Greetings From San Jose

Hello Everybody,

This week was pretty fantastic. We were prepared last Sunday and managed to corner a bunch of unsuspecting members and invite ourselves over to their houses so that we could share a message with them. Our missions goal every week is for every companionship to teach 20 lessons. That is the standard that we are supposed to aim to meet and up until this week I don't think I've ever done it. The key to doing it when you don't have very many non-members to teach is to teach a lot of members. So we set up a bunch of appointments beforehand and throughout the week it worked pretty well. Our total came out to 21 lessons, and not all with active members. You may ask yourself "what is the point of teaching members?" and that is a valid question. Most often we don't end up teaching something that they haven't already heard a billion times, but the value really comes from the spirit that is brought into the home and not so much the message that is shared. From doing this we had a couple of really great experiences. With one family we shared a message about eternal marriage and that was basically in order to fulfill an assignment we had received from our District meeting. We were supposed to teach that specific lesson and we just figured this was already a solid family so they don't need much and we have this lesson that we are supposed to essentially practice teaching. When we got into the lesson and then finished and asked what they felt about what we had shared they were really touched by the spirit and expressed much gratitude because they said what we had shared was a topic on which they had both been thinking about for a while. This is a couple who has been sealed in the Temple and are worthy of their covenants and so they weren't exactly any where near questioning their marriage or anything of the sort but rather they had just sort of forgotten the importance of what their being sealed in the Temple means. A topic that is only brought up specifically in church every so often and so allows time to just kind of fade from your memory. They just felt it was perfect to bring it up and turn their thoughts towards something that isn't always present in your mind every day. So that was just great to get to be a part of.

On Thursday we had a really busy day planned and it mostly worked out. Starting off we did service at the local soup kitchen and that was great. They let you take old donated pastries from starbucks as a breakfast and then put you to work chopping cauliflower and cutting up bread. One thing that entertains me every time I go to this soup kitchen, and perhaps it's just mean spirited, but there are yellow pieces of paper taped on all the entrance doors that warn the homeless people of the dangers of sleeping in dumpsters. I mean I guess I grew up with the stereotype of homeless people living in dumpsters but I had never really thought that it was so commonly practiced, not too mention prone to causing garbage truck related accidents. So maybe I'm just insensitive but I really want to grab one of those pieces of paper or get a picture. But it was great to prepare some of the food to be served out and then we stayed about for the lunch that they serve to all the volunteers. Split pea soup and salad. I got to talk with the director of the place, a very nice man. He learned that I was from Portland and so asked if I had seen a new tv show called Portlandia. I guess it's supposed to be pretty funny and in good humor. Everyone there who'd seen it said that the show could just as easily be hosted in Santa Cruz. Very similar cities they all agreed.

After the soup kitchen we had a lesson with a recent convert which went great, educating him on the responsibilities of the priesthood which he had received on Sunday and we were preparing him to pass the sacrament for the coming Sunday. Then we had a lesson with another recent convert and that went great as well. It is wonderful to see him doing so strong and eager to keep learning more and just soak up as much as he can. After this we were supposed to meet with a less active man and his family, a lesson that we had high hopes for since his wife and children aren't members. We had arranged to bring the primary president with us and win over the kids and the wife I guess but they called right before and said that he hadn't really checked with his wife and now the house was full for a girl scout activity that she was putting on so we'd have to reschedule for a later time. Bummer. But we got to try and contact some people on the street instead and that was alright and then we were headed off to dinner which was great. One of the daughters in the family we had dinner with had her boyfriend over as well and he was not a member and probably pretty resistant to any efforts to change that but we weren't very pushy and just got away with teaching an after dinner lesson to the family that was great. We have a neat lesson on faith and Lehi's vision in which we draw a picture of the tree of life and then scribble over it like it is obscured by a mist of darkness and then we know a trick to cause the mist to dissipate by passing a flame across the back of the piece of paper. It's pretty neat and gets peoples attention.

On Friday we were all set to do some more service but this time for a less active guy that we have been stopping by and visiting. He has this big old aquarium that was just extremely grimy and the sides were covered in algae and there was a dead algae eater in there and only one other fish that was alive. So we helped him siphon out the water with a garden hose and then clean it out. And then we got him to come along with us to teach a lesson to another member. It was really great.

So this week has been fun and we'll hopefully have another successful one to write about next week.

Sincerely, Elder F. Miller