Keeping Christ at the Center of Everything

Hello everyone!

I am sorry that I don't have a ton to write today, it has been one of

those weeks where everything was good, but you can't really remember

any specifics! Sorry!

We had an awesome zone conference this week. The whole thing was

focused on the document, "The Living Christ," and focusing on how we

need to keep Christ at the center of everything that we do. It was so

awesome! 

(Mom's sidenote: I have included this document, in case you aren't familiar with it.  It is well worth reading!)

Hna Miller is doing great. We have had a fun time doing service this

week, and really getting to know each other. It is so fun! Also, I am

like 99% sure I am allergic to nectarines, or at least white

flesh nectarines. That led to some fun times with my good friend

Bennadryl this week. Hermana Miller got to see my funny side. She

hasn't run away yet! She needs an award. :)

Fresh picked Tangelos are the bomb.

(These are NOT the ones she is allergic to)

Hna Zarate just forwarded me this, it is from a while ago, just kind of fun! :)

Other than that, I am not sure what to write. It has been an awesome

week. Ojai is so great, the work is awesome, and time is going way to

fast. Nothing has really changed there! It is so crazy!

Another picture from the Stake Center. One of these days I will get

sick of these pictures. Today is not that day.

I send pictures of this field all the time, but again, it never gets old!  I love this place!

Anyway, I love you all, and hope you have a great week!

Lots of love!

Hermana Courtney Miller

Service Brings Blessings

Hello everyone! I hope everyone had a great Valentine's day, and a

wonderful week in general. It was a great week here in Ojai.

We won't talk about how many outtakes it took to get one picture with

both of us in the air! (Valentine's socks courtesy of Mom.)

Mom's sidenote-Don't know why her socks look orange.  They are black, with pink hearts.

Casual Valentines day pictures. The "all black" look was necessary.

Ojai is such a quirky little town. I love it so much. So many crazy

hippies. It is awesome! I wish I could capture all of it in pictures

and words, but they will never do this town justice.

The style, the trees, the mountains. Ojai can really grow on you.

 Ojai, CA, everyone.

A lot of our investigators have been really sick lately, which has

made it hard. S. is still doing great. There is still more

waiting to be done, but there is progress on that front, something we

haven't seen for a while. Hopefully things will move along more

quickly now! This week, we were also able to have an INCREDIBLE member

present lesson with our investigator M.A. and one of the new ward

missionaries, Sister P, for short. M.A. can have a really hard time

comprehending things some times, but Sister P was able to go in there,

and help her understand so much, from Prophets to the Plan of

Salvation. It was such an incredible lesson, and M.A. was so engaged

and happy to be learning. It was an incredible experience. I hope that

with more member help we will be able to help her progress. Other than

that, though, Ojai is still Ojai. It is such a weird quirky little

place. I love it so much!

One thing we did have a lot of this week was service! We were able to

help investigators, members, and potential investigators with all

kinds of things this week. Sometimes, it felt a bit like spinning

wheels, but it is worth it. On a day where, without us planning it, we

had felt like we spent our whole day doing service, I felt

discouraged, and like we weren't going to help anyone progress that

way. I went home and picked up and old journal, and the paper that

President gave us when they first announced the service program fell

out. It talked about how Christ served, and if we were his hands,

should we not do the same? It made me realize that we are really

making a difference, and that this is what the Lord wants us to be

doing. Service is really a blessing to the people, and the

missionaries.

The things you find on peoples doorsteps. Hope they are okay we took

a picture with it! Some opportunities just can't be passed up!

Last week, the Ventura Stake center looked like a scene straight out

of an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Still slightly scared for my life.

I love this work. I love Ojai. Time is going way too fast if you ask me.

I can not BELIVE it is already week 4 of this transfer! What

happened?? MAKE IT STOP!

Anyway, I love you all and hope you have an awesome week!

Hermana Courtney Miller.

The Work is Hastening!

Ojai is so great. I love working with Hermana Miller. She was not

tracting in her last area, and when she came here, President asked her

to "Share the Vision." Well, she did, and it is awesome. We are moving

to only working with members, and we are already seeing success, and

miracles. I can not wait to see what is in store.This week, we were

able to contact a few member referrals that seem like they have a bit

of interest. We are excited to see what happens with them. The member

that gave them to us was excited to hear that they had invited us

back, and is happy to be able to work with us in their progress in the

gospel. Working with members is great. All of the members we visited

this week were excited to see us, and gave us direction as to where we

should go less. In a ward with over 500 on the records and only around

120 active, we will have a lot of Less Active work coming up, which is

always a lot of fun. I love working with Less Actives.

Ojai at 6:30 in the morning is a wonderful place!

Ojai.

One of the investigators from the new area, is showing a lot of

potential. The first time we met her, we committed her to read the

restoration pamphlet. We went back this week to teach her, and she had

read, and understood the whole thing. She told us that she liked it

all, but her only hang up was Latter Day Prophets. We explained that

the way to get past that would be to read from the Book of Mormon and

pray about it, and her first response was, "where do you want me to

start!" She committed to reading a chapter a day, and praying about

it, so we are excited to go back again tomorrow. She has such true

desires to know if this is true. I can't wait to see what happens with

her. Another one of our Investigators, that we hadn't been able to

find all week, F., showed up at Sacrament Meeting yesterday,

because he knew it was where he needs to be. So awesome! If we could

only get him to realize that where he really needs to be is at his own

baptismal service! Oh well, small steps. S. is still also doing

really well. For the last couple of weeks, we had felt kind of at a

dead end as to what to teach her next, since we had been over all of

the lessons multiple times. Sister L., who goes with her to

interpret gave us the idea of teaching from the Primary Manuals, and

that has proved so helpful! The stories are at the right level for her

to be able to understand, and it has given us a lot of new angles to

look at. I am so grateful for Sister L.'s help. One quick funny

story, yesterday was fast and testimony meeting. Our Ward Mission

Leader went up, and shared part of his testimony in Spanish. Poor

Sister L. was translating from Spanish to English to ASL.

(Fortunately she speaks all 3!) Her face was panicked, but she was

translating perfectly. After the testimony, she looked up, and we all

started dying laughing. She is just so awesome! It was hysterical.

Hermana Miller is doing awesome. She has so many great ideas with how

to work with the members in this area, and we are finding new ways

every day to find success in the work. She has such a desire to do the

work, and is really teaching me a lot. I love working with her, and

finding new ways to bring to pass the work of the Lord. We have also

found a lot of joy in finding fun "Miller themed" ways to answer the

phone when the District or Zone leaders call. Our favorite so far is,

"You've reached Miller Squared!" She is a riot. We have spent a good

chunk of time working on perfecting our British accents over the past

week. So yeah. We are having a lot of fun, and I can't lie, we did

check on our family trees this week to see if we were related. We're

not. It was slightly disappointing.

Miller Squared.

Sometimes, your companion sits in front of the heater in her PJs,

writing in her journal, eating chocolate cake right out of the

container. She's awesome.

This week, I have really been reminded how much the Spirit guides us

when we are doing what we should. All week we were able to visit

people at the perfect time, and deliver the message they needed to

hear right then. It was such a reminder that we truly are the hands of

the Lord. It is a theme that has been popping up throughout my studies

this week as well. We truly are the hands of the lord, and we need to

be worthy of that. I am grateful for the constant reminder that I can

do better, and the will to do it. There is no end to progression in

the gospel!

This week, we were able to help someone in the area pack up to move.

We were never really able to teach her, but she had previously been

married to an LDS man, and when things didn't end well, she kept a

very negative view of the church, as well. We have done service with

her a few times, and she mentioned to us, this last time, that she

really has seen a different side of the church, and was grateful for

that. It was amazing reminder that our examples can have such a strong

impact. By small and simple means.

Elder Kingrey.

Oh, Elders.

Elder Kim and Elder Fagan. They're a riot!

District Selife! We went to the cross again this week!

Ojai is such a great area. I love it so much. Time is just going too

fast. I can NOT believe that it is already week 3. It all just seems

like a blur!

I live in paradise. (I feel like I say this a lot. It's true though.)

(Ps. I feel like I am spoiling you all with such a long post this

week. Don't get too used to it!)

I hope you have a great week!

Much Love,

Stay awesome,

Hermana Courtney Miller

It's Miller Time!

It's Miller Time! (Is that missionary appropriate? Not totally sure,

but it is how we have been answering the phone when other missionaries

call us all week!)

The struggles of trying to take pics with a tall companion are real.

What a crazy, insane, awesome, exhausting week!

This cutie left me this week! She will kick butt in Pennsylvania, though.

Elder Moser, and a baby picture of us. I will let my mom type in the rest

of the story. (If she doesn't remember, things just got really

awkward!)

**see story below**

Having all of Ojai is awesome. We have so much work to do, and so many

different people to see every day, that there is no time to be able to

stand still. We love it! Hermana Miller is so awesome. We are so

excited to work with the members here, and to help this work explode.

(More than it already is!) Some days we have felt a bit like chickens

with our heads cut off, trying to meet all of the new people, get this

apartment cleaned and set up (Nasty elders!) and trying to get

everything else done that happens in missionary work. We are loving

it!

The previous elders had managed to destroy the beds in our apartment

in just 3 transfers! So we got new ones delivered by a whole slew of

Elders. It was quite the funny sight!

 

My cutie companion, and our vegan burritos! You just have to have the

full Ojai experience! I am still not sure how I feel about cashew

cheese. I will get back to you on that one.

Hermana Miller is so fun. We have come up with all kinds of funny

slogans and nicknames this week. We are going to have an awesome

transfer. I can't wait.

Another Selfie, just because.

What happens when the elders abandon us for district lunch. (No

worries though, they came back... 30 minutes later….)

We had Stake Conference here in Ventura this weekend. It was an

awesome experience! We had to laugh though. Saturday night conference

didn't end until about 9:10. We were talking to President and Sister

Felix after, and they asked us how long it would take us to get back.

They didn't believe us when we said that it would be about 30-40

minutes. So we head out, get on the 101 only to hit some good ol'

Southern California traffic. An hour later, we rolled into our

apartment complex. It is always an adventure. Sister Felix got a good

laugh out of it the next day.

With everything going on this week, we were not able to do a lot of

service. However, we were able to help our investigator, D., as she

is getting ready to move. Sometimes it is frustrating, because it felt

like she was not appreciating what we do, and didn't have any desire

to progress. I was feeling like we had kind of hit the end of the

rope, and was praying the whole time we were there about what we

should do. At the end, right before we left, she stopped us, and just

expressed how incredibly grateful she was for everything that we were

doing, and for the love we show for her. She expressed the desire to

start taking the lessons more full time after the move, and that she

wants to better her life. Heavenly Father truly answers prayer. I was

so grateful for that experience.

Finally though, our apartment is cleaned (that only took a few HOURS)

and organized, we are all planned for the week, and ready to hit the

ground running! Ojai is such an awesome, beautiful, incredibly quirky

place. You never know what you are going to find. I love it so much. I

love being able to serve here! The work is crazy awesome, and we are

looking forward to what this transfer has to bring!

Ojai, CA. Home of hippies, tree huggers, and LOTS and LOTS of bikes.

This is the most Ojai restaurant I could think of. It was yummy

though!

"Wait, what's that" -- Caramello and Audrey

I love you all so much, and love getting to hear what you all are up

to! It sounds like everyone at home is doing great too! I love you all

so much! Keep doing awesome things!

Hermana Courtney Miller

**Mom's sidenote**

Denise and Gary Moser were some of our first 'married' friends as a newlywed couple.  When Scott was in grad school, and I was working, Denise was Courtney's sitter.  The picture Courtney is holding in the above pic was taken during that time.  It turns out, all these years later, Courtney and Mike were serving in the same mission!  They were in the same mission for exactly one year, but never met until this week, when Mike (Elder Moser) was on his way home, having completed his two years.
They had a mission Christmas activity that involved baby pictures, so I figured, what better picture to send?