Hello everybody,

This week was incredibly slow. We didn't have very many appointments scheduled but the few we had ended up all cancelling on us anyway. So it was a sad week to see Elder Terry have as his last in the Mission but perhaps the downer of a time here will make him more excited to return to weather at home that is nearly freezing. Transfers are tomorrow and I will still be in my area but will get a new companion. I imagine I'll have much more to report on next week after I've gotten to know my new companion but as for now I don't think much has changed. We sort of had a funny thing happen while tracting the other day though. It is common around here for people to leave their doors wide open when it's warm outside and they just leave their screen doors closed to keep flies out I guess. So it is not uncommon for us to approach houses and stand there looming before the screen door preparing to knock. Every once in a while someone will walk by the door before we have a chance to knock and are unaware of our presence on their porch until they glimpse us with their peripheral vision. This has now happened to me three times I think and twice at the same house only an hour apart. We approached a house and the normal screen door was closed but the door wide open. I prepared to knock when this young woman walks by casually but notices us and is slightly startled. Does the whole stutter steps backward as they gasp for air and clutch their chest bit. She recovered quickly so I gave our proselyting spiel and she said she wasn't interested but to come back when her Mom came home in an hour for she might be. We come back and hour later and again the screen door is closed but the main door is wide open revealing the interior of the house. An older woman comes strolling by right as I'm about to knock and she notices this man raising his fist in the corner of her eye. Her reaction was much more dramatic than her daughters but along the same lines. Almost falling over, grabbing the wall for support and holding her chest as if her heart were trying to pop through her rib cage. She said she was Catholic, once she had recovered enough for me to state our business, and waved us away. So that was my source of amusment this week. That and hearing my experienced companion retell all of his various spookings of people that occurred when he was tracting throughout his mission. I hope everyone is doing well and is having a good week.

Sincerely, Elder Miller

Hello Everyone,

It's always weird when you meet people that know people you know in a random place like the Fremont California Centerville ward. But recently a couple moved into the ward fresh from graduating from BYU Idaho and we were invited to our Bishops house for dinner along with them. Got to talking and she happens to be from Tigard Oregon. Then trying to narrow it down she mentions what street her Grandma lived on and that was in our ward boundaries. And then I find out that her Grandma is Melba Garner who I used to take sacrament to. So it's kind of a small Mormon world when it all boils down to it. So that was the latest exciting thing to happen to me. After dinner actually we traveled to a stake center for a Missionary outgoing fireside which my companion along with 9 other missionaries spoke at and there was a lot of singing as well. It was really great to get to listen to a bunch of veterans in the field share their feelings and bear their testimonies. I view it as a bit of a glimpse of what I can come to expect by the end of my mission. None of the Elders expressed regret or any negative feelings towards their time spent laboring in this mission and that is exactly what I have come to expect. It seems true that almost every missionary returns with a great sense of accomplishment and growth and I am grateful that I get to be out here and have the opportunity to grow in the same fashion. We're still looking for people to teach and baptize. We got a referral from our mission office recently and are trying to get in touch with him. I hope everyone is doing great. Have a good week.

Sincerely, Elder Miller

Hello Everybody,

My time is just slipping away from me. This week we kept pretty busy and so now it has just rushed by. My companion is down to only two more weeks left and it doesn't help that every ward member keeps asking him what his plans are and how soon he goes. But it's a fun yet sort of depressing experience for me having a companion leaving. I love it out here but sometimes just being around him I get into a state of thinking that we are in the same position. I think "he's going home soon" and I get it jumbled into thinking that I must be going home soon as well. But then when I correct myself and recognize that I haven't even been out here 6 months it's sort of a shock. But I should really stop thinking about that.

The work is going okay. Could always use a few more investigators to teach but they are an elusive specimen around here. Our assistant ward mission leader told us that we need to stop finding all the people with so much baggage. He was just joking but it's kind of true. Everyone we find has an ordeal to go through before they will be able to get baptized. One lady we were teaching lives with her son and his father. A man who she severely dislikes and has a wife and kids back in the Philippines. She had to keep her lessons with us a secret from him and recently he caught her reading her Book of Mormon and so to save herself and her son the grief that he would dish out she said she had to stop taking lessons from us. So it's very sad and she's in a tough situation but once she can get her own apartment and get out from under his tyrannical control she'll find her way back to the church and so it's just a matter of time. That's the way I feel about most of the people I've taught. I don't see myself baptizing any of them but many of them I see it as just a matter of time.

We had interviews with our President and the whole district shows up and waits in the chapel while one at a time we are interviewed. The rest of the people in the meantime are each expected to prepare a 4 minute talk and speak to everyone and Sister Jackson and her mother happened to be there as well. I had forgotten about the preparing a talk thing and didn't have one written when we got there but fortunately I was the second to last to speak and so I had time to mentally prepare one and I think I did an okay job. Sister Jackson is a big critic though. This is all organized by her and she takes notes on everybody and asks for feedback from everyone. If you have any sort of twitch or poor habit as you speak she'll point it out to you. I think my posture was okay and I didn't shift my weight but I used filler words like "um" a few times. But it was good.

Well I hope everyone is doing well and braving the Oregon weather. I'm pleased to say it's actually quite pleasant here.

Sincerely, Elder Miller

Hello Everyone,

This week has shot by. Again with my companion it seems like the first 3 transfers just disappear and then for some reason the last three drag on a bit. I don't know why that is, but I'm sure it will be especially true this transfer as my companion goes home at the end and you can tell that his memory of home is kind of like his his screen saver. If there isn't anything more pressing then that's where his thoughts will be. But he's still a good companion and I've learned much from him and with him. We are steadily trying to get our investigators to come to church and read the Book of Mormon and pray about it. It's sad to think about but we are required to sometimes drop investigators if they aren't proving sincere. A number of our investigators are continually kind of just claiming to want to change and make commitments to us that they will work to progress and learn for themselves that the church is true but when we check back with them they haven't done their homework. So it's a harsh practice that we must sometimes just stop working with people but the reasoning is that there are more readily prepared people that are out there and that your time can be spent on. For the moment it is almost more convenient to hang onto the people that aren't progressing because without them we don't have anyone to replace them. And the thought of replacing a couple of hours of teaching each week with tracting instead isn't pleasant, I'd much rather teach all the time. Teaching is the fun part, so I guess the harder you work finding the more fun you can have teaching. Well that's about all that has been going on with me. I hope everyone is doing well and enjoying themselves.

Sincerely, Elder Miller

My week has been good. My companion can't exactly contain himself knowing that he's going home in 3 weeks. He's sort of annoying about it but it's all good. Really not much to report. I got the Christmas newsletter and it was great to read about everyone and see updated pictures. I especially thought that Hannah really resembled Audrey in that picture of hers. Not much else to report. We were able to visit a bunch of other people this week and were expecting a good turnout of investigators to sacrament meeting but then we didn't get a single one. So we really need to fing some new investigators. Shortly before I got into this ward there were like three people that pretty much found the missionaries and were ready to get baptized immediately, I'm just waiting for something awesome like that to happen for me. All of our investigators have some serious barriers in their ways that they are reluctant to even attempt to tackle. Next transfer will be a big change. I'll get a new companion and then pretty much everyone else in my zone who has been here since I got here will either be going home or probably get transferred so everything will get switched up and have new Zone Leaders and District Leader and it should become quite a different Zone in one fell swoop.

Well I hope everyone is doing well. I don't know how to e-mail my mission president using this site so I may e-mail again this week to answer to him and then read whatever e-mails are on the myldsmail site.

Love, Fletcher

Too Much Candy

Hello Everybody,

I'm actually on exchanges right now with an elder in a different ward. He's from Hawaii and has a very chill surfer personality. The holidays were not kind to me, in some aspects. Celebrating with members was awesome and I almost forgot that this was the first time I've ever been away from home for Christmas. But being in a car this whole time I've been on my mission as well as the copious amount of candy we got from all of our generous ward members has made me recognize how out of shape I'm getting. Luckily I think I've maintained a pretty good metabolism so I should make a full recovery but I really need to get to a bike area soon in order to keep up some form of daily exercise.

Sadly the exercise thing is my most pressing matter. We still seem to have no one excitingly close to baptism and so our days are spent trying to find more people. No one was very interested to listen to us as they were caught up in the season of Christmas or general holidays and were too busy for us but it seems to be slowing down and we're catching more and more people in a more relaxed state and able to talk to them more often. And soon we'll get one of them.

I hope everyone had a wonderful wintery holiday season. The winter continues I guess but the holiday cheer dries up unfortunately.

Sincerely, Elder Miller