GOD IS REAL!!! - 25 September 2023

 Good morning from ya boy Elder Milius! It has been a couple weeks since I've emailed, and that's because last week, we switched our pday to Wednesday cause we got to go through the temple!!!! Which was a blast, I love being inside the temple, especially as a missionary because then I get to continue to do missionary work but without the world yelling at me for it lol. 

Basically these past couple weeks we had a blast! Lots and lots of miracles and spirit filled experiences just engulfed us! One thing that was super cool was we had a lesson with one of our friends and we had a member join us on the lesson, unfortunately that lesson fell through so we decided to go knock some doors around her with the member. Eventually we knocked on this one door and a young married couple answered and for some reason they had the most relatable life with the member ever!! Both our member and the guy were both in the military and both of them had experiences that related so well to eachother! It was incredible, we ended up sharing how powerful the gospel is and families and our member just testified so strongly! The spirit was so strong and we know that the lesson we had planned was not the lesson we had to be at. This couple was the reason we were there with that specific member!

Another cool thing was we went to go visit some people who had been taught in the past and for some reason when I knocked the first door, I had a feeling to just continue knocking the row of doors and to our surprise, we found a super cool guy who accepted a Book of Mormon and was really interested! It was all because of the Spirit! And it's so cool to see spiritual promptings actually create something right there! 

Something else that I just loved this past couple weeks was, recently I've been struggling with some things and I just felt completely broken down, lost, scared and had no way to feel peace. I found myself in our bedroom one day just down on the ground in tears, of course I decided to pray and plead for forgiveness and mercy and for peace and comfort. After this prayer I got up and felt a prompting to open up Gospel Library. When I did, I found a talk just randomly opened. It was titled "My ming caught hold upon this thought of Jesus Christ" from Elder Andersen from this previous general conference. Basically this is one of my favorite talks now as I genuinely felt so loved thinking about christ! The wonderful quote from this talk is 

"As you continue to attentively catch hold of the thought of Jesus Christ, I promise you not only heavenly guidance but heavenly power."

Right then and there I felt the overwhelming power from Heaven just fill my soul. Then when I clicked out of the talk, it just disappeared and there was no evidence that showed I ever opened that talk, it was just there! I've seen miracles and blessings before in my life with heavenly protection to guidance but this was something I've never seen before, something that should not have happened, happen to me personally. God is real and he has the power to do anything, I know that as we remember christ and never forget him in our daily lives, we are promised heavenly power and guidance! 

That's pretty much the highlight of my past couple weeks, I did go on exchanges with our zone leaders which was mega fun of course, but other than that, we've just been grinding the finding, and teaching a lot more people now!! So things are going great for me!

Hope yall have had an awesome past couple weeks and I hope yall have an amazing week ahead of yall!! Talk to you in the next one!!

-Elder Milius 

WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS OF THE WORLD - 11 September 2023

So this week went by slow but also super fast! I'm at the point in my mission that I'm just so used to doing missionary work that everything is just a blur! 

But this week truly was one of the best weeks I've had! We as a missionary baptized 52 children of God last transfer which means we broke the mission record and have set a new one! So to celebrate our president allowed us to have a celebration game hour before zone conference started. It was a blast! We did a zone against zone party and all zones were hyped up, we were going crazy! We ended up winning two out of the four games that were played, one of which was the oreo on the forehead challenge, then a wrap the mummy challenge. But the other zone won two as well so we had to go to a tie breaker. We were doing a trick shot with ping pong balls and a water cup and you just had to throw it in. So we start the tie breaker and the other zone got so close so many times, adrenaline was pumping through us all and then it gets to my turn, so I step up, throw the ball and I swear, life was in slow mo as I let go of the ball. To my surprise, I made the shot and the whole zone went wild!!!! We won the zone challenge and truly became certified as the best zone in the dang mission!!! Best part? I was lucky enough to seal that with my shot! I kid you not this was a core memory for me!! My zone leaders hoisting me up in the air, all of us chanting our zone name! It was awesome! 

Then we got to relax a little and we had an awesome spirit filled zone conference. My favorite part was obviously president, and one thing I love about my president is he is just so fired up and truly helps us remember how important our role is in the world. When we baptize people we aren't just increasing numbers to the church, we are literally handing people the keys to the Celestial kingdom. We are the only ones on earth who can do that. Members of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints have that important role to invite others to come unto christ so they can in the end belong to God's Celestial kingdom. 

Other than zone conference we had a pretty chill week! We were able to get back into contact with some of our friends and they were seriously the most spirit led miracles we could have asked for. I had such a strong prompting to go stop by one of our friends but I almost disregarded it. Fortunately I didn't and we ended up getting a return appointment with this lady!

Another crazy thing was I had to give a talk in church about faith and hope. I thought it was a pretty good talk but I hate talking in front of that many people so my chest was pounding all week! Fortunately I ended up doing great and I had a lot of members come up and tell me how awesome my talk was which felt very good to hear. I've never been too fond of talking but I do love it when I can not only enlighten other people but myself as well! Just preparing for this talk I learned so much about faith and hope. Personally I never fully understood hope and how it applies to the gospel but now I've learned that hope are the dreams we have of happiness and eternal life and how that hope leads to action because if I want eternal life, I've got to take the necessary steps to achieve eternal life! And then that's where faith comes into play as well! I need to have faith that what I am doing will give me the chance to have eternal life! It's awesome and I'm so glad I learned more. 

Well that was pretty much my week, we just became champions in zone conference, we have done lots of finding with little to no success but then saw miracles as we were led to people to visit and I had to give a talk in sacrament on Sunday! Aight! Yall have a wonderful day/week! Love and miss each and every one of yall! Talk to yall in the next one!!!

-Elder Milius 

STAYIN IN ROCKHILL - 4 September 2023

Aye yo! What's up everybody! How's life been going for yall? Things up here in Stafford Virginia are going well! This week wasn't too crazy but we had some cool miracles throughout which made the week a baller week! Since this was the final week of the transfer we had lots of meeting and since me and my comps are all staying together we didn't have to worry about transfers at all. So we kinda just spent some time cleaning, having lots of meetings and doing lots and lots of finding!

Tuesday was a chill day, we did however get the chance to go to mutual for one the wards we cover and it was so fun! We played gator ball which is a mix of football and soccer, it was lots of fun. The bishop was popping off and so were a couple of the other leaders, we did show up in our white shirts and ties though so we got super super sweaty lol. 

Wednesday we had an awesome miracle with one of our friends. She has struggled finding time to talk with us and I personally have never met her since I came to the area and so we were getting really close to dropping her but then we decided to go over and knock her door for some reason and to our surprise, nobody answered the door. So it was sad and we just walked away but then she came around the corner yelling out to us and we were able to go back and have an awesome lesson with her. She struggled to understand where Mormon came from and after a lot of attempts to explain it, we finally explained how Mormon is a descendant of Lehi who is a descendant of Joseph from Egypt. This was the answer to her question and after that she seemed really interested in learning more! It was awesome 

Thursday, friday and saturday,we did a lot if finding and unfortunately haven't been able to find any very promising people. Things are incredibly slow up in Rockhill and I've truly been pleading with God to give us more miracles. But no matter how slow it is, we keep trekking along hoping for either a door to open with someone or a referral to come in who is ready to hear and accept the gospel! 

Sunday was awesome as always! We got to take the Sacrament and hang with members and talk about the section for come follow me! Which this week's come follow me is an amazing section talking about unity and about the gifts of the spirit and how everyone has a unique roll to play on the earth! But! When we went to go to Rockhill sacrament meeting, we saw our friend sitting in church!!! This friend we were struggling to get in contact with too, in fact I've never met him either and he was getting ready to be dropped off our teaching list very soon. But to our surprise he showed up at church and I was able to say hi and meet him and he seemed super happy to see us! So we are hoping it will soon become the miracle person we need to baptize his transfer! 

Anyways, as long as this week was and as hard as this week was, we had a couple miracles that sealed the cracks in our hearts. It's truly amazing to see how God will wait till the last second to throw a miracle at us and just lift up our spirits entirely. God is a God of miracles and these miracles have not and will not cease. Moroni 7: 27-30 these are the set of scriptures that keep me going every day...

"29 And because he hath done this, my beloved brethren, have miracles ceased? Behold I say unto you, Nay; neither have angels ceased to minister unto the children of men."

Enjoy yalls week and keep on praying for miracles, God will call his troops in and we will watch as God rains his glory upon the earth! 

-Elder Milius