Greetings From San Jose

Hello Everyone,

Our week was pretty great. After I wrote last week on Monday we had our normal preparation day and then we actually met with about our only investigator and the lesson went terribly. This is the former member surfer guy who lives out of his truck but then got a job and so we didn't see for a while but we finally met with again. He really wants to be baptized but the first time he was baptized he wasn't secure enough I guess cause he wigged out and allowed his parents and family to convince him to have his name removed from the church records. We met with him at the church building and about the first thing he said to start our lesson was "I think I'm going to grow some dreds." We were understandably confused by this. I probably should have just let it go but I couldn't resist the desire to hear his reasoning on this one. So I guess if I haven't already filled you in on his history then it's good to know that after he left the church for a while he joined up with the Rastafari and he still has a tendency to hold to their ways. But pretty much when I asked what his reason for wanting dreds was he said "cause I'm attracted to girls with dreds" Just to joke with him I pretended like I could only conclude from his statement "you want to grow dreds so you'll be attracted to yourself?" He thought that was pretty funny though I recognize it's not my best. Our lesson went downhill from there as one can probably imagine. More reasoning on his part for the dreds was that it fights "the system". He also said that a member had told him that generally it is encouraged for men in the church to be clean shaven. So he interpreted that as beards not being allowed so in order to express his rebellious attitude but still follow church council he would just grow dreds instead. I told him that I would much rather he grew a beard than dreds. Basically when we try to teach him he gets hung up on very trivial things and it makes it difficult to help him progress much. Also in that lesson he expressed how he "doesn't feel much of a connection with Monsoon", the whole proposition 8 thing still bothers him and we somehow got back on how it makes him sad that people call the holiday Easter instead of Resurrection Sunday because Easter is the name of a pagan god. Next lesson we will probably just attempt to be much more rigid and stern regarding what we'll talk about and be strict in sticking to the topic at hand. The last lesson was kind of my fault, my companion had already the resolve to stick to a single topic but the whole dreds thing piqued my interest and I just had to ask what the heck he was talking about. So while the lessons aren't going great I get a kick out of them and I really CAN see this guy getting baptized it will just take a while.

Other than that...we've also been visiting this less active man who most of the time when we try by he is pretty out of it. His liver is failing him and he won't be able to get a transplant so he knows that he doesn't have much time left and those thoughts must be weighing on him but also the drugs he has to take make him kind of incoherent so sometimes there isn't much point in talking to him. This week as we visited he was actually surprisingly lucid and up for a good conversation. The problem was that I was hit with one of those sleepy spells. Sitting there in his lazyboy just droopy eyed. At first you fight it and then eventually you just start to think to yourself, "eh, I won't miss anything." I started weighing the pros and cons in my head. "Well a nap would be awesome but would the embarrassment be too great?" I didn't fall asleep although I started leaning more towards the argument posed by the little nap devil on my shoulder. Had my brain been fully functioning then I probably would have recognized that even if I did try to fall asleep my companion wouldn't let me remain like that for long so it wouldn't be worth it.

I was with a missionary serving in Watsonville for a day, which is a predominantly spanish area and the missionary serves in the spanish program. I felt like I was back in Greenfield. We did service at a soup kitchen that they go to every week and it was alright. I handed out the fruit. First there were a bunch of mutant oranges (naranghas), those suckers were huge and I personally didn't think they looked all the great but to the people in line I think size means a lot. My companion for the day was in charge of desserts and at one point a very angry lady requested more and he refused to serve her more just cause it was the first round of serving and he was rationing them and she started raising her voice and then grabbed more cookies herself and continued in the line. When she came back around for seconds my companion actually removed the desserts to keep her from getting any more and then she threw a fit and the head boss lady of the place said she could have some more. Afterward when everyone was clearing out the lady came back and sort of apologized but at the same time was trying to prove a point, that being that no one is her boss. She phrased it as "your not my mother or my father so you can't tell me what to do". Really he didn't tell her what to do he just refused to let her have more but there was no point in arguing with her. My companion actually ignored her and so she tried to speak to him through me kind of, it was really awkward and I wanted to tell the lady she is a brat and needs to grow up, but instead I just said "I understand perfectly well that I'm not your mother or father." Then I thought to myself that I was extremely glad that I wasn't her mother or father. But also thinking that perhaps if I had raised this person then hopefully they wouldn't be the way they are. I don't know if I'm coming off as a horrible person in this e-mail for criticizing the homeless but I'm just saying that being around so many of these people you can usually trace their problems to uncorrected behaviors from childhood. It builds my faith that children are supposed to be raised by a mother and a father in a loving environment that teaches them the proper way to live and associate with others. It also makes me extremely grateful that I was blessed to be raised in such and environment.

Sincerely Elder F. Miller