Hello all,
It is the start of my third week in my third transfer and all is pretty well with me. We have a few investigators but each of them have pretty complicated situations that we have to work with until they can be baptized. One of them lives with the father of her child who she no longer is involved with but she recently got engaged to her boyfriend that we have taught a few lessons to. She can't get baptized until she moves out of the house or marries the man she's not engaged to so that doesn't seem likely. So right now our plan is to try and encourage them to drastically speed up their engagement process and then baptize them both. Our investigator who seems most prepared for baptism unfortunately lives with her fiance. We haven't taught her that rule yet so she doesn't know that she needs to move out or get married already but we're hoping that she takes the message well and perhaps their engagement will be drastically shortened as well.
I'm getting along with my new companion pretty well. He's very easy to get along with, just kind of relaxed and funny. He's not exactly at the most focused stage in his mission since he is looking at going home in, he told me this morning, 79 days. But he is still working pretty hard and I'm trying to get him up on time in the mornings.
We are also involved with some less active/ part member families and trying to teach there and see if we can get anyone active or baptized. One family are pet fanatics. Apparantly their house used to be a complete sty and no one could hardly stand being in there for any period of time. They had so many dogs and cats and whatnot that the smell was unbearable. My last companion had visited once before I got to the area and he had to go home and take a shower directly afterward. But the city cracked down on them and they are watched and limited to two dogs and cats and then they have two parrots. They used to have a bobcat that weighed 40 pounds and it was the youngest childs best friend. The parrots are funny. One of them is named Toowie and has just the best timing when delivering a line. And my favorite is when one of the owners yells at him to be quieter and he then whispers his own name repeatedly. But they are a fun family and the father likes the church he just couldn't quit smoking 20 years ago when they were investigating.
So those are the people we're working with as well as some others. It's hard to find new people but we're trying. Not that the old ones aren't a handful enough, but we are here to find as many as will listen.
Have a happy Thanksgiving everyone and I'll write next week.
Sincerely, Elder Miller
Monday, November 22, 2010
Monday, November 15, 2010
Corny Zone Conference
Hello Everyone,
This past week was awesome. My new companion, Elder Terry, is terrific. He's a larger fellow and always says thing that are unexpected and therefore funny to me. So it's great to have a humorous spirit about us as sometimes we go about less than exciting tasks. Yesterday was a bit of a drag, as we had none of our investigators show up to sacrament. It wouldn't have been so bad if we hadn't had a landmark seven investigators there the week prior. So members noticed that this week was not as successful as the week before, but it's not that we've lost any investigators, it's just that one was sick three were out of town and another had just gotten back from trip and hadn't slept for a while. So we are still working with some great people and are slowly trying to overcome their concerns and everything else that is stopping them from being baptized.
On Friday I attended my second zone conference which was good, albeit a little corny. President Jackson feels that there is an obedience problem in our mission and so we went to conference with ways we can improve ourselves on mind. As part of zone conference we all had ties on which we wrote down something that is holding us back from baptizing more people, our "weapons of rebellion" and then we cast them to the floor as though we are sacrificing our rebellious acts. I put down that I would give up my relaxed view of the daily schedule. I could do better to follow the plans that we make for our day. It's just that sometimes things arise that you have to take care of and your time gets spent in a different area than originally scheduled. I don't think it's much of a goal but it's one thing to work on that may help.
The most exciting part of zone conference though was that we got new cell phones. We had these old Sanyo phones that are pretty much indestructible. I really like them and through practice I have gotten down how to flip the phone open in a variety of ways just using one hand, or in one method just two fingers. But we got these new LG phones that aren't as sturdy and I would love to find new ways to slide it open using centrifugal force or whatnot but it's not as protected and I'm afraid of breaking it. Plus it's too complicated. I never had a phone before the mission and the simplicity of the other one was nice. I don't think I need 90% of what our new phone can do. Oh well. Have a good week everyone.
Sincerely, Elder Miller
This past week was awesome. My new companion, Elder Terry, is terrific. He's a larger fellow and always says thing that are unexpected and therefore funny to me. So it's great to have a humorous spirit about us as sometimes we go about less than exciting tasks. Yesterday was a bit of a drag, as we had none of our investigators show up to sacrament. It wouldn't have been so bad if we hadn't had a landmark seven investigators there the week prior. So members noticed that this week was not as successful as the week before, but it's not that we've lost any investigators, it's just that one was sick three were out of town and another had just gotten back from trip and hadn't slept for a while. So we are still working with some great people and are slowly trying to overcome their concerns and everything else that is stopping them from being baptized.
On Friday I attended my second zone conference which was good, albeit a little corny. President Jackson feels that there is an obedience problem in our mission and so we went to conference with ways we can improve ourselves on mind. As part of zone conference we all had ties on which we wrote down something that is holding us back from baptizing more people, our "weapons of rebellion" and then we cast them to the floor as though we are sacrificing our rebellious acts. I put down that I would give up my relaxed view of the daily schedule. I could do better to follow the plans that we make for our day. It's just that sometimes things arise that you have to take care of and your time gets spent in a different area than originally scheduled. I don't think it's much of a goal but it's one thing to work on that may help.
The most exciting part of zone conference though was that we got new cell phones. We had these old Sanyo phones that are pretty much indestructible. I really like them and through practice I have gotten down how to flip the phone open in a variety of ways just using one hand, or in one method just two fingers. But we got these new LG phones that aren't as sturdy and I would love to find new ways to slide it open using centrifugal force or whatnot but it's not as protected and I'm afraid of breaking it. Plus it's too complicated. I never had a phone before the mission and the simplicity of the other one was nice. I don't think I need 90% of what our new phone can do. Oh well. Have a good week everyone.
Sincerely, Elder Miller
Monday, November 8, 2010
He's all grown up and off to share the gospel...
I wrote Elder Miller about a friend of his who was having a hard time on his mission in another part of the U.S., and he had this to say:
I figure many missionaries get down when they have few investigators and no baptisms. I analyzed this a while ago and concluded that too many people try to gauge their success and thereby their happiness on baptisms. I would love to see a baptism and I know it would make me happy but baptisms aren't our purpose. We are called to invite people to be baptized and recieve Christ as their savior. The difference is whose choice the happiness [is in the end]. If you rely on baptisms for happiness then you're putting your happiness out of your control and letting it rely on someone else's agency, and that makes no sense. You have to recognize that inviting people to be baptized is your purpose and everytime you talk to someone about Christ you are fullfilling it. It's your happiness and therefore it should be in your hands[...] Recognizing this early on I think has made me much more content in my work despite the rare interest we get from people around here. But [my friend] is just working really hard and experiencing no baptisms and he just has to recognize that talking to people, even if they aren't receptive, is success in a major form.
I figure many missionaries get down when they have few investigators and no baptisms. I analyzed this a while ago and concluded that too many people try to gauge their success and thereby their happiness on baptisms. I would love to see a baptism and I know it would make me happy but baptisms aren't our purpose. We are called to invite people to be baptized and recieve Christ as their savior. The difference is whose choice the happiness [is in the end]. If you rely on baptisms for happiness then you're putting your happiness out of your control and letting it rely on someone else's agency, and that makes no sense. You have to recognize that inviting people to be baptized is your purpose and everytime you talk to someone about Christ you are fullfilling it. It's your happiness and therefore it should be in your hands[...] Recognizing this early on I think has made me much more content in my work despite the rare interest we get from people around here. But [my friend] is just working really hard and experiencing no baptisms and he just has to recognize that talking to people, even if they aren't receptive, is success in a major form.
What a great attitude. I am so (wipes tear) proud of Fletcher.
A New Companion and A Lot of Investigators
Today was pretty exciting thusfar. I got a new companion named Elder Terry from Orem. I was sort of sad to see my trainer go but people always say that you learn different things from different companions so we'll see what I can pick up. I'm still in my first area and we have a number of investigators we are working with. Sunday was actually amazing. We had 7 investigators there. Some of them I guess we should kind of be careful to call investigators but they were there and we are sort of working with them. We picked up one lady because there is a less active man who started coming back to church and he told us to come over so he could have some refresher lessons. But he lives with his sister, he's in his 60's, and he was hoping to get his nephew interested while he was at it. So we went over and he invited some people who we couldn't really see who were sitting in their family room to join in on the lesson. Well his nephew didn't come cause he was busy watching the Giants parade, but his nephews fiance who lives there as well came and was really excited. She was extremely open with us considering we just met her and she just seems so excited to learn and she seems to retain information at a phenomenal rate. She does talk way too much though. Any time she asks a question she has to explain her feelings behind it and why she has the question. So it gets into some pretty long lessons with her when we are supposed to keep them to an hour at most. But she is very promising and has kept all the commitments we extend to her and she is scheduled to be baptized on the 27th of this month. The only foreseeable setback is the fact that she lives with her fiance and they obviously aren't married yet. So we'll have to get to the bottom of that and figure out if we can try and speed up the wedding date or see if she'll move out instead.
But I'm having a great time out here. The weather was very similar to Oregons on Sunday and I was glad that I wasn't in a biking area. I hope you all are doing well and have a good week.
Sincerely, Elder Miller
But I'm having a great time out here. The weather was very similar to Oregons on Sunday and I was glad that I wasn't in a biking area. I hope you all are doing well and have a good week.
Sincerely, Elder Miller
Monday, November 1, 2010
Halloween
Hello Everyone,
I'm doing great. Halloween was actually a pretty fun series of weekend events even though my ward didn't have a party. So here's what happened. I serve in Centerville ward and they share the building with Glenmoor ward. Every year Centerville has a party and every year I think Glenmoor either has a trunk or treat or a party as well. This year since Halloween was on a Sunday both wards had been planning on having their party on Saturday. Glenmoor had actually reserved the building for Saturday and when Centerville realized this they kind of just assumed that they could combine their ward parties and it would all be good. So Centerville I think was planning on that up until they actually got around to asking Glenmoor about it and Glenmoor said no. Centerville ward is like twice to three times the size of Glenmoor and I believe a while back they tried to do a combined party and Glenmoor felt left out within the party. So Glenmoor wasn't having it this year and Centervill was left with no plans. Ward dynamics are interesting sometimes so that's why I just shared this. Plus I'm not in the Philippines and don't have any cool local quisine stories so I have to get in on the interward gossip. That's about all you're going to get from an elder in California.
But we didn't have a party to go to and so we were thinking that this Holiday would be a bit of a bummer. But our dinner appointment on Saturday was this lady in the ward that went all out and had kind of her own party that we ate at and so that was fun. The food ranged from a mummy meatloaf to an eyeball casserole and gummy worm punch. And then our Ward mission leader gave us some extra halloween decorations and we got to decorate our house with huge spider webs and lights. And my companion bought candy to give out on Sunday when trick or treaters (really teenagers who didn't bother to wear costumes) came to the door. And my companion also made a cake to give to our bishop and we took it over to present after he finished a Bishops youth fireside. So it was a fun chain of events. Oh and we also got volunteered to help run concessions at a local elementary schools halloween party. Apparantly the elders help out every year and have been for like 25 years. It was good many of the people that live in the neighborhoods that we tract got to see us in oversized lunch lady serving gloves and preparing their nachos and hot dogs so maybe we'll have some better doorstep reception rates now that people have seen us doing something other than proselyting.
So I'm doing well and having fun here. We have picked up a few new investigators who I am hopeful will progress quickly. It's much more fun out here when you have people to teach. Teaching is always more fun than finding. Transfers are next Monday and I am a little anxious cause my Trainer suspects that he'll be leaving and I am not looking forward to being the foremost authority on my area. Should be fun though.
Have a great week.
Sincerely, Elder Miller
I'm doing great. Halloween was actually a pretty fun series of weekend events even though my ward didn't have a party. So here's what happened. I serve in Centerville ward and they share the building with Glenmoor ward. Every year Centerville has a party and every year I think Glenmoor either has a trunk or treat or a party as well. This year since Halloween was on a Sunday both wards had been planning on having their party on Saturday. Glenmoor had actually reserved the building for Saturday and when Centerville realized this they kind of just assumed that they could combine their ward parties and it would all be good. So Centerville I think was planning on that up until they actually got around to asking Glenmoor about it and Glenmoor said no. Centerville ward is like twice to three times the size of Glenmoor and I believe a while back they tried to do a combined party and Glenmoor felt left out within the party. So Glenmoor wasn't having it this year and Centervill was left with no plans. Ward dynamics are interesting sometimes so that's why I just shared this. Plus I'm not in the Philippines and don't have any cool local quisine stories so I have to get in on the interward gossip. That's about all you're going to get from an elder in California.
But we didn't have a party to go to and so we were thinking that this Holiday would be a bit of a bummer. But our dinner appointment on Saturday was this lady in the ward that went all out and had kind of her own party that we ate at and so that was fun. The food ranged from a mummy meatloaf to an eyeball casserole and gummy worm punch. And then our Ward mission leader gave us some extra halloween decorations and we got to decorate our house with huge spider webs and lights. And my companion bought candy to give out on Sunday when trick or treaters (really teenagers who didn't bother to wear costumes) came to the door. And my companion also made a cake to give to our bishop and we took it over to present after he finished a Bishops youth fireside. So it was a fun chain of events. Oh and we also got volunteered to help run concessions at a local elementary schools halloween party. Apparantly the elders help out every year and have been for like 25 years. It was good many of the people that live in the neighborhoods that we tract got to see us in oversized lunch lady serving gloves and preparing their nachos and hot dogs so maybe we'll have some better doorstep reception rates now that people have seen us doing something other than proselyting.
So I'm doing well and having fun here. We have picked up a few new investigators who I am hopeful will progress quickly. It's much more fun out here when you have people to teach. Teaching is always more fun than finding. Transfers are next Monday and I am a little anxious cause my Trainer suspects that he'll be leaving and I am not looking forward to being the foremost authority on my area. Should be fun though.
Have a great week.
Sincerely, Elder Miller
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