strolling along...

dear family and friends,
it was a great week. we had two full days in our area this week, and we taught six whole lessons on the first full day, only to be surpassed by NINE lessons on the second one! nine whole lessons in one day?? that's unheard of. just to give you an idea, the mission standard of excellence is 3 lessons a day. and we taught 9. :) it felt so good. heavenly father sure helped us out. it was a day full of miracles, that full day... yesterday, actually. the first miracle was when we were driving down the road and we saw a man with a little cart fall down on the corner. we pulled over and rushed to help him up... he was okay, he just has bad legs and got tripped up. he was probably in his fifties. the cool thing was that another car had pulled over to help, too--it was a little asian man who could barely speak english. so picture this: sister miller, as thin as a board, on one arm, and this tiny asian man on the other, pulling this big black man (probably like 6'2") up off the sidewalk. :) it took them a bit, but eventually he was back on his feet. he was so grateful, he was almost crying... and he kept saying, "god bless you, and i REALLY mean it." he even pulled us in and kissed the top of our heads. like 30 seconds later another guy ran up to us and offered to give him a ride wherever he was going... "i can even throw your whole cart in the back of my car," he said. yes, there are STILL GOOD PEOPLE in the world! :) it was a neat experience. and even though we didn't walk away with a new investigator, all three of those men will remember the experience they had with two random girls with little black nametags on. sister miller calls it "running the lord's errands." we're here to bring others unto christ, and sometimes that doesn't mean teaching and baptizing--all he needed from us at that moment was to be his hands as we helped that man on the corner.
the second miracle was another "errand." we went to contact a former investigator, but he wasn't home. sister miller likes to talk to heavenly father outloud sometimes... so she said, "alright heavenly father, we're supposed to be in this area for a reason, so we're just gonna pick a way to walk." i saw a man about a block down--he seemed to be the only human being in sight--so that's the way we chose. :) welp. turns out he was a member of the church. HA. however. he was extremely less-active. we had a great conversation with him, and though he wouldn't commit to coming back to church, he did say he would dust off his book of mormon that night and read some, and that we were always welcome back to his home. heavenly father is SO GOOD. he knew exactly where we'd be at that time!! but it gets better.
the third miracle was a long chain of events. we had set up a lesson at the temple with one of our investigators at 7:30, only to remember two days later that the temple is closed on monday nights. so we tried to move it back to the church building in our area for the same time. but he said he'd rather go to the battalion, so that meant that we pushed the appointment back to 8, which left us an extra half hour in our area at 7ish. so we were driving around contacting again, and we picked a random less-active name on ward list. we were on his street, but it was dark and we couldn't see the numbers, so we just parked and decided to walk, even though it was FREEZING. (okay--not compared to utah, but i was still whining about it. :P) well... we walked down the street til we found his house, but it was completely dark and nobody answered. we were pretty much out of time by that point, so we just started walking back... with four minutes left, sister miller talks outloud again and says, "okay heavenly father, we've got just a few minutes, if there's a single human on this deserted street that we can talk to, i'll talk to them." we get back to our car, and across the street was an open garage that wasn't open before. we looked inside, and wouldn'tcha know it, two single-adult people are sitting there, just chillin. we started talking to them, and once we got on the subject of a modern prophet, the boy seemed interested... he said he wouldn't mind learning more sometime, but then the girl starts spouting off all these excuses about how they're leaving for costa rica soon to expand their business. "what's your business?" we asked. "it's a skin care company," they said. right then sister miller looks over at a random box sitting in the garage with the company logo on it... one that looked strikingly similar to our seacret box which is sitting under our sink at home that had been given to us by a member of our branch. "is the company seacret??" she asked. they said yes... welp, turns out they're really good friends with that branch member--they work together. and they absolutely love him. once we said his name, it was like we were best friends. they said they'd love to meet up with us (and him) sometime so we could talk more. oh, and the garage they were sitting in? they don't even live there. that was his dad's house.  ???  so. to recap: we weren't even planning on being in our area at that time. we wouldn't have parked anywhere NEAR that garage if we could see the numbers on the street. we had a 4-minute-window of opportunity. they just happened to be visiting his dad's house at that time, they just HAPPENED to WORK with JOSH, and now they're willing to hear more about the gospel. yup. my mind was blown. it was RIDICULOUS... heavenly father is SO GOOD!!
so... being a missionary is SO COOL. that's pretty much all. i love you so much. hope you've had a great week.
love,
sister madsen