Fletcher's First Car Accident

Hello,

This past week has just rushed by. I guess we've been busy, but most days are much of the same so I don't know if it's cause we are always just all over the place or cause I forget a lot of the monotony. The missionary work is going pretty good, we have two investigators with baptismal dates and then a few other people who we're working with.

The area I live near is called Niles, it's part of Fremont and the downtown part of it is pretty cool. Apparantly it was made notable by Charlie Chaplin. He chose Niles as a the spot to film a few of his films. I heard all this from some old-timers on the street we stopped and talked to. But they said that he filmed some cowboy type film in the hills that surround Fremont and stayed at an inn or cafe or some store in town while on site. So there are lots of paintings and signs depicting Charlie Chaplin in town. My first week here they had a "Hot August Niles" car show. My companion and I walked through it and checked out the sweet rides, and talked to a few people, one car contestant even gave us a doughnut. Then just yesterday they had an Antique Fair in the street, vendors all over the place the road blocked off. And at the same time, the community organizes it so that everyone has garage sales on the same weekend. So about every other house has items out to sell and there are people walking all over the place, so many people it's crazy.

I am getting to know certain families in my ward better and they are awesome people. Our mission President recently gave us a new thing to do after dinner appointments instead of just sharing a spiritual thought. Now we give the family an index card and challenge them to ask a stranger if they like to read and if so they tell them that they can get them book all about Jesus for free if they just write down their name and address. Sort of sounds like a bad scam but it's an attempt to get the members on board with the work so it kind of is a scam.

Today my companion and two other companionships got up early and hiked a place called Mission Peak. It was cold and windy at the top but fun. We attempted to make our own path back down the mountain but it resulted in a number of sticky situations and a couple of Elders getting stung by a bunch of bees. So after that we stuck to the prescribed path.

At Zone conference on Friday my companion put a lot of effort into sucking up to our vehicle coordinator in order to trade up our corolla for a malibu. He succeeded eventually mentioning that he's never been in an accident. Ten minutes after hopping into the malibu we traded the sister missionaries our corolla for we got rear ended when stalled in traffic. It was crazy. That was the first accident I've ever been in. No one was injured but the impact crunched up one of the back corner panels so the frame is out of whack, we drove it until today when we traded it in for a worse corolla than the one we had. Sad times.

Well that is my news from Fremont. Write you all in another week.

From, Elder Miller

First Email from California

I'm in a little house in Fremont, it's the northernmost area in my mission and boarders the Oakland mission. The house we have is owned by a member who rents it to the mission for a dollar a year I think so really for free. We just have to tend to the yard and thing like that. There are two orange trees in the front and an avacado and lemon trees in the back. We have to gather a coulple bags full to take to the owner once a week I think. And then we just give out avacados to everyone in the ward. My first week was a little confusing. My companion is Elder Bludworth from Albaquerque(still don't know how to spell it) New Mexico. He's a cool guy and really relaxed. I think I really lucked out to have such a patient trainer. According to him he was a terrible missionary to train. He didn't really want to serve a mission but is now over it and seems to be training me okay.

My first day here we got off the plane met the mission President and then went to the mission office to eat some snacks and watch some instructional videos and meet the senior couples who work in the office. Then my companion drove me around in our Carolla to meet some of the ward members. Then we ended up at a members house for dinner and it was a good night.

The house I stay in apparantly was not very well taken care of by the previous missionaries so my companion, the first six weeks he has been here has spent the whole time cleaning it up cause his second day here he got chewed out by the lady who owns it while his companion the one responsible hid in the avacado tree.

I'm really excited cause we seem to already have a crazy. I don't want to sound incensitive and perhaps my family should edit this out but I've grown up hearing mission stories of the interesting people that you meet on your mission. There is one lady that we met with at the Bishops request because she just started showing up to church one day and seemed like she was a member but they requested her records from church headquarters and they don't have any record of her being baptized. So we met with her and brought this up and her story is that she works for the government and because she's involved in some pretty hefty government work the government has to keep any records affiliating her with anyone under wraps. It is all pretty ridiculous. She isn't as crazy as some of the stories you hear but I figure if I've gotten this my second day then I'm in store for some good ones throughout my mission.

Anyway things are going good. We haven't really tracted too much. My companion hates it for one but really I think the mission President expects more member visits than is normal because the duty of my companion and I is to sort of clean up the area from some damage that previous elders left behind. Five missionaries were sent home the week before I came out so we're trying to regain trust a bit and establish a presence.

I'm having fun though. The members feed us every night and everyone I've met thusfar is really interesting and cool. A bunch of young couples in the ward keep having us over and they are really fun to talk with. At dinner last night we got on the topic of mission animal stories. The Brother last night said that his Dad went to London and a lady let them in to her house and was preparing them hot chocolate in the kitchen and the ladys cat started really attacking his companions leg so his companion flicked it in the nose and the cat dropped dead. So they stuffed it under the couch, drank their hot chocolate and left as quickly as possible. That is horrible I know but I find it funny.

Then the same Brothers brother served in New Jersey and they were driving and a cat darted in front of the car and they hit it and just drove on nothing they could do. But the guy in the passengers seat felt guilty cause the cat hadn't died and was just suffering there so they circled around the block until they came to a cat in the rode and so they drove over it, reversed back over it and then once again drove over it. They then drove off as a lady started yelling and chasing after them. They kept going wondering what she was so mad about when they had gone a couple blocks and found a cat half alive in the middle of the street. The first cat they had run over, the other one had just been sleeping in the street. Heh heh.

Anyway things are great here in Fremont. The zone leaders had talked my comapanion and I into waking up a 5am this morning on our Preparation day to go hiking up some hill but then they called at 4:55 as we were ready to leave to tell us that one of them were sick. They normally wake up at that time to work out so I'm thinking they were just pulling a prank on us, making us get up early just to mess with us.

My mission president gives us more time to e-mail so I can respond to more than I thought I'd be able to. I had to get a library card but hopefully it will be usable throughout all my areas. That's all I got to say.

Love, Elder Miller

Hey Family, just a note to let you know that Fletcher made it safely to California on Tues. We talked to him Tues. morning as he was waiting to board the plane and he sounded really good. We also received a call Wednesday night from his Mission President (Michael Jackson) who said that Fletcher had arrived safely, thanked us for preparing such a fine young man to serve in the California district and assured us that he would take good care of him for us. Fletcher will be serving in the Centerville Ward and his companion is Elder Bloodworth. I'm sure we will receive more info. from Fletcher later. His new "P" day will be on Mondays. Thanks so much for all your letters, emails and prayers on his behalf, We sure miss him here at home, but we know he's where he is supposed to be at this time..

Love to all, Susan/Mom xoxox

A Couple of MTC Pics

The Elders in Fletcher's district:


Fletcher and his companion, Elder Fultz:


San Jose!


Classic "Matrix" picture that every Elder has taken since the movie was released in 1999:


Fletcher leaves for California tomorrow! We'll update his address once he lets us know what it is!

Letters to Fletcher

I recently sent Fletch a postcard from Disneyland. I'm hoping he likes it considering he himself will soon be the sunny state of California.

I'm sorta just bragging here...but if you send Fletch a letter from a cool place you should let us know about it!

MTC Week 2

Hey everyone,

It is really crazy that it has been two weeks in the MTC now. The first week seemed to drag on and really felt more like a month, and this past week just flew by. Everyone here told me that that would happen and didn't necesarily believe them but here I am saying the same thing.

Marcene sent me a letter warning me not to eat the french toast cinnamon sticks cause they are just deep fried pieces of heaven that are the worst for you. Her warning came too late, we had them for breakfast earlier in the week and they are pretty much the best things in the cafeteria.

I don't exactly remember what I put in my last e-mail so I may cover some stuff that I've already written about. The MTC is starting to feel more comfortable, I still don't sleep very well at night, but I am much more familiar with campus and the way things are run. Gym time was limited this week thusfar cause we had Sunday of course no gym, and then on Monday we had service project which ate up our time slot and then Tuesday we had a devotional that night, by Elder David F. Evans, it was really good and I probably shouldn't say this but I would have rather played volleyball.

We also finally got to have the health instruction seminar that everyone prior to entering the MTC told me to look forward to. It is more commonly known as the ingrown toenail lecture cause apparantly the most common health problem among missionaries is ingrown toenails. Really what made the lecture great was Dr. Moody. The guy was hilarious. It could possibly just be a case of the "Immature Health Class" but really I would like to believe that I'm pretty mature and Dr.Moody was trying to make the topics funny. I won't share any of the vast majority of quotes I felt prompted to copy down, cause I know this will be shared with many people who may not share my same sense of humor. And really the quotes won't be that great by themselves, I mainly copied them down to serve as a memory stir stick. My memories will start to settle at the bottom of my thoughts and I'll need something to recall these precious Dr. Moody quotes.

Let's see, today is of course preparation day and then I'm scheduled to head to the field on Tuesday the 17th. Should be exciting. Being kind of trapped in the MTC has me ready to leave to California already. I'm not saying that I think I'm prepared to enter the field, cause really I feel like I have alot to work on, but the MTC, despite feeling more comfortable is a little cramped.

One of my instructors got us all excited the night before the devotional cause he mentioned that the MTC is kind of due for an Apostalic visit. Apparently there haven't been any here for a few monthes so I hope that it will be sunday cause it would be awesome to get to hear a talk from one of the Apostles directed at me as a missionary about to start the work. It would be so inspiring. I don't remember if I mentioned that a bunch of my district members saw President Uchtdorf in the parking lot, but they did and that was the night of a Tuesday devotional and everyone was crazed at the thought. This time we fought hard to get good seats but were, and I probably shouldn't say this, a little dissappointed to find it was just a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy.

What else, I just wanted to thank everyone who has written me letters or sent me stuff. I think I've gotten the most letters out of my whole district. One day there happened to be five letters waiting in the mailbox for me and everyone thought it was my birthday.

Yesterday we went to the TRC (Teaching Resource Center, i think) and met for a second time with a volunteer investigator. I kind of feel like her goal is just to boost our confidence in our ability cause you can tell when she sort of assists us by bringing up subjects that we were trying to insert into the conversation naturally. I honestly feel like we learned more from her than she did from us. She has an orchard and informed us the plums and prunes are two different fruits. Prunes are their own fruit, and here I was thinking that they were just shriveled up plums.

Well I am just having an amazing experience here and I am surprised at how quickly I am able to learn so much new yet familiar stuff. Thinking about being in California in less than a week is a little scary but at the same time I am glad that I don't have to hang out in the MTC for 6 more weeks to learn Spanish or 9 weeks to learn Russian. Well last time I waited until I had like 1 second left before I sent this and I didn't like the feeling of rush. So I'll send it with a healthy 2 minutes.

Love, Elder Miller

First Email From Elder Miller!

Hey, wednesdays are my preparation days so I get to e-mail you now and mail off some letters. Uh, I got a card thing when first I got here and on it it has a bunch of information that is useful for parents, I plan on mailing it to you but on it it says that I will most likely to report to California on the 17th of August.

I guess this will be the generic e-mail that gets sent to everyone so I'll just talk about my experience at the MTC thus far. The first day I came in was crazy. I got an Elder from Finland who helped carry my luggage and then directed me through a building where they did everything from take my picture, give me my nametag to handing me a bunch of papers and dorm keys. After that I went to the bookstore where I got a notebook and supplies for class and then I dropped off my stuff at the dorm and went straight to class. It was a really hot day and our class room wasn't very cool despite the air conditioner unit and fan but I got to take off my jacket and meet my companion named Elder Fultz along with the others in my district most of them are going to Santa Rosa, one sister is going to Roseville and then two others besides me are going to San Jose. We met one of our instructors named Brother Smith who is actually the nephew of the MTC President. Nepotism didn't seem like it should exist within the confines of a church run place like the MTC but he is actually a really good teacher and I think he's pretty awesome.

That night was the coolest though when they had set up a bunch of chapels within a main building and arranged a kind of mock discussion/lessons with actors playing investigators. It was really cool to see the missionaries come in and talk to people, who I assumed were already members of the church just volunteering. A couple of times they opened up the discussion and allowed us observers to ask questions. They are really emphasizing taking the first major part of meeting an investigator to just get to know them as much as possible cause then you'll know them well enough to be able to cater to their needs and sort of be able to teach what they need to hear. It makes perfect sense and I guess this is the whole purpose of doing away with the memorized discussions and the whole raising the bar. The Spirit is the real teacher and so missionaries must be in tune with the teachings of the gospel all the time.

It's kind of crazy to think that I have only been here a week. The days are so long that I often am preparing to go to bed and someone mentions an aspect of the day and I think that we did it the day before. The days are so structured and long that they really feel like a week themselves. Being sort of couped up in the MTC though has me more excited to go to California and get to do something real and new.

The food is of course pretty good and in abundance. I ate the full portion they gave me the night I got here, it was chicken and mashed potatoes with gravy I think and that was way too much food. They tell you not to waste food but I've started trying to cut back my portions otherwise I don't feel so good the rest of the day. \

Everyone looks forward to Gym time, supposed to be once a day but we did a service project yesterday and had some devotionals and today is P-day so laundrya and temple visit take it's place. So I'm excited to have a p day but I'll be more excited to get gym time tomorrow. The first day we played sand volleyball, it was okay but I guess I'm kind of a snob and was little unenthused at the level of play. Actually Elder Adams in my district and he is in the same dorm room is like an extreme athlete he like can't not dive for everything. So he played quite extraordiarily but not with a technical skill just pure athleticism. Anyway, the next day we played soccer which was crowded and confusing as I had no idea who exactly was on my team, then we played four square which is pretty fun and the level of competition is beyond my abilities I got kind of annoyed at having to wait in line for three minutes just to be sent straight to the back of it again. I've gotten to toss a frisbee a couple of times which is a comfort but Ultimate is banned and so I guess I won't be playing it anytime soon.

I don't know exactly what people want to hear from me. I feel like I've covered pretty much everything. I'm pretty tired most days, before and after breakfast when we have personal and companion study I usually doze off while quietly reading. There are some other pretty cool people in my district. We have 3 sister missionaries which is apparently a privelige in the MTC. One of which is from Palau and has only been a member for Two years. Our district leader is originally from Wales and has lived in Buffalo NY for 4 years and has been a member for 5 years. He also is like conversationally fluent in Tagalog cause his mom is some percent Philippino but I don't see it in him at all. And his full name is Matthew Graham Hubert Hugh Van Jenkins. He's is really awesome and a good guy.

Well my time is up on the computer, please don't e-mail me anyting too long cause I won't have time to write back and read it. Apparently a thing called dear elder allows you to type an email and theuy print it off and mail it to me and it's free I think Haley knows about it.\

-Love Elder Miller