivation, or a companion, or your first orange peeling in Brasil, or the time you found someone PREPARED by God. 

So as a full-time missionary I'm arriving at the end of the rope, but I will never stop being a missionary.

I will never forget.

May God be with you til we meet again.

Sister Haley Kristina Mills

And this part is for Uncle Barry - no regrets.

Thanks and Miracles

You´d think with a ton of practice I´d just start these emails right up, but it´s like trying to write about a year of your life in 3 sentances. Yeah. Its that hard.

So in our highlights from this week... our office elders have recently learned that I love politics so I've started recieving regular updates on politics? You could say I'm SUPES greatful.

Speaking of grateful we had THANKSGIVING! WOOOOOO! And when I say thanksgiving in BRASIL, I want to say- Mixed Christmas/thanksgiving? Since they don't have Thanksgiving they made things like Christmas rice (only in Brasil) and some other dish with fruit and flour? I'm not really sure what it was called, but I'm thinking we are a little narrow minded on our food options there in the states. Why have we not been enjoying Christmas rice all this time?! Its fine. I'm bringing recipes.

But really it was the best- we got there and I'm like- WHERE IS THE GRAVY?!?! (Mom- who knew I liked gravy?) So I make it there on the spot (also, who knew I knew how to make it?) and everyone loved it! Julia (she is 14) was like- MOM PUT THIS STUFF ON YOUR POTATOES! And then everyone spent the rest of the night trying to pronounce gravy. SUCCESS.

In other news we had the COOLEST miracle of my whole mission this week. Her name is Elizeth. And it all started with a rain storm, when obviously we were on our way to visit a man so we couldn't go in his house. Sister Hauet and I stop and look at each other for all of 10 seconds trying to decide what to do when I woman comes out of her house and says (translated obviously) "GIRLS! Come inside my house until the rain stops would you?" Ummm obviously yes! So we go in and chat for a little- then I ask her about her family and she starts (I kid you not) BAWLING. She informs us that her daughter died of cancer and then the rest of her family is less than family. And not knowing what to say the compy and I make eye contact. (We sort of have a thing where if we dont know what to say- I talk, like always right?) So I'm like uhhhh... Irmã, I know God loves you.

She LOSES it. She then tells us she prayed the day before that she could know that He was actually there. Long story short we marked her baptism for the day we leave and she is AMAZING.

More next week! LOVE YOU AND MISS YOU!