Tender Mercies

Hello everyone! I hope you all had a great week! We sure did here in Oxnardia.

Oxnard is great. I love the work here. This week Hermana Eames and

Hermana Huey contacted an awesome referral from Elder Law that are

super solid investigators. They are currently reading in 2 Nephi in

the Book of Mormon (after starting in the beginning) and have such

incredible desires to learn more. We are so excited to start working

with that family, and to see what will come of that. We focused a lot

this week on doing a lot of How to begin teaching and getting to know

our investigators more. One really cool miracle that we saw come from

that is finding a major concern of one of our investigators. He had

been telling us for weeks that he had been asking off Sundays, and

just not getting them, but after taking the time to get to know him,

and really showing how much we cared, he opened up to us, and shared

that he hadn't asked any off, and that he wasn't sure how he could do

it. He asked how we could give up so much to come on our missions, and

we shared a lot about faith, and how we have to just trust in our

Heavenly Father's promises. We are excited to keep working with him,

and to help him progress towards baptism. This coming week we are

going to work on doing the same thing with our Less Actives, really

getting to know them and finding out how we can help them. We are

excited to see what will come of that.

Someone came up last Monday and surprised me at emails. I figured this

was the most appropriate photo to describe our relationship.

This week I have a strong testimony of the phrase "the tender mercies

of the Lord." This Saturday was a huge one. Hermana Brown and I went

on exchanges with Hermana Newland in Ventura. Exchanges in and of

themselves were great. It was awesome to have some time to get away

from everything, and to have a fun change of scenery, and do some

awesome work. Hermana Newland is awesome, too, so that doesn't hurt

anything. The coolest part though was a baptism we went to on Saturday

morning. Apparently one of the Elders had told Hermana Newland that if

I was the one who was going to be in Ventura, that we needed to come,

though we had no idea why. When I walked in we found out it was a

baptism from the Ojai ward I nearly cried. Seeing everyone was so

incredibly awesome, and just what I needed. It was incredible to get

to see D. and S. again. I am still giggling like a little girl

over how happy that baptism made me. The Lord has perfect timing and a

perfect plan. It was an incredible day.

Best reunion ever!

This week we did a lot of service for the O. family, a part member

recent convert family, who moved to Idaho. It was sad to see them

leave, but awesome to get to help them so much. I will let you know

when I finally get all the paint out of my hair... :)

I love you all so much, and hope life is good for all of you. I love

Oxnard so much. I love this mission so much. Life is crazy good.

Hermana Courtney Miller