He's Home!

Elder Miller arrived home on Wednesday, August 1st! Here are a couple of pictures from the airport:

Guten tag!

Well I've made it to my last week. I'm not sure if I'll e-mail the Monday before I catch my flight so this is probably my last address. I better make it good. This past week we went on two exchanges. So on Thursday I had a pretty new missionary in my area and in the morning we went over and helped out doing service for Habitat for Humanity. We mainly helped one of the regulars as he put up these soffett like eaves. We had had an appointment with one of our former investigators for 2 o'clock and so we meant to finish up with service at 12:30 to make sure we had plenty of time to travel and change and travel to the next appointment. Every time I've been to this place of service they have lunch time at 12:00 on the dot just about and I was counting on that so then we could eat lunch and then take off like we usually do. Lunch didn't come as usual so the next time I looked at my watch it was 1 and we had to go. This younger missionary I was with was complaining about not having any lunch and I was pretty annoyed with him cause he was going to make us late to this appointment we had in which we intended to get a new investigator and invite them to be baptized. It's like the best set up lesson that a missionary can hope for and this guy is going to make us late while he's whining about lunch. We're walking back to our car when we get a call from the lady we're supposed to meet next and she reschedules for the next day. So then we had nothing better to do but help out some more at build site. Long story short I got a wicked sunburn on the back of my neck. It's weird how sometimes you don't realize that you're getting burned. I recall the night before I went into the MTC we were up late talking to my brother in law and a friend of his and they were giving me advice or just stories from their missions and the MTC. The friend told about a time that he went golfing on his Preparation day and just wore a t-shirt and got such a bad sunburn on his neck, a part of his neck that is usually covered by the collar of our white shirts. He said that the pain of his white collar on his neck for the next two days was unbearable. Well mine wasn't that bad but it reminded me of his story. It was painful at times but it was bearable. We didn't have any aloe in our apartment either. I was just looking for any sort of lotion that might help and the only thing I came across was neosporin. I think it's mainly to prevent infection but on the tube it said that it also relieves pain a little bit and it was the best stuff I had so I walked around for the rest of the day smelling like neosporin.

The next day I was actually on exchanges with a companionship serving in San Jose and I went there so this was the only time that I have ever served in the capitol city of my mission. We did service as well and luckily it was indoors and we were helping a less active man mud the ceiling of a house he's working on repairing. Later though we went street contacting in downtown and at times the sun was at my back and that was hard. I tried to scrunch my neck down further in my collar to protect it from the harsh slap of the sun rays. At one point it felt like my ear might catch fire. I checked around to make sure there wasn't some random person standing behind me holding a magnifying glass on me. But the exchange was good.

It's getting kind of annoying having to tell everyone my plans for after the mission. When you first get to an area they want to get to know you so you recite about your hometown and family and hobbies and whatnot but after a while they either remember and don't ask anymore or they don't remember but realize that they should know and are too embarrassed to ask anymore. So I've been in this area for almost 7 months so not many people ask me the newcomer questions anymore but now I have to endure the repeated, "So what are your plans after the mission?"
I'm not really that annoyed with it. I'm sure every missionary goes through it almost like a right of passage. Perhaps it's designed that way just in case a missionary hasn't really thought about what they're going to do after the mission, this process guarantees that they will have thought about some plans.

Well we did get a baptismal date with the same woman who has had many in the past. She just never comes to church. We're set to teach her more regularly though so that should be great. This week should go much like the others I expect which will be good. This has been "a most excellent adventure". This Month and transfer have probably been the best of my mission. Just as far as pushing myself and doing well fulfilling goals go.

I thank all of you long time subscribers out there (if there are any) seeing as this is my last edition I just want to thank everyone for their prayers and letters and support in general. I have greatly enjoyed my mission and just want to let everyone know how grateful I am for this Gospel and the knowledge that is available to us. Christ surely did come and fulfilled the plan that allows us to change and make possible our future admittance into the company of our Father in Heaven.

Sincerely, Elder F. Miller

Hola Mi Amigos,

I hope I wrote that correctly, of course I don't know how to make a tilde on the keyboard and that phrase undoubtedly has one, but besides that I hope I did it correctly. And I think I'm going to give up on capitalization for this e-mail cause we're at a different library and this keyboards shift key is amazingly uncooperative. seriously my pinky hurts. well this week was pretty good. we got a new investigator from a recent convert that we teach and meet with a lot. he took to inviting a certain friend upon our challenging him to do so and now that friend has come to church twice. we have not taught him a very substantial lesson as of yet however. we were set to meet him once and he called in sick and then just an hour ago we were supposed to meet again but he had called saying essentially that he was sick again but this time it was a problem with his medication and he had to go to the doctor to get it straightened out. so the first time he called in sick and missed our appointment it was cause for concern thinking that he didn't actually enjoy attending church but then he came to church again and so this time we're not as concerned that we didn't get to meet with him assuming that his excuse is real and it's just a matter of time before we do get to teach him and really we just really want to invite him to be baptized. that invitation is always a thrill.

we still have a lady that has now come to church about 8 times and we aren't teaching her yet but i think she's becoming more comfortable with us and we always see her in the gospel principles class and there are members that she is close friends with that are helping her along and so she's just a matter of time as well. i recognize that i keep saying "matter of time" as if i can hold out forever when in reality i don't have long to go, but that doesn't really matter. it's fun to be a part of it while i'm here but if i miss out on the end that's not too upsetting. one would think it would feel diminishing to know that once you're gone nothing will really change almost that you didn't make a difference, but in the realm of missionary work it's more of a comfort knowing that it will go on unimpeded. hopefully i made a difference, or am making a difference but it's easy to recognize that it shouldn't be too difficult for someone else to come in and carry it forward. it makes me think of the princess bride. how the infamous dread pirate roberts has actually been a bunch of different men throughout the ages but all with the same name so they carry on the legacy. perhaps i shouldn't compare the work of the Lord to piracy but i think you all understand what i mean.

anyway, we also received a call from a lady that we worked with a while ago but didn't go anywhere and she wanted to meet again. there's no telling whether or not it will go anywhere this time but we're always willing to try. she is one of those investigators that seems to agree with everything in theory but actually committing to do the things required to demonstrate what you believe is where things fall apart. coming to church is very hard for her and it's evident why and i'll admit that if i were in her shoes i would not jump at the idea of the kind of preparation that would be required to make it to church, but we can't be sure if she's really very committed until she accepts that challenge. you would think that being baptized and accepting the commission to take upon oneself the name of Christ and always remember him and keep his commandments, would be a harder invitation to accept and accomplish than coming to church. i guess that is the point that this investigator is missing so we'll need to focus on that when we meet this week and see if we can't help her progress and come to church regularly.

well that's what's going on around here. it's fun. i hope you all have a great week.

sincerely, elder f. miller

Wuz Crackin',

Well this will probably be short since the computers are once again in high demand and my companion and I are sharing a time slot. My Fourth of July was fine. We actually were on exchanges with another companionship so I missed the ward breakfast that was put on and instead attended a different one with a different companion. It was really good. Some of the tastiest pancakes I've ever had and the members somehow got the word out enough to have a bunch of people not in the church show up.

This week we have zone conference coming up and so my companion made sure we washed our car today cause often times the car coordinator for the mission will inspect the vehicles while we're in the meeting. We washed the car decently and then we got a call from some other Elders saying that to save miles we were just going to ride with them down to the meeting. But that's okay, we really needed to wash our car regardless if someone was going to inspect it or not. That's probably the hardest thing for me, convincing myself to spend a half hour of Preparation day to wash the car.

We were at a baptism for a little boy in the ward last night and he had to be baptized a couple of times and then it was good. It was kind of funny cause the first time his foot came up so for the repeat I'm sure they counseled him to keep his feet down and subsequently I think the kid locked his legs on the second try cause you saw him kind of just lean back and his dad almost toppled over him cause he was pushing him down but was forced to reach back and back. And then the third time was counted good and everyone dismissed back to their seats and then someone inquired as to whether the kid had a middle name cause the father had just used first and last and it turned out that he did have a middle name and so they repeated it and it went well the fourth time.

We were super hopeful that our investigator would come to church. In the past the problem has been that she didn't have a car and she still doesn't but she said her father was interested and was going to drive her and her son and come himself on Sunday. They didn't show up and we have yet to figure out why but it's starting to look like she just doesn't really want to come. But we have been meeting with a recent convert quite a bit and building him up and encouraging him to share his beliefs with others and this Sunday a friend that he has invited a bunch of times finally came. They had to walk a ways to get to church and the convert kind of tricked his friend into the long walk so we'll see if he comes back but he seemed to like it and shared his feelings during a gospel essentials lesson. Then he was invited to come and attend "bible study" with us when we usually meet with the recent convert on Thursdays.

So we have a few odd things that seem likely to pick up. This past week we finally were able to catch up with a less active guy that we had been teaching regularly but then I guess we just happened to never catch for like two weeks straight, of trying about every day. I figured he was avoiding us but then we found him. I even tried to fix his bike for him. Really all I did was mess it up more and then fixed the part that I messed up and the original problem was still there so I just told him to stay away from the low gears and he'd be fine.

Well I hope you are all doing well. Have a great week.

Sincerely, Elder F. Miller

**This is the attachment that he sent**

Hey Peoples, All of the internet capable computers are taken so I’m trying to see if I can just use the word processing computer and then just save this and plug it into my e-mail when I get the chance so that I’m not wasting time. I’ll probably only be able to make this an attachment which would be super annoying for people I’m sure but maybe not. I’m not much of a computer person.

Well this past week was pretty good. We got a call from an older sister in the ward telling us that she had broken her ankle and wanted a blessing. The thing was she wasn’t at her apartment but was house/cat sitting for a less active lady in our ward who we had never met. The house was super nice. Set on a big piece of land and it was just decked out with art and had a pool and I’m sure many other amenities. The less active lady who owns the house actually is an opera singer and performed back around Easter when that symphony from BYU Idaho came and the Stake choir sang with them. She had a couple of solo parts that were really good. Everyone was talking about her and how great she was and I assumed that she lived in the stake but didn’t realize that she was in our ward. I have never seen her again at church. I’m not certain if she is less active or if she’s just super busy with her career. I think she travels a lot perform all over. Anyway that was just a weird realization.

This other older less active lady we stopped by. A while ago we stopped by and I took the opportunity to play with her husbands Rubik’s cube and she was impressed that I could solve it, but she wondered why my companion couldn’t solve it, so she told us to take it and that I should teach him and then bring it back when he could do it. Normally we aren’t supposed to play with toys but the thing was kind of our return ticket to meet with this less active lady so I commenced in teaching my companion how to solve it and now he can do it. Then we stopped back by the ladies house by impulse and so didn’t have the cube with us but she still let us in and we talked with her a bit and asked if there was any service we could render her and she mentioned weed pulling. We got out of that one by not owning any pairs of gloves so instead she said that if we wanted we could come back and fix her shutters. So on Saturday we went and it was a simple matter of lining up the dowel holes and gluing them in and putting some vices on them. We didn’t really think about it at the time but I’m afraid we may have undermined her husband by fixing those. Cause that was the project assigned to him and he had found it too tedious and resigned to just buy some new shutters. Her husband is not a member of the church and he’s held out thusfar, being like 60 years so I don’t plan on converting him especially not when we’ve gotten off to a bad start by showing him up in his shutter assembling skills.

Anywhootenanny, all of our once investigators have become scarce. We called and set up an appointment with one of them and then when we went they weren’t home. They’re kind of old and so I’ll believe that they plumb forgot, but as a missionary we’re pretty used to living by our appointments so it becomes hard to understand that some people just don’t remember or don’t consider an agreement to meet a binding contract.

Hey Peoples, Sooo, rather unorthodox today but the internet capable computers were all occupied for a while and so I endeavored to use the word processing computer and I just saved what I was writing in the hopes that I could add it here and then continue writing when a computer opened up and so I wouldn't waste time. I can't open it and paste it in this e-mail cause they really limit these computers but I did add it as an attachment. Sorry for the inconvenience but I can only imagine that I have about 10 people that follow my weekly e-mails, and they're usually all about the same so missing one every once in a while can't be too disappointing. I don't remember all that I wrote in the attachment so I don't know what to add here. But long story short, I had a good week. We were able to meet with some less active members and those were enjoyable visits. We have this old guy that we keep stopping by and chat with. He's hilarious. Just so old that he no longer gives a crap. I think he's 90 but still in admirable health. He still gets around and drives and reads a lot. Fine enough to even travel a bit. He's fun to talk to and try to convince to come to church but he claims that he's just too old and he'd fall asleep and it would be of no benefit to him. Fast Sunday was great, but let me tell you that the pressure you feel to get up and bear your testimony when there are only 20 people in the room and 40 minutes left is amazing. After that the singles branch had their break the fast and we had pulled pork sandwiches which were really good. Alot of people manage to bear their testimony on the 4th of July or about the blessing of living in a free country but I totally failed to bring that up. Actually much of the time I found it funny that everyone was talking about America when it was actually Canada Day. Nobody probably would have appreciated it if I had gotten up there and just praised Canada though. It would be pretty funny to just start out speaking really ambiguously and lead everyone to assume you meant America and then state your appreciation for Canada. But I wouldn't do that, maybe. Well I hope everyone has a great week and Independence Day. Man I wish I could watch that movie right now! Sincerely, Elder F. Miller

Good Tidings of Good, Well we had a great week. Especially the weekend. On Saturday we joined along with the young men in the ward to do service for a less active lady who lives in the hilly part of Santa Cruz and she keeps a few horses. The duty was to tear out this cinder block retaining wall on one side of her small horse arena. The job was made pretty easy by the fact that the young mens president in the ward has his own construction company and brought along a little skid rider CAT thing that did all the hard work. By pressing down on the wall with the bucket of the CAT he collapsed it for us and then us and all the young men went to work with sledge hammers and busted up the cinder blocks a little more to be dumped at another members house. But the CAT would scoop up all the rubble and dump it in his hauling truck. So we just had to smash and shovel a bit. I'm not sure if they are going to replace the wall but he had us slope the wall of earth so that it would cause water to run off much easier and not collapse or avalanche down. I have like one particular spot in my back that is sore and I think it's from when I was using the pick ax to lever out the foundation of the wall that we had torn down. The base of it had stayed encased in the hillside a little bit so I had to dig behind it with the pick ax and wrench it out. Pretty efficient but tiring. We also that day had the opportunity to go to an Eagle Scout Court of Honor for the Stake Presidents son. We were invited cause they like us I guess and also there were supposed to be some non-members there for us to meet. The thing got started late and we figured we'd have to cut out early cause we had an appointment with an investigator the next hour. When we first showed up there was this older gentleman on the front row who called us over and then started asking us a bunch of questions saying that his wife was a member but he was not and he never got straight answers out of her and so he'd like to ask us about the church. I think his first question was to ask if the whole white shirt, dark pants, and tie ensemble was a uniform that we had to wear. Then he asked what the deal with tithing is, saying that his wife pays but she doesn't make any money, so I told him she must be donating 10% of his money, and then he asked us if Mormons don't believe in dancing. He was a pretty suspicious character so I asked for his name and he said he'd be reluctant to do that cause then we'd know that our whole discussion had been a ruse. Turns out he was the Stake Presidents father, who had been himself a stake president and a mission president over the Salt Lake City Mission. He was a super nice old guy and we go to sit by him. When the Eagles nest was called we weren't going to go up cause we knew we'd have to leave part way through, but they practically forced us up and it actually was no treat having to sit in the hot sun unprotected and no back rest, when before we had been standing under a shady tree. We ducked out early though and went to our appointment only to find our investigator wasn't home. We pretty much just have one investigator at this moment. The one I just spoke of above we have met with a number of times and her interest is slight but she reads from the Book of Mormon and agrees with what we say so we're still trying to figure her out. She missed our appointment cause she was in the hospital. Man, some guy just came up and started asking a bunch of questions and used up all my time talking to him. Have a good week everyone. Sincerely, Elder F. Miller

Hola Friends, Well this week was pretty fantastic. Quite well rounded which we are proud of. I've probably mentioned it too many times before but when we total our numbers at the end of the week, a goal for everyone is to strive to teach at least 20 lessons and contact 140 people. So we have done that quite a few times and the mystical romance of achieving such numbers has lost a bit of it's prestige. While we were preparing for a baptism this week we naturally cared a bit more about working with our investigator and making sure that everything was on track for that and took focus away from the every week goal. So we got our investigator baptized on Friday and then found ourselves on Sunday, the last day of the week and we needed to contact like 60 people and teach five more lessons. We went before church to Pacific avenue, where all the shops and Father's Day tourists were and we picked up 70 street contacts no problem and then miraculously throughout the day, even though we had church for 6 hours, we managed to teach 6 times. So we felt pretty accomplished to have gotten a baptism in the week and then, even though it DID distract from the rest of the week, not have it distract from the rest of the weeks goals. Anyway, I assume you all want more details about the baptism. It went well. We really rushed the investigative process on this one. When we first taught this gal she rejected our offer of a baptismal date because she had accepted them in the past and always bailed out at the last second. So at first it seemed like she wanted us to teach her slowly and make sure that she grasped everything before moving on. Leaving nothing to faith pretty much. She has definitely been the investigator with the most random questions. We taught her and got her a baptismal date and then upon meeting again she said she'd like an earlier date, which we didn't argue with. We let her pick her own date and it was June 15th. And so we baptized her. I did the honor and also spake on the gift of the Holy Ghost which she got on Sunday. She was 10 minutes late to the baptism and then on Sunday she didn't come to church due to allergies that she gets from peoples cologne and perfume. But we had her come after church to at least be confirmed and we gathered a group of fragrance free men (more commonly known as FFM's) and my companion confirmed her a member and gave her the Gift of the Holy Ghost. So it all worked out well. After I baptized her I tried to change out of my wet clothes and into my suit as fast as possible and try and beat her back into the room where the well wishers were waiting. All the baptisms I've been to the women always beat the guys in the changing game, unless the women try and blow dry their hair, then all bets are off. But I tried to go fast and I didn't even have a towel cause our investigator showed up unprepared and so I gave her mine. But she beat me. I got to the room a little winded and she was sitting there calmly beside her mother. Schucks! Next time maybe. Suits are very impractical, unlike their counterpart... jumpsuits, which are amazingly practical. Anyway, I recall being a little critical of the former baptisms to take place where the guys failed to pull the stopper and drain the water. Well I have to apologize for that cause I nearly did the same thing. You are just so excited about performing an ordinance that there is no room for concerns about unplugging the font to be lingering in your head. My companion reminded me to pull the plug before I got out luckily other wise I would have had to perform the equivalent of a circus act to get it out again. Today we plan to take a hike with some other Elders and there is supposed to be a bigfoot museum which I'm excited for, hopefully it's a quality fake sasquatch museum, I've been to some really lame fake sasquatch museums let me tell ya. In other news I received a letter from one Elder Wiederholt and in it was a picture of he with a former companion of mine. I had written Shain about my companion cause he's serving in an area where my companion used to live. And then they ran into each other at a stake priesthood meeting and Shain sent me a picture of the event. Pretty cool. Have a great week everyone. Sincerely, Elder F. Miller

I Extend Greetings, A little while ago I decided to try and make each start to my letters a little different than the previous ones since I've been doing the same thing for two years. I didn't think it would be so hard to come up with original starts to my e-mails, I'm going to have to start studying up on synonyms for Hello if I intend to keep it up. This past week was pretty fantastic. We had the opportunity to attend three different baptisms. While none of them were for investigators that we had taught they were all good none the less. The first one was actually just a normal eight year old baptism but the father of the child is less active and the mother was trying to organize the whole thing herself and so asked us if we'd be able to help fill the font and set up and do whatever so we agreed. Actually to guarantee that we did help she signed up for dinner and told us that she'd feed us at the church after we'd helped set up and got the font running. The baptism didn't go very smoothly after that though. The boy was baptized by his grandfather who didn't really know what he was doing. I had lent him my Missionary Handbook so he could practice the prayers and have them down and he studied it beforehand but when it came time he couldn't repeat the prayer word for word at all. The bishop coached him through it and then he submerged the child but the kids foot came right up and breached so they went again and the same thing happened. I beat myself up about this cause the thought came to me while we were about 15 minutes from starting the baptism that I should ask the grandpa if he and the child had practiced or if they wanted to. I dismissed this thought telling myself that it wasn't my baptism and so it wasn't my place to be checking up on people and telling them how to baptize or practice baptizing their grandchildren. I realize now that that was a prompting from the Holy Ghost that I ignored and if I hadn't then the baptism would have gone a lot smoother and I wouldn't be lamenting it all now. They tried baptizing the child again and this time the child was focused and kept his feet down but the grandpa was also focused on the foot and so he failed to submerge the child's head completely. Everyone thought that this time it was perfect and some people even clapped, I guess cause it had been so suspenseful, but then our bishop cut in and said "now that was good but not quite all the way, we'll just do it once more." The child was unhappy about this and they took a recess at the bidding of the Stake President during which they practiced in the changing room and came back out eventually and finally did the ordinance correctly. Afterward I remembered that since we had filled the font we should probably also drain it. As I walked back to the font I thought about it and remembered that there is no chain attached to the rubber stopper that needs to be removed from the drain sitting under 3 feet of water. The grandpa and child were already dried off and dressed so I went about trying to think of another way to remove the plug. I was recalling the assets of our church building mentally trying to picture all the long stick like heavy objects I could use to reach down and loosen the plug when a lady in the ward noticed our problem and said that one of her sons would probably jump at the opportunity to strip down to his undies and yank the plug for us. So we scouted out the son she mentioned and waved him over and told him we had a special assignment for him, trying to play it off like it was the coolest thing in the world that we were about to offer him. "We need you," we crack the entrance to the font open so he can see the dilemma "to go down there and pull out the plug that's stopping the water for us. Think you can do it?" He didn't look too certain. So then my companion suggests "How about if we and maybe your Dad as well just lower you over the glass viewing wall holding you by the ankles?" The kid's too logical for this plan, says "I'd probably just fall in." So it was back to plan A. I found a metal table leg that was for some reason not attached to anything and I leaned out and down over the glass viewing wall, nearly bifurcating myself and just barely managed to scrape up the edge of the stopper and get it to shift allowing some water to start draining but it was very slow since the stopper was still mostly in place. I realized that basically hanging off of the glass wall wasn't the best idea and so we taped a pasta claw utensil to the end of a broom handle and I got the rest of the plug removed. And that was my font drain adventure for the week. At that baptism was a non-member friend of a lady in our ward who has now come to church twice and knows some other members and it's seeming likely that she'll eventually require some missionary lessons. For now we're keeping at bay, letting her develop roots on more of a friendship level with the ward members and then when those are strong we'll add some Gospel Miracle Grow. I don't normally view people as plants but there can't be anything wrong with it since Jesus did the same thing in parable. Anyway, we have been teaching a lady in the singles branch and it's going alright. She tends to play devils advocate during the lessons. This greatly vexes my companion cause ultimately I guess it tears down a bit of the reverence that should be there when discussing the Gospel but I notice that she knows when to be serious and not poke at the points we're making as well. We originally had a baptismal date given to her for the 28th of this month and then when we were discussing that my companion asked if she was still good with that or if she would like to more definitely set it for another day. He and I were assuming that she'd go for more time but she surprised us and said that she'd prefer a sooner date. She has been taught in the past and bailed on two baptisms but she's seeming pretty committed this time. So her date was set then for the 15th, as in this Friday, but we talked to our ward leaders about it and they want it to be on Sunday at the earliest, and that way everyone from the branch can just be there and attend right after church. So it may be the 17th, oh, Fathers day, didn't even think about that. Maybe some branch members won't be around anyway for that. Yesterday she almost didn't make it to church. We called right before sacrament meeting and she was saying that there was a dead rat in her car. I don't think she has mob connections, it was just a literal rat that I guess had gotten in there and died. I don't understand how this hurts the proper function of her Volks-Wagon but we had to send a branch member to go pick her up. And then she got super emotional as a man performed a song in honor of Pioneer Day about pioneers laying their dead babies on the side of the road. If this baptism happens it will definitely be a miracle. We have a few other people the we are working with and things seem to be picking up around here. Getting the hang of things, took me long enough. I hope you are all doing well. Sincerely, Elder F. Miller

Salutations, Well it's pretty rainy here today. We had to be in San Jose last Friday for the first part of the day and so we were in the church building from 9 to 3 about and then when we got around to going outside it was a scorcher. I haven't ever actually served in the city of San Jose so I was never aware of how hot it gets especially compared to Santa Cruz. It made me extremely grateful that I wasn't serving there. The places in which I've spent the summers on my mission have generally been close to the bay and so stay cooler than the inland spots. So I've had it pretty cushy. Yesterday was pretty great. We had church like normal but since it was fast Sunday we have a linger longer break the fast with the Single Adult Branch we cover. This time we forgot to put them on our dinner calendar so a family in the Santa Cruz ward signed up as well. We were conflicted until we found out that the branch dinner was just a build your own potato. I've never cared for plain old baked potatoes much so that made our decision for us. I did manage to sneak into the kitchen and convince them to let me have dessert early cause we were leaving though so that was pretty great. One of the most delicious cupcakes I have ever had in my life. The frosting was just right and there was raspberry filling. I think I've been told that I talk about food a lot when I write home. I guess I see the truth in that. Anyway, we had some time to try and make the goals we set for ourselves this past week. As a zone we were expected to teach 20 lessons per companionship and contact 140 people on the street per companionship. We were down 2 lessons and like 40 contacts. We didn't get all the contacts and actually we didn't bother because we were counting the totals as a group, so other companionships that exceed in certain areas make up for people who struggle. Instead we focused on getting some more lessons cause we figured that was where we'd be hurting. We only got 2 lessons so we met our goal there. And then when they were all added up for everyone in the zone we had exactly the right number of lessons. And I think we were over on contacts a bit. I thought it was pretty crazy that we met the goal exactly. We have a few ladies that we are teaching now. One lady was supposed to be baptized at the end of the month but she still hasn't come to church. She wants to post pone to August so that her sister can be here for her baptism. So we'll keep working with her but I guess this isn't a new problem. She's worked with missionaries before and her home teacher is a stubborn opinionated old guy who has been working on her for 30 years and still she never comes to church. It's a challenge that I'm not sure how much of a dent we'll put in it but we're giving it our best. Then we have a younger lady who is also set to be baptized at the end of this month. She doesn't like to come to church but her reason is that she is allergic to like a bazillion things and when she encounters them she loses the use of her legs temporarily. I'm not sure how legit this problem is, she may just be feeding us some symptom from House M.D. but that's what we're working with. And then we have a lady who is the mother of a semi recent convert. She used to be a member but her records we are pretty sure got lost. She isn't sure if she wants to join the church and so it's a very sincere situation we have going with her. She likes the church, just not the hymns. We are very optimistic that we can guide her to be baptized. She already has no problem coming to church and she doesn't seem to have any future conflicts with the Word of Wisdom or Law of Chastity. All we need to do is show her the what the church is all about and get her reading and praying. I realize I talk about investigators like this all the time, mentioning that the process of getting them baptized should eventually work out and yet I have few under my belt. So either they're not as ready as I think and need more than I'm anticipating or I'm driving them away somehow. I certainly hope it's not the later but I better look into that just in case. I hope you all have a good week. Sincerely, Elder F. Miller

Greetings all, This past week was pretty terrific. We picked up some new investigators and even got a couple to agree to a baptismal date. I have to give a bunch of credit to my new companion, he's great. As far as I can tell we don't do anything much different than I or my other companions have done in the past but it just really feels like the work is flowing right now. We received a random call from a recent convert in our ward saying that her mom isn't a member and would like to meet with us so yesterday we were able to do that and it was a good lesson. The Mom is possibly a member. She recalls being baptized when she was a child but I think they tried to find her records a while ago and couldn't. But she's not totally on board with coming back yet. She is more like a legitimate investigator who has much to learn. We are set to keep teaching her and I think she is much closer to joining the church than turning her back on it. For now it seemed like her biggest issue with the church is that our music doesn't rock as much as other places. We ran out of time and didn't get to teach everything we meant to but we'll get around to resolving her concerns. She raised her children to be Christian in a more non-denominational sense I think and then her son just joined the church a few years back and then his sister followed and now the Mom is looking more into it. The great news is that she already comes to church, she has no problem making it. That is like the biggest problem with investigators most of the time for us. We have two investigators who have committed to work towards a baptismal date and neither of them has come to church. Sometimes it's our fault cause we don't teach the importance of it well enough but that's only because it seems like a given to me. We have to take off quick but this week has been awesome and this one is looking like it will be pretty good as well. We had interviews with President Watkins yesterday and those we cool. The strange part was that a former missionary who was the assistant to president is back and is serving as a secretary to the mission presidency, and so as part of interviews he gave a little presentation. We keep referring to him as Elder but then catch ourselves and realize that we can call him Carlos. Hope you all have a great week. Sincerely, Elder F. Miller

What's up everybody? Well this week was great. My new companion is set on just seeking out the less active members on our ward rosters and so we've had some pretty boring days of realizing that the ward rosters are kind of outdated. Many people don't live where the church thinks they do anymore. It's really sad when we don't find who we're looking for. Often times the new resident simply says that they've never heard of the person and so we have no way to further pursue them. When we report this back to the ward then their only option is basically to send the persons church records back to Salt Lake and say that the whereabouts are a mystery. I've heard that the Unknown file is getting mighty large. It's good for the ward to clear up some of these records though. Cause if we determine that many of these people don't live in the area anymore then that means the records can be sent off and the number of less actives in the area will decrease and so the activity rate in the stake will increase to a more accurate representation of what the membership is in this area. The members here say it time and again that Santa Cruz is a place that members come who want to hide from the church. I think the cause and effect related to that saying should be re-evaluated though. In some cases it's probably more that members come and then get caught up in the way Santa Cruz is and it becomes easy to stop going to church. But then the reasons that one might come to live in Santa Cruz probably would mostly indicate that they're influenced toward being less active to begin with. We had an interesting discussion about this when we ate lunch with our Branch President this past week. They are both from Utah originally but have been in California for a long while. They were actually debating the pros and cons of living in Utah. They ultimately plan on moving and they fear it might be to Utah. They used the word fear because they feel that Utah isn't exactly the bubble that everyone not from Utah thinks it is. In reality you end up with a large spectrum of members and so in Utah there isn't as definite a line drawn for Mormons as in other places. This was particularly discussed in terms of school aged kids and the peer pressure issue. When you're the only Mormon in school the expectations of others can kind of help you keep your standards. But when everyone is a baptized member but half of them don't follow church standards then it becomes harder to really define what a Mormon does and doesn't do. My companion backed this up saying that when he lived in South Dakota it was way easy to know who he was and what he stood for cause he was alone, and then he moved to Utah and it became harder since there are lots of Mormons there that seem to break the definition. I just found all this interesting especially since I haven't lived in Utah and so I was an outsider and one of those naive people who assumes that Utah is perfect. Anyway, sorry to bore you with things that you probably already recognized. We stopped by one name on our list that we didn't know and found the address to be in a 55 and older retirement mobile home community built around an old mill. There was a sign that read "Ye Old Mill" and it was pretty cool. The lady we visited was like 80 years old and her husband has never been baptized. She joined the church in Argentina while they lived down there and her husband was the financial officer for a company that was building Argentina's first highway system in the 60's I think they said. She said the missionaries knocked on the door and gave their approach in Spanish and she said to them they better try again in English or move along. And they were relieved to have found some Americans being two guys from Utah or Idaho or somewhere. Her husband was awesome. He came in and had this really deep voice like a radio announcer. The lady had recently had her hip replaced and neighbors kept bringing them food so they sent us off with like two boxes of cookies. They were super nice and we'll be sure to visit there again. She told us her husband is a devout Agnostic, which perhaps I don't know the full definition of the term but I thought it meant that the person is basically undecided as to whether they believe in God or not. It sounded funny to me that someone would claim to be devoutly uncertain. Anyway, I guess this lady was active up until about a year ago when perhaps she called it quits just due to medical ailments. So we're having some fun and a little success. More to follow I'm sure. Another inactive fellow that we have been meeting with has assumed that we mainly come over to play on his pinball machine. I can't lie and say that it isn't pretty awesome. So we teach a lesson and then don't want to disappoint him and so play a round or two with him. I view it as bonding time. President Hinckley said "Every new member (or returning member) needs 3 things,a friend," and then I forget the rest but I think he also mentioned something about a job and perhaps he mentioned that everyone needs a good pinball opponent as well. Well I'm out of time. Have a great week. Sincerely, Elder F. Miller

Hiya, Well my new companions name is Elder Hammond and he's from Pleasant Grove Utah. He's lived in a variety of places and I wouldn't call him the cookie cutter Mormon boy so it's annoying for him to have to introduce himself as from Pleasant Grove and just see everyones assumptions fulfilled. We had a good first week together. Did well. It's kind of neat how some of Elder Hammonds strengths are my weaknesses so we compliment the work in the area pretty well. Well actually he's just an all around great missionary so it might not be an equal relationship cause I'm not certain I'm offering much to the efforts that he's not already good at but still it's good to be working with him. About the most exciting thing we did this week was we were let into the houses of some less active and part member families. The one part member family that we visited we got talking to the wife who is a member outside for a while. We couldn't go in cause her husband wasn't home and so she walked her dog and we strolled along beside her. Very friendly, and then her husband came home and he's super nice as well. It was a hot day and so they invited us in at this time and offered us some water, thank goodness! And then we just heard all about them. It was a long visit, much longer than we are supposed to take but we were kind of trapped there, without objection, for a long time. The husband is into hunting and guns and manly stuff in general. Just in their little living room they have six motorcycles. A big old harley davidson sits against the wall and then against it lean a couple of dirt bikes, and there's a smaller couple in the corner and then a little kids one by the door as you walk in. At one point we were invited upstairs to check out a big three foot diameter saw mill blade that they had had painted with a snowy wood and deer scene by their neighbor. The blade was in the man cave room along with a huge book case full of ammunition and a gun safe. We got to see some of the guns that he has rebuilt and they were pretty cool. This all reminded me of that movie Tremors, with the character Burt who is a survivalist expert and his home is all protected and he's prepared for everything, everything except that is "darn underground monsters". We also managed to meet with a less active guy who speaks about no English. He gave us some cola and was very nice. My companion asked for his bible and just shared a scripture in Spanish with him and we couldn't exactly elaborate on it so just left it at that. It was an interesting encounter. I can only imagine he doesn't come to church just cause it's all in English and he'd have to travel down to Watsonville to go to a ward he can understand. My last companion called on Thursday I think it was. I was surprised sort of. We got a call from an Illinois number during a lesson so I didn't answer it but called back afterward and it was former Elder Miller. He was calling because he was wondering if he had left his underwear behind. When my new companion was unpacking his stuff he found the drawer full and I was wondering why my last companion left it. He was a very meticulous person so I assumed he hadn't merely forgotten it but had left it for some reason, but it turns out he just forgot about it. Overlooked the drawer I guess. I offered to mail it all to him but he said that he would buy new ones and he didn't want to continue the embarrassment by having his underwear mailed to him. So it's been a good week. I'm not sure what this week will be like but it should be better since we're doing some grocery shopping today and won't have to eat out as much. I didn't realize how understocked we were before I got my new companion. Sincerely, Elder F. Miller

Hello All, Things are going well around here. I say goodbye to my companion tomorrow, but the sadness will last only a short while as they force the transition on you quick. I'm not sure if I wrote about this last week but my companion had always been eager to sit in on the meetings held by President and the Assistants to determine who gets transferred where and so he asked if he could sit in on one before he goes home and so we were invited to do that on Tuesday and it was neat. Not exactly as inspirational as I think my companion was hoping but it was just plain cool to get the scoop on transfers way before the rest of the mission. We actually don't know that much, we sat in on the first meeting but they had a couple more on different days to solidify the whole process. We just caught the initial ideas and placements when it may all be changed around later. Through this though I think I'm much more prepared to guess who my new companion will be. I'm going to put it out there and guess that I will get Elder Fields as my companion next. We may likely e-mail tomorrow to update our families on this new change and so we'll see how good my predictions are. I already wrote about this I think but on Monday we had a lesson with the girlfriend of the less active guy that we got coming to church very regularly and he's completely invested and active now. The lesson went well and we have determined she's a new investigator. We haven't met with her since and part of the problem there is that she actually lives in Fremont and just visits her boyfriend very often in Santa Cruz. Well if any of you recall, Fremont was my first area and so I asked which street she lives on and the answer was Decoto. I remember that street very well, not because I drove on it, in fact I never went on it, I remember because apparently there is a huge church building on that street that everyone would ask us about, or when we were trying to tell people where we meet for church everyone would assume it was the Decoto road building cause they all noticed it cause it kind of looks like a taco bell they would say. The reason I never saw the Decoto building is because it is actually out of our mission. This is the age old missionary dilemma. Well not actually age old cause I think back in the day they didn't exactly have boundaries and no other mission president would get on your case for stealing investigators cause they didn't have mission presidents, but we do now and our new investigator I think lives in the Oakland mission boundaries. Not only would we be stealing her from some other missionaries but we'd be stealing her from missionaries that aren't even in our mission. Normally I think I would just keep this under wraps but our mission President recently had to deal with some other case where missionaries baptized a lady that didn't live in the mission and so he made sure that everyone knew to tell him if we are teaching someone that doesn't reside in our area. So I'll try and talk to him about it at transfers tomorrow. Perhaps my favorite thing this week was service. We got to dismantle a walk in refrigerator that was at the police station. It was pretty neat. The evidence department had this huge refrigerator in case they had perishable evidence they needed to keep but they found that the fridge actually had too much moisture and damaged the evidence so they donated this thing to the local soup kitchen. We got to walk past all these file boxes labeled by year, like on the tv show Cold Case. We turned right when we came to the corner stacked with rifles and a sword and then started unscrewing this fridge room box thing. It just broke down into wall sections and corner pieces. We had a professional guy taking care of unhooking the cooling unit and sucking the freon out of it and whatnot and we just did the heavy lifting. I just thought that was pretty fun and interesting. The things you learn on your mission eh. When I get back and any of you need help dismantling a big fridge room, then you now know who to call. Other than that we were able to meet with a bunch of less active members and just offer some help. One lady was doing pretty well coming back to church and then we didn't see her for like 4 weeks and so we stopped by and she had been sick so we gave her a blessing and we hope to see her next week. Stake conference was this weekend and it was pretty good. My only issue is that they had a man speak who only knows spanish and so they had an interpreter and they alternated, the man speaking a sentence and then the lady interpreted it in english and that was just a long talk to endure. I could not pay attention to that, especially since the man was just basically reading out of the book of Romans I think and not even expounding upon what he read. I had to resort to one of my favorite church zone out habits; staring at the carpet and letting my mind make up images in the random pattern. We were singing with the stake choir and my companion spoke a bit sharing his conversion story since it was his last Sunday here. Today is just a bunch of packing and cleaning for my companion and I. We are looking forward to a lesson we set though. It's nothing too exciting, just an active great family in the ward but we have tried to meet with them for like the whole two transfers that Elder Miller has been here with me cause this family is the Miller family. It's been delayed and put off cause I'm sure people are just scared not knowing what will result from the awesomeness of The Elders Miller meeting with the Millers. It could get explosive. But I'm sure the saying is true, you can't have too much of a good thing. We were supposed to meet last week and they forgot and took their daughter to the movies instead during that time. Anyway, this week should be good. Normal stuff going on, and I'll find out soon what my new companion will have to offer the area. Mother's day coming up as well, on Sunday I should be able to skype home which is exciting. I hope you all have a great week. Sincerely, Elder F. Miller

Hello There, This past week was pretty good. I am not currently recollecting much of it so hang in there... oh yeah, one great thing was this lesson we had in which we invited a senior missionary in our zone to come. He and his wife are genealogy specialists and so we brought him along to talk dead people with the non member wife of a less active man that we had visited once before. It went amazingly well. This senior missionary is a great guy and he actually was serving as a mission president a while ago but was removed due to medical issues. He got right in there and we just sat back and munched on some interestingly delicious french toast custard dish that was quite good. The only problem was that I kept blowing on it to cool it down and that would disperse powdered sugar all over me. There wasn't much of a lesson taught, the senior missionary just got their basic family information and got working on their lines and there was just a wonderful spirit felt as they were able to work together to do family history work. At the end it was revealed that the wife has been reading the Book of Mormon and has been considering joining the church for quite a while. They had a daughter that desired to join the church but passed away before she could. So we're letting the spirit of Elijah handle this case until it's ready for us to teach a little more. Another new development occurred on Sunday. Everything just kind of worked out for us to finally get around to teaching the girlfriend of a less active guy that has been coming to church regularly now and bringing his girlfriend along. Sunday was mostly normal except that our mission president was the guest speaker along with his wife and my companion. So our less active friend brought his girlfriend again and she was able to attend sacrament meeting and hear the good talks given by these three people. After the meeting the branch hosted a dinner and so we all hung around and ate together and so it was just good to have the girlfriend getting to know everybody better over a meal. And then that night was the outgoing fireside for the missionaries going home. We had our less active friend offer to give us a ride (in his girlfriends car cause his is on the fritz) So the girlfriend came along as well. On the ride up I was given the front passengers seat due to my leg proportions and so my companion sat in the back with the girlfriend and worked wonders in just being friendly. At the fireside she was bombarded by testimonies of missionaries and recent converts and then on the ride back we basically taught her a bunch of principles. We set up to teach a more official lesson the following evening. Monday, we had a beach activity with the neighboring zone. So we all drove down to Monterey, or Carmel I think technically and had a few hours fun on the beach. The beach was not quite so nice as the beaches in Santa Cruz and I found myself upset with the lack of frisbee playing space. But there is always sand to dig in and structures to climb on and whatnot so we made our own fun. Lots of missionaries that I don't know so well and didn't bother to really get to know better. That evening my Irish companion was severely sunburned and I was but unaware for a while. We had the lesson with our less active friend and his girlfriend and it was good. Her main concerns are just a difference from what she's grown up learning being Catholic and then although we didn't teach it, she is aware that members of our church don't drink or smoke or party so much, or have pre-marital sex and so her worry is just changing those things while she considers herself to be in the prime of her life when that's what young people are "supposed" to be doing. She understood everything else and is a great investigator but much depends on just whether she really wants this. She's seen her boyfriend make a lot of changes and that may be the source of both her intrigue and trepidation when it comes to learning about our religion. We look forward to teaching her more and it's great to finally have an investigator, that is more legitimate than many others we've had. The difference is made when they have a tie to a member. They have a measuring stick into the church. "Well he's normal so his church can't be too out of whack." Makes a huge difference. Anyway, I lose my companion next Tuesday and I'm not excited. I always dread transfers. I guess for all the things I say about investigators being afraid of changes I'm not all that much better myself. It will be good though. One more companion to come and finish me off. Have a great week everyone. Sincerely, Elder F. Miller

Hello Everyone,

Our week was pretty great. After I wrote last week on Monday we had our normal preparation day and then we actually met with about our only investigator and the lesson went terribly. This is the former member surfer guy who lives out of his truck but then got a job and so we didn't see for a while but we finally met with again. He really wants to be baptized but the first time he was baptized he wasn't secure enough I guess cause he wigged out and allowed his parents and family to convince him to have his name removed from the church records. We met with him at the church building and about the first thing he said to start our lesson was "I think I'm going to grow some dreds." We were understandably confused by this. I probably should have just let it go but I couldn't resist the desire to hear his reasoning on this one. So I guess if I haven't already filled you in on his history then it's good to know that after he left the church for a while he joined up with the Rastafari and he still has a tendency to hold to their ways. But pretty much when I asked what his reason for wanting dreds was he said "cause I'm attracted to girls with dreds" Just to joke with him I pretended like I could only conclude from his statement "you want to grow dreds so you'll be attracted to yourself?" He thought that was pretty funny though I recognize it's not my best. Our lesson went downhill from there as one can probably imagine. More reasoning on his part for the dreds was that it fights "the system". He also said that a member had told him that generally it is encouraged for men in the church to be clean shaven. So he interpreted that as beards not being allowed so in order to express his rebellious attitude but still follow church council he would just grow dreds instead. I told him that I would much rather he grew a beard than dreds. Basically when we try to teach him he gets hung up on very trivial things and it makes it difficult to help him progress much. Also in that lesson he expressed how he "doesn't feel much of a connection with Monsoon", the whole proposition 8 thing still bothers him and we somehow got back on how it makes him sad that people call the holiday Easter instead of Resurrection Sunday because Easter is the name of a pagan god. Next lesson we will probably just attempt to be much more rigid and stern regarding what we'll talk about and be strict in sticking to the topic at hand. The last lesson was kind of my fault, my companion had already the resolve to stick to a single topic but the whole dreds thing piqued my interest and I just had to ask what the heck he was talking about. So while the lessons aren't going great I get a kick out of them and I really CAN see this guy getting baptized it will just take a while.

Other than that...we've also been visiting this less active man who most of the time when we try by he is pretty out of it. His liver is failing him and he won't be able to get a transplant so he knows that he doesn't have much time left and those thoughts must be weighing on him but also the drugs he has to take make him kind of incoherent so sometimes there isn't much point in talking to him. This week as we visited he was actually surprisingly lucid and up for a good conversation. The problem was that I was hit with one of those sleepy spells. Sitting there in his lazyboy just droopy eyed. At first you fight it and then eventually you just start to think to yourself, "eh, I won't miss anything." I started weighing the pros and cons in my head. "Well a nap would be awesome but would the embarrassment be too great?" I didn't fall asleep although I started leaning more towards the argument posed by the little nap devil on my shoulder. Had my brain been fully functioning then I probably would have recognized that even if I did try to fall asleep my companion wouldn't let me remain like that for long so it wouldn't be worth it.

I was with a missionary serving in Watsonville for a day, which is a predominantly spanish area and the missionary serves in the spanish program. I felt like I was back in Greenfield. We did service at a soup kitchen that they go to every week and it was alright. I handed out the fruit. First there were a bunch of mutant oranges (naranghas), those suckers were huge and I personally didn't think they looked all the great but to the people in line I think size means a lot. My companion for the day was in charge of desserts and at one point a very angry lady requested more and he refused to serve her more just cause it was the first round of serving and he was rationing them and she started raising her voice and then grabbed more cookies herself and continued in the line. When she came back around for seconds my companion actually removed the desserts to keep her from getting any more and then she threw a fit and the head boss lady of the place said she could have some more. Afterward when everyone was clearing out the lady came back and sort of apologized but at the same time was trying to prove a point, that being that no one is her boss. She phrased it as "your not my mother or my father so you can't tell me what to do". Really he didn't tell her what to do he just refused to let her have more but there was no point in arguing with her. My companion actually ignored her and so she tried to speak to him through me kind of, it was really awkward and I wanted to tell the lady she is a brat and needs to grow up, but instead I just said "I understand perfectly well that I'm not your mother or father." Then I thought to myself that I was extremely glad that I wasn't her mother or father. But also thinking that perhaps if I had raised this person then hopefully they wouldn't be the way they are. I don't know if I'm coming off as a horrible person in this e-mail for criticizing the homeless but I'm just saying that being around so many of these people you can usually trace their problems to uncorrected behaviors from childhood. It builds my faith that children are supposed to be raised by a mother and a father in a loving environment that teaches them the proper way to live and associate with others. It also makes me extremely grateful that I was blessed to be raised in such and environment.

Sincerely Elder F. Miller

Hello Everyone,

Our week was pretty busy. We had something out of the ordinary and big just about every day. From Monday night through Tuesday we had exchanges with some other missionaries which actually didn't feel a whole lot like exchanges because both set's of us ended up working together to help a less active man in our ward with moving a bunch of furniture and things out of his house. That took a few hours and then the rest of the day was spent in the far reaches of the other companionships area. They cover a string of little towns in what's known as the San Lorenzo Valley and then they also cover a branch called the Alma branch which is north on Highway 17. There isn't much going on in the Alma branch and so the missionaries only devote one day a week to working in that area since it is so far removed from the normal beaten path. I happened to be with them on that day. It wasn't bad. We tried to visit a bunch of potential investigators and less active members and then we finally had dinner with their Branch Mission Leader and his family who are awesome. The Brother showed me his prize rock candy crystal which was huge. Seemed like a neat little project to have going without having to devote really all too much time to it. You just let the sugar grow on the string and check it for months until you get a good sized specimen.

Wednesday didn't work out as we planned cause we had a bunch of appointments bail on us, but we had a member who just happened to need help moving stuff out of his storage locker. It was no coincidence that he needed our help exactly when we were left wondering what to do. It wasn't a miracle either though; that guy just always needs
help. He was moving his stuff from his storage locker into a much smaller storage locker and so a bunch of the stuff he needed to have taken to his tiny apartment. We were actually a little reluctant to try and move his stuff cause we didn't want the risk that comes from loading items into our new car. We were pushing it when his old heavy tv was crammed into the back seat and close to leaning against the window. Had we gone over any major bumps recklessly there's no telling the kind of damage that could have been done. But we helped him move what things we could and then we were off to some other appointments. That night we met with members of the stake presidency and our mission president as some new protocols are being put in place to try and help investigators who accept baptismal invitations into become better welcomed by the ward members. It's a whole phone texting chain that will result in assignments being given to members of the ward to go and welcome the investigator to church or activities or what have you. I haven't seen it in action yet but I'm skeptical as to how the average investigator will feel having even more strange people standing on their doorstep. Ideally we invite investigators to be baptized the very first time we teach them, and usually it's more of a conceptual baptismal invitation. In my experience a solid baptismal date acceptance right off the bat isn't common at all. Primarily we'll be dealing with people who agree with the idea of baptism but won't be fully committed to it until much later down the line. So I'm afraid the new plan may scare more people off. But I'm often wrong and I hope I am this time.

On Thursday we had Zone Conference which was great. We watched this wonderful talk in the spirit of Easter given on the subject of mercy and it was really insightful and funny. My least favorite part of zone conference was the lecture on proper dinner etiquette. I think I'm mostly a pleasant dinner guest, no major flaws to be done away with. The only things that came up that I think I can improve on are things that don't make any sense to me and therefore I don't want to improve on them. The main one is concerning the consumption of bread. They said that it is to be broken off bit by bit and if you're using butter then to slather it on an individual basis. Considering my love for bread, this particular rule would probably prolong our dinner visits by up to an hour, and no one wants us sitting at their table for that long. Unless the purpose of the rule is to keep people like me from eating too much bread. If that's the case then I REALLY don't like this rule. Anyway, after zone conference we actually drove to my old area in Redwood City because a missionary in my zone that we had driven up needed to go and pick up some shoes from another elder now serving there. It killed our day. I don't know why but sitting in meetings and driving a bunch just wipe me out. My companion as well. That night we helped set up for an activity that was being put on by our Single Adult Branch.

The activity took place on Friday evening and was essentially a walk through the plan of salvation. We started off with a plane ride. The hallway was decorated to look like the inside of a passenger jet with black plastic to cover up the brick walls and little oval windows cut out of blue construction paper. Seats lined the walls and our Branch Mission Leader was the pilot. A simulated crash was made by flickering the lights and banging on the walls and doors and then my companion and I dressed in white as angels bearing flashlights guided the deceased first to the spirit world and then through each kingdom of heaven. At each destination they learned more about the station and were left to ponder what it would be like to remain eternally in each place. The lowest kingdom was a dark room with only glow in the dark stars all around it and with a heater in it to make it a little uncomfortably stuffy in there amongst the 30 people crammed in. The middle kingdom was the relief society room which was nice and spacious and had some good plants but kind of plain and boring. And then the chapel was the highest or Celestial kingdom and it was brightly lit with pleasant music and a family from the Santa Cruz ward sitting on the stand just looking good. We had the father stand and bear his testimony on how this kingdom was the best and only place where families can be together forever. And then from there we went to heaven on earth, the kitchen, for refreshments of root beer floats and cookies. It was really great and such an eye opener for some people to get to physically kind of tour and somewhat feel on a more real level what it's going to be like.

On Saturday there was an emergency preparedness fair that we volunteered to go to and greet people and answer questions if anyone had them. It was small and not well attended but has been very successful in years past supposedly. There was a bread making class in the kitchen which we hit up often to get some good bread and there was a lady doing "Cave Man BBQ" which was just cooking chicken on top of charcoal in a pit in the ground. It was super simple but tasty.

And then yesterday I gave a talk in church. No topic was assigned cause it was assumed that I'd just talk about missionary work. Not that I didn't want to talk on missionary work it's just that I didn't want to go at it without a new or good angle to come from. So I infused service in there. That is one aspect of missionary work and so I just kind of focused my subject to that and it was okay. Super unresponsive crowd in the Singles Branch, made me very nervous while giving my talk, especially since I had just written it that morning and didn't feel sufficiently prepared.

Then last night we finally got around to performing with the stake choir as they were joined by the BYU-Idaho Sinfonietta. A bunch of string instrumentalists came and made us sound good. We rehearsed right after church and then had dinner provided by a lady in the stake and then we performed. We were expecting more people to show up but it was still a fine turn out. Our music was called or by Faure, I'm not really sure. It included pieces called Agnus Dei, Libera Me, and Sanctus. We also did a song by Vivaldi called "All Earth Rejoice". The most of our songs were in Latin and fun to sing though. And there were a few soloists, one of them in our ward and a member of the mission presidency. He has a killer baritone voice and stole much of the show. Then there was a soprano who was really good as well. But perhaps the most exciting thing for some people was the fact that Steve Young and his family were in the audience. I guess he is really good friends with the bishop of the ward that shares the building with us and so he came for the stake choir performance. He was surrounded at the end of the show and I didn't attempt to talk to him. Perhaps a cooler statement is that Steve Young applauded my singing performance. I guess it would be more amazing if he complimented my football skills, but that's never going to happen.

So that was my week for the most part. We are doing well and having fun. We have the same guy that really wants to be baptized but he has been too busy with work to meet with us. On Sunday we were able to set up an appointment with him for tonight, so we can better assess how long it's going to be before he's baptized. There was also this whole family that came on Easter Sunday that are good friends with many members in the ward and we are hoping to get to teach them soon. It seems likely that we'll get to eventually so it's just a matter of sooner or later.

I pray that everyone is doing well.

Sincerely, Elder F. Miller

**This was Fletcher's email from April 9th**

Hello Everyone,

This past week was great. It had a good start to it that is for sure. Coming out of conference we were able to visit the Oakland Temple and that was again a wonderful experience. Going only once every 6 months though is not enough cause you forget everything between visits. Once again we drove up in a small 5 passenger car with four missionaries and a driver. We met up at a church building and were kind of early before our ride came and there was a basketball hoop and we just happened to have a basketball in our trunk so we shot some hoops. I also had a frisbee and it was our preparation day so it was perfectly alright to do but we were just in our suits and it was a warm day so that made the first part of the car ride pretty uncomfortable for me until I got cooled down.

On Wednesday I was on exchanges with my district leader and that was fine. This was the first time I got to drive our new car all day. It was alright. I actually always don't like how soft the acceleration pedal is on new cars, much too sensitive. But I managed not to wreck it and so the day was successful. We walked along a popular beach strolling path called West Cliff and were passing out cards and inviting people to things. We have a couple of events coming up that we were also passing out fliers for to switch things up and not just pass out mormon.org cards or the normal missionary items. At first I tried passing out some fliers to people for this concert that BYU Idaho students are coming to perform along with the stake choir but lots of the people we were talking to were only visitors to the area and so weren't interested in something local going on that they wouldn't be around for. I was telling my companion for the day that these fliers were useless. I approached an older looking guy and figured the probability of him being savvy with the internet was low and so my mormon.org card wouldn't be much use and so I gave the concert flier another try and the mans reaction was kind of neat. As I turned about the walk alongside him and introduce the flier I was holding his initial instinct was to wave off anything that a missionary was offering him, so his action was to kind of hold up his hand like "save it" but my words were just "hey, here's a flier for a free concert you're invited to attend" so as he actually processed what I had said he turned his barrier of a hand into an upturned "gimme gimme" motion and he was genuinely grateful at the invitation and took the flier with interest. So that was pretty cool just to see a different reaction come from an invitation that I thought was useless. I'm not sure there is really lesson in this. In reality we have been taught that we should never change or lessen our message just to appeal to a wider audience. I think it was one of the prophets on his mission he found that as he just taught the Atonement and left the Restoration part of the message out of it than more people would listen to him but that is a sacrifice that isn't worth it. I don't think the concert invite was a cop out though. It's just a different invitation, the hopes being that the man will come to the church building and that step will possibly lead to many more in coming to know more about the gospel.

Anyway, I think on Friday we visited an inactive man who had stopped us in a parking lot and told us he was an inactive member. He told us we were welcome to come over to his place which was cool but he figured that we'd want to come over not to teach him, but to check out his pinball machine. I have to admit I was intrigued at the thought of a pinball machine free to use. So we went over and got him sharing his life story over a couple rounds of pinball and then we shared an Easter message with him and invited him back to church. We are supposed to help him move some of his stuff tomorrow so hopefully we can continue meeting with him and serving him however and it will lead to him trusting the church again.

Yesterday we had a great day at church. We got out of having to give talks for another week since our Branch mission leader wanted to speak in our place alongside his sister who is leaving on her mission in a short while. There was a non member family at church who were really nice and maybe we'll be able to teach at some point. And a few less actives came as well. We had dinner with a couple of families who live up at the college and that was fun. And afterward we drove up to the little town of Davenport to try and find a less active lady but we asked the residents and they said she had moved. Kind of a fruitless long drive but not so bad.

That has been my week. Thanks for reading.

Sincerely, Elder F. Miller

Hi Everybody,

This past week was okay. Obviously the most exciting thing was getting to watch General Conference. I'm not sure if I already mentioned this in a previous e-mail but we met with an older active couple who are extremely intelligent people and we were just talking about Conference and how our Prophet and Apostles speak to us and we asked their opinion of conference expecting the normal consent that it is a great thing to behold, but they responded that they felt that conference was "for the lowest common denominator." I think I would agree that General Conference is pretty basic in it's teachings. The doctrine shared is never exactly earth shattering but it teaches simple truths and insights that everyone can benefit from listening to. Perhaps it's not bad for this couple to think this way of General Conference, I'm pretty sure they still listen to the talks even though they don't feel like they learn much, they just feel like they learn much more from their own personal study. It rather seems like they are on another field of understanding. They have the basics down and are working towards exaltation on an advanced curriculum level. At first I kind of considered their opinion towards conference a bad attitude but they still watch it, just not for enlightenment so much as to feel the spirit and contemplate things that they do still wonder about.

At General Conference we had a goal to get two less active members to view conference and two non-members to watch it. We only got one non-member to watch that we know of and we weren't sure who else in the less active category we could get to come. Randomly on Sunday for the second session that day a lady just showed up. She said that she had been baptized a few years ago but had been moving around and hadn't been to church for a long time. She stayed for a lunch pot luck put on by the singles branch and then stayed and watched the session. What was really weird about it is that we tried to find her church records in the ward and she was mentioning that they may have been removed. So actually we're not sure if she would have counted as a non-member or a less active. We didn't count her in our goal cause it wasn't by anything we did that she came but it's almost like our goal was fulfilled by the hand of the Lord anyway. But I really loved conference. I took furious notes summarizing everything every speaker said. The problem with me is that when I just listen to conference I enjoy it but never am able to recall what the talks were about afterwards and then if I take notes I am not paying full attention and so I can't recall what the talks were about even worse. Theoretically I have those notes to refer back to and spark my memory but in reality I don't get around to checking back on them very often. Just today we had a District Meeting and asked everyone to stand up and just share a part of conference that they really liked and I had one in mind that someone else used so I tried to think of another talk but just couldn't come up with one. One of my favorites was the one by Elder Hallstrom I think his name was and it was just really meaningful to us as missionaries. It went into the difference between the church and the gospel. People who are active in the church aren't necessarily active in the gospel or vice versa. We are making a big effort to work with inactive people and it's clear that the reason they no longer come to church is that they never had the full conversion of being active in both the church and the gospel. And then it also makes a good case for missionaries teaching active members as well. Some people may go through the motions of going to church and participating in their calling but not actually practice the principles of the gospel. Some times it's astounding to talk to some inactive members and find that they used to serve as relief society presidency 1st counselor or something else that would indicate that they were pretty solid in the church, and perhaps they were but not in the gospel.

Then Elder Holland gave another phenomenal talk. "Downing a quart of pickle juice every time some one else has a happy moment." Enviousness, no thank you. So yeah, conference was fantastic. We had a less active man that we have been working with and seen amazing improvements in come to three sessions and watch another one at his home. He's just throwing himself back into church, volunteering to do stuff and showing up for all the activities, it is really inspiring to see.

Tomorrow we are supposed to go visit the Oakland Temple, as we do around General Conference time. We still haven't found a ride that can take us which is not good but hopefully we'll find someone. I recognized a little while ago that I have never really studied or even read much from the Doctrine and Covenants and so I found that if I read one section a day I would finish about the same time as my mission does. I'm already behind a little but that's because it's kind of lame to just read one section a day so I've been storing them up so as to spend a little more time on a few sections at a time. It's been good. Just little things that I never picked up on before through hearing the stories told and not reading them personally.

Sunday after conference we went and visited a less active man and his non-member wife who we had never met before. He suffers from some pretty serious medical problems and only has one leg having lost the other one to gangrene recently. It was kind of a sight to knock on the door and then wait for about 2 minutes not knowing if they heard us. Then the door opened and I saw that the man was in a wheelchair and then a dog came out to greet us and then I noticed that the dog was missing a leg as well. The man invited us in, I may have been a little apprehensive to enter a house where it seemed the price of entry might cost me a leg. We met his wife though and she was intact so I calmed down. They were really nice. They have a gated driveway, the pass code for which some members gave us, so we weren't sure how they react to strangers seeing as they probably don't get them visiting often but they were pleased to see us. Just a nice old couple happy to talk about their kids and lives. We had heard that the wife was interested in doing some family history work so we introduced the idea of having the senior couple missionaries who specialize in that field over to meet with them and they were all up for that as well.

I guess that has been my week for the most part. Our only progressing investigator has started working a lot and doesn't have time to meet with us now. We thought it was bad when he was just a surfer bum living in his car but at least then he had plenty of time to meet with us and we could teach him. But as we motivated him to get his life together he has found two jobs and is looking to get an apartment and has no time for us. I'm sure we'll eventually get to work more with him though.

I hope you all enjoyed conference as well and have a good new week.

Sincerely, Elder F. Miller

Hello Everyone,

I was actually just perusing the updated lds.org website and I think it's awesome that it let's you log on and check out an online ward directory. Unfortunately I didn't recognize most people in the ward so I'll have a lot of greeting to do when I get back to the Maplewood ward I guess. This past week had some great parts to it. Foremost of which (I hope this doesn't unveil my mixed up priorities but,) we got a new car. My current companion has been vying for a new car for quite some time now, and not just any new car it is a brand new Chevy Cruze. I think my companion would have gotten the car no matter what cause he was pretty much the only missionary aware of it's coming and bothered to pester our Vehicle Coordinator for it. The fact that we serve in Santa Cruz makes it way cooler that we have a car called the Cruze however. It's pretty nice. I've noticed there isn't as much leg room as in the Malibu we had but the turning radius is much better and that is a trade that I am fine with since mission rules state that the passenger must exit the vehicle and signal the driver whenever the car is backing out. Better turning radius means that I don't have to get out of the car in the rain and look like a dork as often. It's a shorter car but the trunk space is surprisingly good. Upon inspection our district leader said in appreciation "Wow, you could probably fit four dead bodies in here." I'd say two living bodies though cause four would be uncomfortable if you could feel it.

New car aside the week was good. We have an investigator that is progressing nicely. He has a strong testimony of the Book of Mormon and that is really all it takes. He knows that it is true and whenever he comes to us with concerns, we can give him answers and they are true but he's never convinced until he studies it out himself and finds his own answer through the Book of Mormon. At first it seemed like it would be no problem to get this man to the waters of baptism and then we met with him some more and he seemed less certain on some things. The next time we saw him he said, "I know that I want to be baptized and soon." We asked how he had come to this decision so assuredly and he just said that he was reading in the Book of Mormon and found a section talking about the importance of baptism and it moved him.

On Sunday we managed to make it over to San Jose for the departing missionary fireside. Our investigator made us really late but it was great to get to go and see the finishing missionaries bear their testimonies and also the testimonies of some very strong recent converts and hear the beautiful music we could sing all together. The investigator we brought tends to be very open and we accidentally introduced him to Sister Watkins, the wife of our Mission President, and this resulted in Sister Watkins being stuck listening to our investigators life story for 20 minutes. He's a talker alright. We also were able to bring with us a less active member who we have been meeting with and a guy in the Singles Branch who hasn't made up his mind about whether to serve a mission or not. He'd make a great missionary but I think all the pressure from church members is having the opposite affect on him, causing him to push back.

Today was transfer day and both of the district leaders in the Santa Cruz zone were switched up. My new district leader is an Elder that I've seen around but never gotten to know like at all so it will be great to get to know him better.

On Thursday we were able to go and do Habitat for Humanity again and it was lots of fun. It's a good work out and also kind of relaxing to pound some nails into a floor. It's really neat to see the construction at like week intervals and notice slight changes and try and envision what the final product will look like. I guess I should probably say something to that effect about my investigators as well. It's neat to see them make changes over time and look forward to the growth that they will make in their knowledge and understanding.

We were also able to do some service at a soup kitchen that we go to every week but this time we got a less active member that we have been working with to come along, actually he volunteered and invited his girlfriend and roommate to come and the Elders Quorum President came along as well. Some of the other volunteers seemed a little unsure, like the Mormons were taking over their Catholic Soup Kitchen, but most of them are super friendly. Actually there are quite a few UCSC students at the soup kitchen and a few visits ago my companion got talking to one of them and they were interested in all the same stuff. Japanese culture, anime, math, D&D, you know, nerd stuff. But she is a poor college student and so welcomed the invitation to any activities we might host that involve a free meal or refreshment and we got her to come to an ice cream social that the single adult branch held and it was great. We couldn't stay but for 10 minutes cause it went past our curfew but we heard that she had a great time and we were very excited about that. Then we are planning another activity that will take people on a tour of their own death, but in delicate terms, fictitiously put on as a plane ride in the chapel that crashes. It should be fun, my companion and I will act as post mortal guides, showing the "deceased" through the plan of salvation.

That's about it for me. I hope you all are doing well and enjoying the times.

Sincerely, Elder F. Miller

Hi Everybody,

Let's see...what has been going on? Well last Monday we had a Zone activity and were able to meet up with all the missionaries around and just hang out on the beach. It was orchestrated alright. Some missionaries brought a charcoal grill, others brought some fruit, we were in charge of drinks which we did a good job of and I did recognize that cups would be an issue and so I suggested to my companion that we just get a couple boxes of Capri Sun cause they come individually ready to drink. I don't think he understood my reasoning and got one box of those and then a big jug of fruit punch. I think he thought I was just trying to be cheap but that was only half of my reasoning. Lo and behold at the beach everyone was thirsty and the capri suns were all taken and the fruit punch was untouched for want of cups until I cut the top off my capri sun pouch and used it like a cup and a couple of other missionaries followed. I was pretty proud of myself and then realized that I am definitely my fathers son.(which I was still proud of) But yeah, it was nice to be at the beach, no where near the water, but on sand and getting to toss a frisbee and a football around. The senior couple brought all the expensive food, namely the hot dogs and burgers and so it was fun. Also the senior couple had a couple of their grandkids(returned missionaries) with them so it added to the numbers and made it a more legitimate party.

Let's see, this week as goals all of the companionships had goals to get a Perfect Week which is defined as teaching 20 lessons and contacting 140 people. We'd been doing about that on lessons but our street contacting number has been pretty low the past few weeks and so we had to focus in on that. In the end we were able to make it with a little additional trips downtown passing out mormon.org cards to the hordes of weekend shoppers.

It rained all this past week and was a little miserable. Made me so glad that we have a car. And I'm not sure I shared this yet but my companion even before he was here had been buttering up our vehicle coordinator cause he had heard that there was a brand new car coming in to the mission and my companion really wanted it. The car just so happens to be a new Chevy Cruze. So when my companion came to Santa Cruz he knew he now had an even more compelling case for getting the car. There is only going to be one Chevy Cruze in the mission so it is only right that it ends up in Santa Cruz. We had it semi-confirmed that my companions schemes have worked and that when the car does get here we'll be the ones to get it. It just worked out perfectly that our car is about ready to be retired.

Anyway, the miracle of this week is that we were able to get a new investigator. It's not exactly the most magical of cases. He is a guy who has been coming to church every now and again and everyone assumed he was a member but technically he had his membership removed cause his family laid on a lot of pressure after he was baptized but now he wants back in the church. For us he is technically a new investigator and if we baptize him he'll count. So like I was saying it's not the most romantic of missionary tales but still a soul is a soul to our Heavenly Father and the worth of which is great. So that was pretty neat. We just set up a lesson with him and it was obvious that he was kind of lacking on fully understanding the gospel so we were just going to start meeting with him to help him learn more but now we have a new investigator who will likely get baptized. He's a nice guy though a little weird and also homeless. He lives out of his truck which he likes cause he is dedicated to surfing and so likes to just sleep right by the ocean and when the surf is good he goes for it. He's at least got a job and is working on getting another part time job.

In other news, well there is really not too much else going on. We are still trying to just teach a bunch. Visiting less active members has proven really good. We started teaching the grandson of a lady that is semi-active and she started coming more and we hope that the Grandson will gain a worthwhile interest. He is only 11 and so it's not very likely that he'll progress much without the guidance of his athiest father or alcoholic mother. The mother we counted as a new investigator but haven't been able to meet with her again yet. She had investigated the church once but was more doubtful than her parents and siblings and so didn't join with them. Really she just feels like she has to know a lot more and so maybe we can answer most of her questions and get her interested again. But often times it will come to a point where they start asking questions that really don't matter and sometimes we can't even answer them. Eventually it becomes a kind of stalling method and then it just comes down to whether or not they can get an answer for themselves about the Book of Mormon and just accept that no one knows everything but that doesn't mean that we don't know enough.

This past week we gave a lot of blessings to ladies. We have made it a point of trying to visit single sisters (generally older) who don't normally get the missionaries visiting often because we have the rule that we have to have an adult male accompany us. But we have been getting guys to come with us and so it's been great to get to know all the old gals in the ward better. And then they inevitably take advantage of the opportunity of having the priesthood in their homes again to get a blessing. Really this just affirms to me the importance of home teaching. It is a shame that home teaching is often not done. I mean I know why, I was a horrible home teacher before my mission. I can only promise that I'll do better when I return. Maybe I shouldn't put this in print though cause my future elders quorum president will have something to hold against me. But seriously, it's nice to visit these ladies and help in any way we can.

This is the last week of the transfer and one of the missionaries in the neighboring ward is going home so it will be sad to see him leave cause he's a great guy. And then we have conference coming up which is exciting. Since it is really close to transfers though we have put our corresponding temple trip back a couple weeks so we will go after transfers to avoid a lot of confusion. So I'm looking forward to General conference and then going to the Temple again. It feels like it's been way more than 6 months since the last time we went.

I hope you all have a great week.

Sincerely, Elder Miller