Greetings From San Jose

**This was Fletcher's email from April 9th**

Hello Everyone,

This past week was great. It had a good start to it that is for sure. Coming out of conference we were able to visit the Oakland Temple and that was again a wonderful experience. Going only once every 6 months though is not enough cause you forget everything between visits. Once again we drove up in a small 5 passenger car with four missionaries and a driver. We met up at a church building and were kind of early before our ride came and there was a basketball hoop and we just happened to have a basketball in our trunk so we shot some hoops. I also had a frisbee and it was our preparation day so it was perfectly alright to do but we were just in our suits and it was a warm day so that made the first part of the car ride pretty uncomfortable for me until I got cooled down.

On Wednesday I was on exchanges with my district leader and that was fine. This was the first time I got to drive our new car all day. It was alright. I actually always don't like how soft the acceleration pedal is on new cars, much too sensitive. But I managed not to wreck it and so the day was successful. We walked along a popular beach strolling path called West Cliff and were passing out cards and inviting people to things. We have a couple of events coming up that we were also passing out fliers for to switch things up and not just pass out mormon.org cards or the normal missionary items. At first I tried passing out some fliers to people for this concert that BYU Idaho students are coming to perform along with the stake choir but lots of the people we were talking to were only visitors to the area and so weren't interested in something local going on that they wouldn't be around for. I was telling my companion for the day that these fliers were useless. I approached an older looking guy and figured the probability of him being savvy with the internet was low and so my mormon.org card wouldn't be much use and so I gave the concert flier another try and the mans reaction was kind of neat. As I turned about the walk alongside him and introduce the flier I was holding his initial instinct was to wave off anything that a missionary was offering him, so his action was to kind of hold up his hand like "save it" but my words were just "hey, here's a flier for a free concert you're invited to attend" so as he actually processed what I had said he turned his barrier of a hand into an upturned "gimme gimme" motion and he was genuinely grateful at the invitation and took the flier with interest. So that was pretty cool just to see a different reaction come from an invitation that I thought was useless. I'm not sure there is really lesson in this. In reality we have been taught that we should never change or lessen our message just to appeal to a wider audience. I think it was one of the prophets on his mission he found that as he just taught the Atonement and left the Restoration part of the message out of it than more people would listen to him but that is a sacrifice that isn't worth it. I don't think the concert invite was a cop out though. It's just a different invitation, the hopes being that the man will come to the church building and that step will possibly lead to many more in coming to know more about the gospel.

Anyway, I think on Friday we visited an inactive man who had stopped us in a parking lot and told us he was an inactive member. He told us we were welcome to come over to his place which was cool but he figured that we'd want to come over not to teach him, but to check out his pinball machine. I have to admit I was intrigued at the thought of a pinball machine free to use. So we went over and got him sharing his life story over a couple rounds of pinball and then we shared an Easter message with him and invited him back to church. We are supposed to help him move some of his stuff tomorrow so hopefully we can continue meeting with him and serving him however and it will lead to him trusting the church again.

Yesterday we had a great day at church. We got out of having to give talks for another week since our Branch mission leader wanted to speak in our place alongside his sister who is leaving on her mission in a short while. There was a non member family at church who were really nice and maybe we'll be able to teach at some point. And a few less actives came as well. We had dinner with a couple of families who live up at the college and that was fun. And afterward we drove up to the little town of Davenport to try and find a less active lady but we asked the residents and they said she had moved. Kind of a fruitless long drive but not so bad.

That has been my week. Thanks for reading.

Sincerely, Elder F. Miller