Happy Festivus!

This is truly the most wonderful time of the year. I used to wonder from time to time why it is our church - the true church of Christ - does not discourage the celebration of Christmas: a tradition of Pagan origin, Christianized by Constantine during the age of apostasy. In the end, although Christ certainly wasn't born during this time of year, the anniversary of His birth is worthy of the most joyous of celebrations! And how strong is Spirit all around us as people reflect on the importance of family, their goals in life, and possibly even their relationship with God and His Only Begotten! As a missionary, I do believe the tradition of Christmas is an universal tool the Lord likes to use to soften the hearts of His children and bring to pass His Work. Our district's Living Christmas Cards are still working wonderfully. We've been getting into more houses than ever, spreading the story of Christ's birth and bringing His Spirit into family's homes. The Cub Scouts in one of our wards made a bunch of Nativity Christmas ornaments that we've began to pass out while we carol; the people absolutely love it!
On Thursday night this week, just a few of us Elders when out to Bonanza Ward (my old area) to carol to a few houses there. The Bonanza Elders decided to go see an old couple they only ever talked to once before very briefly - no member's that sent them or anything. They answered the door and we sang our very best "Silent Night" we had ever sang. We greeted them and gave them their nativity ornament; we asked if we could step in to share the story of Christ's birth, and they gladly invited us in. They hang up the ornament on their tree as we recited the beautiful words of those scriptures to them. By the end they were in tears, telling us how wonderful it was to see young people like us sacrificing our time to share what we believe with them. It was a powerful experience, paralleled by very few on my mission so far. Now whenever they look at the nativity ornament, they'll think back to the time the missionaries came to their house and brought the Spirit into their home. I don't know if this will be the first of a chain of events that will lead to their conversion (and it just might be), but at least I know there will always be that. When we first came up with the idea to do this, it was the kind of experience that we ended up having at Harold and Sheryl's that we were hoping and praying for. We got to testify to many more families beside them, but that was really something special I'll never forget.
On Wednesday, we had our annual Christmas Conference in the mission. We got to play Family Feud with questions about the Book of Mormon and the missionary handbook. It was, sadly, Sister Spencer's last mission conference, and she got to go up and share her "dying testimony" with us towards the end of the meeting. It's hard to believe that her time has come to an end (and I'm not too far behind). It's been wonderful serving with her (counting the MTC, we've actually been in the same district three times!!), and I've been able to see a great, positive change in her.
We got news about transfers on Saturday. President Browning called me early to tell me that I'm going to be the new district leader and that I'm getting a new companion - Elder Esplin.
I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and enjoy this time to dwell on God's greatest gift to us all - His Only Begotten, Jesus Christ.



"For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior, which is Christ the Lord."
"And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God, and saying,
"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace; good will toward men." -Luke 2:12-14

"IT'S A FESTIVUS FOR THE REST OF US!" -Frank Costanza

Elder Miller   

Since Elder Maynes training last week, we’ve been making an effort to talk to more people than we usually do. We’ve set a goal to talk to 13 people everyday - who we aren’t already teaching. From Wednesday to Saturday we spent some time in parking lots of Target and Walmart and other places just passing out cards for LighttheWorld to hit our goal. It’s difficult to stop people sometimes and when we do, the conversations aren’t really of high quality. We’re thinking we should just try to spread our contacts out throughout the day rather than packing them in all at once.
We’ve also continued our caroling and presenting of the living Christmas Cards. Tonight we’re doing our wards as a district and we’re really looking forward to it. Our ward mission leader just yesterday sent us eleven names to do. The members in our wards really like this idea.
Sorry the letter’s short this week. We’ve just been spending a lot of time finding, but a lot of people just haven’t planned out the way we hoped. Hope you all have a good safe week!
Elder Miller

Living Christmas Cards

I’m very excited for this holiday season. It’s about this time of year most people are taking the time to ponder on the things that matter most: their family, their lives, their goals, and perhaps even their relationship with God Himself. Our district is doing something super fun and special to take advantage of this. We’re delivering Living Christmas Cards on the behalf of our members to their neighbors and friends. What we do is we knock on their door and carol to them (Silent Night, First Noel). After the song we say “John and Mary Smith, this is a living Christmas card sent to you by your friends Steve and Kate Johnson. May we come inside and share the story of Christ as recorded in the Bible.” We would then recite Luke 2:7-14 and bear out testimony of the Savior followed by a quick prayer. We tried it for the first time last night in our district leader’s area. It went super well; the first family we did it to was actually Jewish, but they loved it so much and invited us right in. We presented it with great confidence and that made the Spirit strong. Another house we went into was in the middle a “mental meditation class,” so there we a ton of people we got to go and share it with during their break.
This past Thursday we had our mission conference with Elder Richard G. Maynes of the Presidency of the Seventy. He spoke to us for over two and a half hours and just about every minute was wonderful. He focused a lot on the importance of giving our investigators the opportunity to read the Book of Mormon themselves, rather then read and preach at them. He talked of instances while he was a mission president where people were convert just from reading the Book with no missionaries around. Early church History has many examples of that as well. He also focus on how we need to make our purpose as missionaries a part of our “inner fabric.” Looking at data from missions in the US, we need to be having quality gospel conversations with at least twenty people a day to maintain productivity and regular baptisms in our areas. It was very eye opening the way he presented the importance of talking to pretty much everyone and anyone. We can’t just say hi, but we need to try to actually stop them and give them something to ponder on and learn from. That can be hard, but it’s very important.
In my studies, currently, I’ve begun to do something super fun. President Nelson gave a great talk last Conference about making lists during his Book of Mormon reading; I’ve started to make one of my own of the many phrases that we owe to the Book of Mormon. Not so much a list of doctrines in the Book, but phrases and expressions that are unique to it. Some are doctrinal like “When ye are in the service of your fellow beings, ye are only in the service of your God” (Mosiah 2:17) or “It must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things” (2 Nephi 2:11). Others are just expressions like “great and abominable church” (1 Nephi 13) or “tight like unto a dish” (Ether 2). It’s been super fun seeing how many different ones you can find and it has helped me appreciated it even more.
Will go for now, but hope you guys have another fantastic week and a wonderful December!
Elder Miller