Greetings From San Jose

Hello Everyone,

Well this past week has kind of floated on by. Normally the first week in a new area feels like it's super slow as you're trying to learn a bunch of stuff and you just don't know anything. But there was a baptism to plan for and we cover a ward and a branch so we stayed pretty busy and my mind had no time to think about how long it's been since I got here. The first night on Tuesday I got to attend a meeting with the leaders in the YSA Ocean Branch and discuss how to advance missionary work. We have a brand new Branch mission leader who just returned from his mission in New Jersey I think and he is still very much invested in the work. Still in missionary mode and really gung ho. It's pretty great but at the same time he's on a bit of a different plane. It's apparent that they do things a bit differently in New Jersey than we do here. Nothing bad but he thinks of things that we aren't accustomed to. He brings a whole new view to things so I think we have everything covered and it will really be good for this area but at the same time we may end up disagreeing quite a bit which won't be good. We'll have to see what happens in the future. Anyway, there is a huge surfer community here. My first night we had dinner with an older couple and the husband had just gotten back from surfing. It's not too strange I guess but it seems like most of the avid surfers are all older guys. They seem to be in pretty great shape so there must be something to it. I just pictured the average surfer bum to be younger guys but I guess they must have jobs or school in the winter and then they must hit the beach hard in the summer perhaps.

Anyway on Wednesday we got to teach a young man who was to be re-baptized on Sunday. He was baptized in the Philippines when he was younger but his records can't be found so we got to teach him and prepare him to be baptized again and take careful record of the event this time. That night we went out with members from the YSA Branch cause once a month all head out to visit less active members and just check up on them. I went with one of the Presidency counselors and we had a good time. He knew it was my second day so made sure to kind of familiarize me with the area. He's lived here a long time and so knew what streets to teach me and sites to see. We visited a couple of people and then we all met up at an ice cream place and all got treated to ice cream. It was a good night. One of the people we visited was actually a lady and her non-member husband. As we were leaving the member driving me around told me that the non-member was a really great guy but has just never cared for religion, said that tennis was his religion. And I was like "hey, I like to play tennis." So it would be neat if I could connect with this man through tennis. Challenge him to a game some time. Except he'd probably lose respect for the church when he beats too easily. I'm probably terribly rusty now and singles I was never very adept at.

On Thursday we had District meeting and I got to meet the rest of my district. We have a very jovial guy from Samoa who I'm looking forward to playing volleyball with cause he is supposed to be really good, and then we have the usual couple of Utahans, my companion and another, our district leader is from Arizona and his companion is from Texas most recently I think. My companion goes home in one transfer and our district leader goes home in 2 transfers, the missionary from Ogden is a transfer ahead of me and then the other two are relatively young I guess. It should be interesting how the next couple of transfers pan out for our zone cause our zone leader goes home next transfer as well. In fact about 20 missionaries are completing their missions and going home at the end of this transfer. Lots of changes are going to be made I take it. We had to take our car in to get new tires and an oil change which left us a little stranded for a while but that night we had dinner with a neat family. I guess this brother is way knowledgeable about cars and our mission president happens to love cars as well and so apparently this member is on good terms with our mission president and our president will call this member every now and again just to talk about cars and which ones are best to buy and whatnot. And then they are family friends with a family from my last ward so it was neat to make that connection as well.

On Friday we had our baptismal candidate interviewed by our district leader and he was giving the green light. All set to go. Then we were kind of behind on setting things up for the baptismal program so we spent a while calling and visiting people to help out with the program.

Finally yesterday was long. We have our Santa Cruz ward that starts at 11:30 and then we transitioned into the branch for their Sunday school. The wards Sunday school overlaps with the Branchs' Elders quorum now that the new year has begun and the Branch works it's meetings in reverse of the normal way. So they have priesthood and relief society first cause the building doesn't have a free room big enough for them all to start off with. So it seems like I may be missing a lot of Priesthood lessons this year. Sacrament meeting for the branch was held in the Relief society room and we kept ducking out to check how the water was filling up in the baptismal font. After the meeting we had a Break the Fast and ate some wonderful food and then broke everything down and set up in the chapel for the baptism. It went well and our branch mission leader baptized the young man. It was great. The missionary that was here before me was able to come and see the finish to what was mostly his work, I just stepped in at the last second. He is now companions with one of my former companions, Elder Maughan so it was good to catch up with him. So we were at the church from 11:00 to about 6:00pm. Seven hours is perhaps the longest I've ever stayed at church. It was just long cause of the additional break the fast and the baptism it will normally only be five hours which sounds like it won't be too harsh.

Today I'm looking forward to playing some volleyball or basketball or something with my new zone and also perhaps trying to scour the town looking for a cheaper place to do laundry. Cause after paying about $2.25 in my last area I don't want to jump to $3.50 without a fight. There has got to be a cheaper place than our apartments one. It's a little more work to haul our laundry someplace else but I think it will be worth it to find a cheaper place. Anyway, that's my exciting life. I hope that you are all having a wonderful new year and enjoying whatever blessings we have.

Sincerely, Elder Miller