Greetings From San Jose

Hi Everybody,

This past week was okay. Obviously the most exciting thing was getting to watch General Conference. I'm not sure if I already mentioned this in a previous e-mail but we met with an older active couple who are extremely intelligent people and we were just talking about Conference and how our Prophet and Apostles speak to us and we asked their opinion of conference expecting the normal consent that it is a great thing to behold, but they responded that they felt that conference was "for the lowest common denominator." I think I would agree that General Conference is pretty basic in it's teachings. The doctrine shared is never exactly earth shattering but it teaches simple truths and insights that everyone can benefit from listening to. Perhaps it's not bad for this couple to think this way of General Conference, I'm pretty sure they still listen to the talks even though they don't feel like they learn much, they just feel like they learn much more from their own personal study. It rather seems like they are on another field of understanding. They have the basics down and are working towards exaltation on an advanced curriculum level. At first I kind of considered their opinion towards conference a bad attitude but they still watch it, just not for enlightenment so much as to feel the spirit and contemplate things that they do still wonder about.

At General Conference we had a goal to get two less active members to view conference and two non-members to watch it. We only got one non-member to watch that we know of and we weren't sure who else in the less active category we could get to come. Randomly on Sunday for the second session that day a lady just showed up. She said that she had been baptized a few years ago but had been moving around and hadn't been to church for a long time. She stayed for a lunch pot luck put on by the singles branch and then stayed and watched the session. What was really weird about it is that we tried to find her church records in the ward and she was mentioning that they may have been removed. So actually we're not sure if she would have counted as a non-member or a less active. We didn't count her in our goal cause it wasn't by anything we did that she came but it's almost like our goal was fulfilled by the hand of the Lord anyway. But I really loved conference. I took furious notes summarizing everything every speaker said. The problem with me is that when I just listen to conference I enjoy it but never am able to recall what the talks were about afterwards and then if I take notes I am not paying full attention and so I can't recall what the talks were about even worse. Theoretically I have those notes to refer back to and spark my memory but in reality I don't get around to checking back on them very often. Just today we had a District Meeting and asked everyone to stand up and just share a part of conference that they really liked and I had one in mind that someone else used so I tried to think of another talk but just couldn't come up with one. One of my favorites was the one by Elder Hallstrom I think his name was and it was just really meaningful to us as missionaries. It went into the difference between the church and the gospel. People who are active in the church aren't necessarily active in the gospel or vice versa. We are making a big effort to work with inactive people and it's clear that the reason they no longer come to church is that they never had the full conversion of being active in both the church and the gospel. And then it also makes a good case for missionaries teaching active members as well. Some people may go through the motions of going to church and participating in their calling but not actually practice the principles of the gospel. Some times it's astounding to talk to some inactive members and find that they used to serve as relief society presidency 1st counselor or something else that would indicate that they were pretty solid in the church, and perhaps they were but not in the gospel.

Then Elder Holland gave another phenomenal talk. "Downing a quart of pickle juice every time some one else has a happy moment." Enviousness, no thank you. So yeah, conference was fantastic. We had a less active man that we have been working with and seen amazing improvements in come to three sessions and watch another one at his home. He's just throwing himself back into church, volunteering to do stuff and showing up for all the activities, it is really inspiring to see.

Tomorrow we are supposed to go visit the Oakland Temple, as we do around General Conference time. We still haven't found a ride that can take us which is not good but hopefully we'll find someone. I recognized a little while ago that I have never really studied or even read much from the Doctrine and Covenants and so I found that if I read one section a day I would finish about the same time as my mission does. I'm already behind a little but that's because it's kind of lame to just read one section a day so I've been storing them up so as to spend a little more time on a few sections at a time. It's been good. Just little things that I never picked up on before through hearing the stories told and not reading them personally.

Sunday after conference we went and visited a less active man and his non-member wife who we had never met before. He suffers from some pretty serious medical problems and only has one leg having lost the other one to gangrene recently. It was kind of a sight to knock on the door and then wait for about 2 minutes not knowing if they heard us. Then the door opened and I saw that the man was in a wheelchair and then a dog came out to greet us and then I noticed that the dog was missing a leg as well. The man invited us in, I may have been a little apprehensive to enter a house where it seemed the price of entry might cost me a leg. We met his wife though and she was intact so I calmed down. They were really nice. They have a gated driveway, the pass code for which some members gave us, so we weren't sure how they react to strangers seeing as they probably don't get them visiting often but they were pleased to see us. Just a nice old couple happy to talk about their kids and lives. We had heard that the wife was interested in doing some family history work so we introduced the idea of having the senior couple missionaries who specialize in that field over to meet with them and they were all up for that as well.

I guess that has been my week for the most part. Our only progressing investigator has started working a lot and doesn't have time to meet with us now. We thought it was bad when he was just a surfer bum living in his car but at least then he had plenty of time to meet with us and we could teach him. But as we motivated him to get his life together he has found two jobs and is looking to get an apartment and has no time for us. I'm sure we'll eventually get to work more with him though.

I hope you all enjoyed conference as well and have a good new week.

Sincerely, Elder F. Miller