Greetings From San Jose

Hello Everybody,

This past week was good. Still trying to understand how to navigate my area. We have this giant map on our wall that covers much of our area but the thing is it is oriented so that Northeast is up and that keeps throwing me off cause I keep assuming that up is North. It reminds me of those Ender's Game books where the little kids are playing war games in a zero gravity room and so in order to not get nauseated they designate each wall of the room as east, west, north, south, up, and down. But the directions are contrary to what they were used to outside the room so they have to force their minds to just accept it and then they no longer feel sick from lack of gravity. That was a long and perhaps confusing comparison but that's what I feel like. I have to force my mind to accept that the map we have is only accurate when I accept that north isn't up. Anyway, my first preparation day was okay. Our Zone is kind of small and spread out so the activities we used to do in my old zone aren't as successful here since we have no participation. Basically we have a few people who never feel like playing any sports or doing anything really which we had in our last zone but there it didn't make a difference cause we had people to replace them. Here if one person doesn't want to play then no one can really play. But that's just P-day and doesn't really matter I guess.

On Wednesday we had our Mission President come for an inspection of sorts. He really just wants to know where all the missionaries are staying and get to understand their areas a little better so that he can make better judgments when assigning missionaries to areas I guess. You may recall that I wrote about this similarly about a month ago I suspect. Cause President Watkins made a tour of my last zone in December I think and so Elder McKenzie and I had him at our old place in Redwood City. I think the plan was for President Watkins to tour the whole mission before Christmas, he made it to every zone except one, Santa Cruz. I was the only missionary transferred into Santa Cruz recently so I think I am the only missionary to have President Watkins visit twice. It's not really a bad thing I guess. But it is kind of stressful to find out that you mission president is visiting and then having to be a little worried about whether your bathroom is clean enough or if you'll make a good impression or not. But the meeting went well. President Watkins is very good at putting people at ease with his sense of humor and he is in no way judgmental or critical, or at least he has never been towards me. So it was a good visit. Actually it was my first opportunity to put my ELDER FLETCHER name tag to use and so I was wearing it when our President and our housing coordinator came. I was just thinking that President probably wouldn't even notice cause he has everyone's names memorized and knows us by face. So I was just seeing if I could get away with wearing it and not have him notice. What I didn't count on was that our housing coordinator would. He's a senior missionary and right when he came in he was double checking that he had his records correct. I saw him looking at his clipboard and saying "Are you guys on exchanges cause I have it here that Elder Reay and Elder F. Miller should be here, not Elder Fletcher?"
When he had said the first few words I slipped my name tag off and put on my real one. Our housing coordinator noticed though and so dropped his question, but our president who was inspecting our kitchen turned around to answer the question, saying "This IS Elder F. Miller of course." and then president made a show of naming all the Millers in the mission with their appropriate first initial. "C. Miller, P. Miller, F. Miller and Z. Miller." And then the subject changed. President just kind of looked around and said that everything was okay, not great but okay and he recognizes that all the stains in the carpet and scrapes on the vinyl and holes in the wall have been accumulated through years of missionaries staying here, but they'd be sending a carpet cleaner our way and expect us to clean some of those stains up even though we didn't necessarily put them there. President noticed my sewing machine that I put under my desk cause I still don't know how to use it and he asked about it. I imagine some missionaries have things they shouldn't and so have creative means for hiding them and I suspect that that is what President suspected of my sewing machine, that it was just a case with contraband cds in it or something. But it's just an old crummy sewing machine. Come to think of it, President probably thinks me more odd for having a sewing machine than if it were just inappropriate music.

We met with our ward missionaries on Wednesday night and discussed what we might do to draw some of our less active members and potential members. And we decided that we should throw a bonfire activity on a beach some where. So we really have no plans for it as of yet but on February 4th we have one scheduled. It's our job to go out and invite a ton of people and then we'll also share a lesson with everyone there I guess. I'm looking forward to it cause it should be fun, plus I haven't been on the beach yet so that should be cool.

This Thursday we have zone conference and there is a rumor that we are getting new cell phones. Which in a mission seems like bigger news than if President Monson were to be making a visit. I remember last year around this time we got our current cell phones and I think the phones before that were here much longer but they were more rugged.

Not much else going on for now. We have a bunch of great members that never fail to give us names of people that we can go visit. There seem to be quite a few part member families in the ward that we look forward to eventually working with. I'm sure missionaries have tried before but sometimes it's just a special message or right time that makes the difference. Many members talk about how Santa Cruz is a good place for members who don't want to be members anymore to come. There are a lot of less active members that seem to have moved here from Utah just to kind of disappear in the crowd. Hard to truly reach out to them but it's worth a try. We don't want to let anyone drift away without at least asking them if there is anything we can do to keep them coming or to help them. We don't find much success there but at least we know that these people are aware that we care about them. Thanks for reading my e-mails.

Sincerely, Elder F. Miller