FINDING MIRACLES

Dearest Family,

We had a pretty busy day! A really fun day too! This morning we had a district activity and then district lunch right afterwards. We had a nerf war! It was a lot of fun. We set up tables and moved furniture and had chalk boards all as places to duck 'n cover. We played in our church gym. I also cut my companions hair! Not very much, just trimmed her ends, but still! That is scary!!! I would never trust someone untrained to cut my hair! But, it still looks cute :) I did a good job. I colored my hair again. My hair was 3 different colors! Dark on top, lighter in the middle, and really light on the bottom. Well, it is pretty much all one color now :) I'm not really a blonde anymore :) It is a really pretty light brown. 

So we have been having lots of fun finding miracles throughout each day. We were invited by our district leader to look for miracles everyday. So every night before my companions and I go to sleep we pillow talk about one miracle that each of us had. I've had some pretty fun ones! My first miracle happened at a dinner appointment. We always share a message or spiritual thought with those we have dinner with, and at that house, we decided to talk about the Book of Mormon. Normally what we do is discuss favorite stories, and share how the Book of Mormon helped us gain a testimony of the Savior. This time I felt the impression to share my favorite scripture. It is Mosiah 24:14 " And I will also ease the burdens which are put upon your shoulders, that even you cannot feel them upon your backs, even while you are in bondage; and this will I do that ye may stand as witnesses for me hereafter, and that ye may know of a surety that I, the Lord God, do visit my people in their afflictions". As we read this, I saw the mother's jaw drop wide open. She said that she had been looking for this scripture for years because it was the one that led her to know that the church was true!! Can you believe that!?! It was so cool!!! So after all of that we invited them to write down their testimony inside of a copy of a pass along book and pray to know who to give it to. Then we discussed Family Mission Plans, and how they could be missionaries in their own way. hint hint :)

My next miracle was when we were able to get back in contact with a referral from the church headquarters we received back in November. We taught her the restoration and got invited to come back! When we got there, I noticed that she had a little picture of Jesus Christ hanging up on her wall that we gave to her. She kept it all this time!  The church is true!

I love you all! 

Love, Sister Keller

BAPTISM #4

Dear Family!

Hip Hip Hurray!!!! Melissa Houston got baptized!!!! Her dad got to baptize her because he was just ordained a priest of the Aaronic priesthood a week earlier. He was going to have struggles pulling her back up in the water, so Elder Oloapu was there as well and helped lift her up. But it was so sweet to see him baptize her. Everything worked out the way it was supposed to. The original plan was to have them baptized the same day, but doing it this way was a much better plan. The Lord knows best! Sister Houston was so happy! She never thought the day would come that her family would join the church. But now look at them! They can now work on getting sealed to each other for time and all eternity next year!

So we had a pretty awesome lesson with a man the other day. It was a little disobedient for us to see him though the way we did. Normally, if there is a man home and there isn't a woman present, we should come back when there is or come back and bring a woman with us. But it was just him and his young son there. We thought that his wife was in a back room or something, but she wasn't even home. All three of us felt the spirit very strong that we were okay and that he was a good person. We know better now to ask if a woman is present at the beginning of a lesson rather than at the end... He felt the spirit though and would love to learn more about the church. We asked him if he would be baptized, and he didn't say no! He didn't exactly say yes either, but he did say that he would like to investigate more. I repented!

So the past 3 days have been brutal! It has been so cold!!!! I have never seen weather as cold as it has been. We were instructed by President Wirthlin to stay indoors. If we had a teaching apt set up, then that was okay to go outside. But if we didn't have something, then we were told to stay inside and study, watch the church movies we have, and prepare for future lessons. We are so sick of our apartment! We did have lots of fun keeping ourselves active though. We made sure to make our week busy busy busy so just in case it gets too cold to go outside again, we could still work.

We found a new opportunity to do service here! We go to a warehouse where they pack food to deliver to food pantries through out the area. We make packages full of food to give to kids who don't have meals over the weekend. We get to go every Tuesday. It has been fun!

I love you guys! I hope you have a warm week! The church is true!

Love Sister Keller

3 AMIGOS

Dear family,

I had the craziest, most awesome, and long week yet! I had more prayers answered faster in a week than I have ever received them! I will just start with last Monday. So I got the news that my best friend had to go home from his mission. I was so happy for him that he got to be back with his family again and still return as an honorable missionary who served a faithful mission. When I saw pictures of his homecoming I was struck with another case of homesickness... It was really hard on me. I have wanted to give my mom a hug for so long!! Being homesick has been an on and off struggle for me throughout my whole mission. But I learned my lesson the first time that working harder will numb the pain a little bit. It gets my mind refocused, back on the work and I can get back into the happy missionary spirit. I didn't want to go through what happened last time so I didn't waste any time in doing something about it. So Monday night I prayed really hard for the work to pick up in some way, or for a new person to come along that we could get excited about teaching. Knowing that something like this took faith, I closed my prayer and listened to the spirit. I just felt very peaceful and felt as though things were going to be fine. Well, the very next day I got a phone call from both President Wirthlin and my Zone Leaders saying that one of the Ithaca sisters just got their visa to Portugal and was leaving the next day. Her companion was going to need a new companion... So with a lot of shifting and cleaning and reorganizing, Sister Howard and I made room for a third bed! We are in a trio now with Sister Frisby for the rest of the transfer!! We have double the witnesses and triple the testimony now! Nothing can stop us!

This wasn't the only part of my prayer that was answered. I had also asked for a new person to come along that we could get excited about. On Thursday we had just finished planning out our week and setting new goals for ourselves. One of my goals was to "fear no man". Fear has been stopping missionaries from finding the most prepared families and slowing down the work of the Lord. I was noticing that I wasn't as fearless as I know I can be and I wasn't remembering that I have a calling to proclaim this gospel to ALL who will hear it. So I figured this was a good goal. Later that day we went out to look for some people that were written down in our area book in one of our far areas. We came up to a house and we saw the family outside sledding. All three of us started to feel nervous and a little bit scared about going up to them. There were all kinds of scenarios going through our minds of the outcomes and none of them sounded good. We couldn't even find a place to park and figured maybe we shouldn't go see them. Trying to be in tune with the spirit and learn what the Lord would want us to do about this situation I remembered learning about how Heavenly Father works. He doesn't give us thoughts to be afraid. Satan does. Heavenly Father doesn't make us feel uneasy about a bad situation, He makes it a sure fact in our minds that we shouldn't go there. So I asked my companions what is stopping us from going to see this family? They all said fear. We instantly made the decision to park half a mile away at a gas station and walk to this family's house, up their long driveway in the snow. The mother answered the door and told us that she hasn't seen missionaries in over a year and was hoping they would come back!!! We taught her the first lesson and she told us that she knew it was true and wanted to come to church the next Sunday she had off from work. I know that Satan was trying to prevent us from seeing this VERY prepared family by making all 3 of us feel uneasy about teaching her. I know the difference between the spirit telling me not to go somewhere and the devil telling me not to go.

In other news, I found out we will not be getting our ipads because there have been missions taking them away from missionaries because of disobedience. Maybe I'll just get one when I go home :) I also got to confirm with Melissa that she will be getting baptized this Saturday!!! YAY! a Valentines day baptism and the first woman I taught to get baptized! I am so excited for her! I have really come to love that family!!

I love you all so much! I am so thankful for the lessons I learn as I have been serving. They have helped me grow and I will never forget them. I know that God answers prayers and has a plan for each of us already as hard things come our way. He is always preparing us to learn something new that will further prepare us to meet Him again someday. The church is true!

Love, Sister Keller

P.S. Happy Valentines day!

BUSY

Dear Family,

My week has been so busy!!!!!! I can't tell you how tired I have been. The beginning of the week was normal. Preparation day, and then another casual day harvesting in the Lord's vineyard of Horseheads. Then on Wednesday we started our exchange. We have district meetings in Corning every Wednesday so we just hitched a ride with the elders over there and then did our swap after the meeting. I was pretty bummed to leave Sister Howard. We have become such great friends and we had also done an extremely good job of planning that week to be jam packed full of teaching apts. I was going to miss out on so much in my area, but I knew that Sister Howard and Sister Williams were going to do great! Sister Yancee and I had a lot of fun in Corning. Although a lot of stressful things happened. First of all, my zipper broke on one of my skirts... During a teaching apt!!! It was so bad! I had to hold up my skirt the whole time. Second, one of their investigators dropped them. She was pretty sad about that, but we found 2 new great people at the end of our exchange for them. On Wednesday night, we went to the branch's mutual activity and taught the girls how to play volleyball. They have a tournament with the Elmira ward coming up. I got to coach them with my mad skills. Thursday and Friday went pretty well too. We were pretty busy and got to see lot's of the members over there. I never feel fully welcomed in that branch. They are always so terrified that there was an emergency transfer or something when they see me and not the other sister. It's happened twice now. But then they realized we are just on an exchange and feel fine knowing I'll be back in my own area soon. Friday night they have "game night" which was a lot of fun. They bring investigators to the church and they do all kinds of fun things in the gym. We were playing dodge ball once and I was trying to refrain from falling on a kid and ended up hurting my knee again. It's all good now. I haven't needed to wear the brace today which is good! Saturday we exchanged back. I was so glad to be back in my own area!!!! I came back to a whole new missionary! Sister Howard learned so much about teaching and she is stellar at planning! Her weaknesses have become strengths!

There was another baptism in the Elmira ward on Saturday :) 2 great young men taught by the elders now making an entire family members of the church. I am so happy for them!! President and Sister Wirthlin surprised us by showing up to their confirmation and bore their testimonies during the Sacrament meeting. It was pretty great. 

Today at Wal-mart, we had a really cool experience! We were walking around and this man came up walking behind us. He said something like "we walk too fast" and he was trying to catch up! But as it turned out, he is a member of the church! He is a truck driver who passes by here all the time and asked us if there was a ward near by. We told him it was less than a mile away from here! His name was Brother Brown. He was pretty cool! I hope we see him at church on Sunday :) The church is true.

I love you all so much!!!! Pray that I don't get stuck in the snow somewhere! :) 

Love,  Sister Keller