Sister Avery Miyahara: What will you give for Christ(mas)?? 12/16/2013

It’s been just another glorious week in Acworth! I really mean it when I say I couldn’t be happier. The subject of this email is a question asked to me and I wanted to bring it back to y’all. It’s that beautiful time of the year where the Savior gets to be so publically appreciated. In the hurry of purchasing other gifts for our loved ones, we just gotta slow down and take a moment to think about what we can give the Savior this Christmas! It's worth it, i promise. What a perfect oppurtunity to better ourselves! Personal progression has to be the most beautiful doctrine. Becoming our best selves is exciting! Sure, it takes sacrifice + courage + patience + humility but arent those all things we want to posses anyways?

This week's 'Miracles of Exchanges'

::Sister Chidester in Cassville. Their area had been considered “dead,” a small country town that has had many many missionaries come through. We desperately needed a miracle day to establish a real teaching pool and get things rolling. We prayed so hard. We knew there were people who would receive us and we had the faith to find them. 1^st person we knocked into…15 year old girl, thirsting for the truth of the gospel! Dakoda’s eyes dazzled at the message of the Savior. She accepted to be baptized on January 4^th. like whaaaat thank you HF! Next miracle, we were teaching this less active lady lesson 1 and in walks in her daughter in-law. She joined our discussion and with tears in her eyes said that she may have discovered the answer to her prayers. She accepted to be baptized in January too! It was the perfect missionary day. We found so many new investigators that updating the area book took ages that night! I cant even tell you how humbled we felt. It was just not real, never to have been thanks to us but always thanks be to God. I’ve never felt God so in control than I did on that blessed exchanged.

::Sister Carroll (Rome sister) in Acworth. The Lord works through anything good right? Well a fun miracle story was how the Lord worked through our GPS. Three times in a row the GPS led us to the totally wrong place. “You’ve reached your destination” would sound, and we wouldn’t be anywhere near the place we typed into the GPS but we trusted and went with it. We knocked on the rando doors it took us to and every person we saw that it wrongly directed us to wanted to hear more and accepted invitations to come closer to Christ. We laughed and thanked Heavenly Father. This is the Lord’s work, not mine.

::Sister Freeman (Mars Hill Sister) in Acworth. It’s hard to just select one miracle story! Okay so we felt strongly we needed to tract this one street. Leaving after little success, we saw a car pull up to a house that didn’t answer. We knew we had to be on that street, so those people had to be the reason! We walked up and she said she couldn’t really talk because she had the clean the house. Perfect opportunity to serve as Ammon did! We cleaned that house inside out! She loved us and was thrilled to listen to what we had to say. She had been offended by religion in the past but knew there was a God above. We taught lesson 1 and she just totally accepted it! She committed to be baptized in January! This morning at 7:30am we (us, the elders and some members) raked more leaves than imaginable off her lawn. There is nothing happier than serving others.

This is already the best Christmas ever! Our commitment to the Lord this holiday season in the South is to strengthen each person's faith in the Savior we see. We run people down; no one can get past us without hearing a brief testimony and scripture about the Savior and His restored church : ) It’s the greatest! I love this work of salvation. Members + missionaries = the Lord’s way.

Have a blessed week and I’ll let y’all know when we get to Skype next week!! Yipe!!!

LOVE YOU, Sister Avery Miyahara