Greetings From San Jose

Hiya, Well my new companions name is Elder Hammond and he's from Pleasant Grove Utah. He's lived in a variety of places and I wouldn't call him the cookie cutter Mormon boy so it's annoying for him to have to introduce himself as from Pleasant Grove and just see everyones assumptions fulfilled. We had a good first week together. Did well. It's kind of neat how some of Elder Hammonds strengths are my weaknesses so we compliment the work in the area pretty well. Well actually he's just an all around great missionary so it might not be an equal relationship cause I'm not certain I'm offering much to the efforts that he's not already good at but still it's good to be working with him. About the most exciting thing we did this week was we were let into the houses of some less active and part member families. The one part member family that we visited we got talking to the wife who is a member outside for a while. We couldn't go in cause her husband wasn't home and so she walked her dog and we strolled along beside her. Very friendly, and then her husband came home and he's super nice as well. It was a hot day and so they invited us in at this time and offered us some water, thank goodness! And then we just heard all about them. It was a long visit, much longer than we are supposed to take but we were kind of trapped there, without objection, for a long time. The husband is into hunting and guns and manly stuff in general. Just in their little living room they have six motorcycles. A big old harley davidson sits against the wall and then against it lean a couple of dirt bikes, and there's a smaller couple in the corner and then a little kids one by the door as you walk in. At one point we were invited upstairs to check out a big three foot diameter saw mill blade that they had had painted with a snowy wood and deer scene by their neighbor. The blade was in the man cave room along with a huge book case full of ammunition and a gun safe. We got to see some of the guns that he has rebuilt and they were pretty cool. This all reminded me of that movie Tremors, with the character Burt who is a survivalist expert and his home is all protected and he's prepared for everything, everything except that is "darn underground monsters". We also managed to meet with a less active guy who speaks about no English. He gave us some cola and was very nice. My companion asked for his bible and just shared a scripture in Spanish with him and we couldn't exactly elaborate on it so just left it at that. It was an interesting encounter. I can only imagine he doesn't come to church just cause it's all in English and he'd have to travel down to Watsonville to go to a ward he can understand. My last companion called on Thursday I think it was. I was surprised sort of. We got a call from an Illinois number during a lesson so I didn't answer it but called back afterward and it was former Elder Miller. He was calling because he was wondering if he had left his underwear behind. When my new companion was unpacking his stuff he found the drawer full and I was wondering why my last companion left it. He was a very meticulous person so I assumed he hadn't merely forgotten it but had left it for some reason, but it turns out he just forgot about it. Overlooked the drawer I guess. I offered to mail it all to him but he said that he would buy new ones and he didn't want to continue the embarrassment by having his underwear mailed to him. So it's been a good week. I'm not sure what this week will be like but it should be better since we're doing some grocery shopping today and won't have to eat out as much. I didn't realize how understocked we were before I got my new companion. Sincerely, Elder F. Miller