Greetings From San Jose

Hello Everybody,

This week we had another zone conference which was fun kind of. The Zone conferences we have with our new Mission President was a bit different than the old ones we used to have. Our old mission President would always give us a bit of instruction and then have us go try it out by role playing a teaching scenario and teach other missionaries but the last zone conference we had was basically a long lecture. I'm not sure which I prefer. Most missionaries consider the role plays a little idiotic but recognize that they are helping us teach better and practice the new skills we've learned but still they aren't very enjoyable. So just being talked at for the whole time is a little lame cause we don't get to move for hours at a time but also nice that we don't have to teach people that already know it all. I'm not sure which type of zone conference I prefer yet.

Some exciting news that we got while we were at zone conference came from a new senior couple that just got called to serve in our mission. They are very experienced missionaries, this being the 4th mission they've served together and they have kind of a special assignment, that being they focus on setting up community service for all the missionaries. So they are going to be trying to get us missionaries out and about working with other people in the community to serve. I really like this idea. Essentially we hope to contact and find people to teach from the people that we are serving alongside. I think it's kind of brilliant in that we are going to be associating ourselves with people who are already demonstrating the same ideals that we find admirable. There are few things that missionaries can do that are actually productive between the hours of like 10:00 to 2:00 every day. Most people are working and we usually don't have lessons during that time so this is something that I am excited about. A good thing to do during a time of day that most missionaries really struggle to fill up on their planners.

Also at Zone conference we got new cell phones which we didn't open until afterward but I like them less than our old cell phones and so that' s not really exciting news. A big focus during zone conference was on goal setting though. That is a major part of missionary life that I never gave a second thought to back home. But there is a great quote in Preach My Gospel which I don't have memorized but essentially it says that "when goals are set productivity increases, when results are measured productivity accelerates." It's like a way of harnessing peoples own aggressiveness and pitting them against themselves. Anyway, we're trying to improve this area and help people out. It's slow going so far. There are a lot of inactive members that want to stay that way that it seems we've been wasting our time on. But we were also told at zone conference that we should be just as happy and excited to get a less active member to come back to church as we should be to have a convert baptism. Whether people making new covenants or people picking up their old covenants it is just as exciting and brings joy to our Heavenly Father.

I hope everyone has a great week.

Sincerely, Elder F. Miller