Greetings From San Jose

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