Greetings From San Jose

Hello Everybody,

The past week for me was very good. We had more lessons that we were able to teach than usual which we always enjoy having. Some of them were to less active members and that is part of our goal in order to try and find new investigators we go through the less active members cause they are more likely to have friends that are not members of the church already, plus we teach the less active members and hopefully uplift them and encourage them to come back to church. Thusfar we haven't gotten any new investigators from it but we look forward to the day that we do.

On Tuesday we finally set up a dinner for our investigators to come to our Bishops house, and they already knew him cause he's their dentist. But the father of the household didn't make it and that was a real bummer. It's kind of sad because one of his main concerns about joining any church is that he won't be able to be himself. That is a tough thing to overcome I think. He respects religion and considers it a very serious ordeal, which it is, but that makes him feel like he can never be himself in church cause he's such a jokester. So we really want to get him go to High Priests Quorum. We figure once he gets around those guys he'll no longer figure he has to be a total stiff at church. We almost got him there too. On Sunday they finally came to church and stayed for sacrament and then we talked to him and he said he'd be fine with staying the next hour but that we better talk to his wife and then she was the one who let us down and said they had to go. Fortunately their daughter stayed and went to primary for an hour before they came back to get her. So their daughter is the one who really wants to get baptized and the parents are fine with that so she is scheduled for next saturday and then we really hope the parents want to tag along and get baptized as well on that day but we're not sure what will happen. It will be an adventure and we are pretty certain it's just a matter of time but we hope that it will be soon. Not too much else is going on. We often teach a couple different older men who have severe health problems and so can't really make it to church. There is a man who we read the book of mormon with weekly and he is about finished with it and seems to believe it all and really wants to join the church but he suffers from a condition where he experiences extreme anxiety in social encounters and that triggers a serious issue he has with is chest wall tightening up and making it so he can't breath. So the elders before me really pushed him to be baptized despite his condition but he didn't really go for it. Plan to offer him a blessing the next time we meet and pray that our faith will allow him the opportunity to overcome his anxiety and apprehension. Otherwise maybe we'll plan a baptism and make sure that no one is invited and doesn't come, and then when he comes to church we'll put like a quarantine sign on him or something so people will stay away. Just kidding.

Sincerely, Elder Miller