A Messianic Jewish Sikh and a Dead Lemon Tree

Hey everyone,

This week was good. On Tuesday we had interviews with our mission President and also his wife sort of. They, as well as our housing coordinator Elder Winn, came around 10:00am and President Jackson shook our hands and then immediately said "Who's first?" It was good we just caught up on how my mission has been thusfar and he suggested how we can help our ward out and improve the work. I really like President Jackson. He's a little shorter than me and has some large glasses and gray hair and a booming voice. I think I've heard that he has done some stage performance in his time as a hobby. He's a farily successful lawyer from Arizona though. His wife is Canadian I learned though. Not to be stereotypical but she always talks in a high pitched voice and once I learned that she was Canadian I felt that explained it. Elder Winn was there to kind of inspect the living quarters plus Sister Jackson is a bit of a skeptic and so her suggestions on how to improve the places were given and I think Elder Winn was there so that he could take her suggestions into account and try to make changes. We were a little wary of how Elder Winn would react when we told him that one of the two main limbs of our lemon tree in the backyard broke at the trunk. It had so much fruit on there that the limb just cracked. We were only instructed to take a half a bag to the lady that owns the house and so we toss the lemons that fall and the rest just weighed down the limb. We don't have enough time to pick all that fruit but we probably should have cause now half the tree is dead. Anyway Elder Winn is a pretty relaxed individual and didn't mind too much, just told us he'd get us a saw so we can chop it up.

On missionary work: it's been crazy. It seems like it's very simple and easy to extend baptism invitations and people commit to certain dates but then they never come to church and so don't qualify to be baptized. I don't understand it. Why would you commit to baptism if you won't ever go to church?

We tracted an apartment complex the other night though and this lady chatted with us. "oh, you're missionaries, so am I. Latter day saints right? Well I'll tell you what I am but you probably won't understand. I'm a messianic jewish sikh."
We talked with her for a while. Most of the time got eaten up cause she would tell us something and then she'd back up her belief with something from the bible. But she is fluent in Hebrew and has the bible memorized practically in Hebrew. So she would quote the scripture in Hebrew and then translate it. There wasn't much point in talking with her cause there was no way that she'd be interested in taking lessons from us but she was kind of fun to listen to go on. She mainly pretended to listen to us and then would get off on a tangent of her own crazy thinking and end up at a random topic. Just in one conversation we probably touched on everything that we are supposed to teach and investigator in 4 lessons. But she was an interesting person. She is very involved in her community of Sikhs and on her wall there was an election poster with pictures of candidates, all men wearing turbans and had beards. She pointed to the poster at one point when she talked about her husband. My companion afterwards in the car told me that he didn't realize what the poster was for and was about to make a joke about her having an FBI most wanted terrorist poster in her house when she pointed to her husband on it running for some religious postion.
I was glad he didn't make that joke.

Well we're just trying to meet new people and talk about the Gospel. Being out here makes me think about how un-outgoing I was at home. We try to rely so heavily on members and I never really thought much about what the missionaries challenged me to do but now I recognize the importance and really wish I had been more helpful.

Have a good week everyone.

Sincerely Elder Miller