Greetings From San Jose

What's up everybody? Well this week was great. My new companion is set on just seeking out the less active members on our ward rosters and so we've had some pretty boring days of realizing that the ward rosters are kind of outdated. Many people don't live where the church thinks they do anymore. It's really sad when we don't find who we're looking for. Often times the new resident simply says that they've never heard of the person and so we have no way to further pursue them. When we report this back to the ward then their only option is basically to send the persons church records back to Salt Lake and say that the whereabouts are a mystery. I've heard that the Unknown file is getting mighty large. It's good for the ward to clear up some of these records though. Cause if we determine that many of these people don't live in the area anymore then that means the records can be sent off and the number of less actives in the area will decrease and so the activity rate in the stake will increase to a more accurate representation of what the membership is in this area. The members here say it time and again that Santa Cruz is a place that members come who want to hide from the church. I think the cause and effect related to that saying should be re-evaluated though. In some cases it's probably more that members come and then get caught up in the way Santa Cruz is and it becomes easy to stop going to church. But then the reasons that one might come to live in Santa Cruz probably would mostly indicate that they're influenced toward being less active to begin with. We had an interesting discussion about this when we ate lunch with our Branch President this past week. They are both from Utah originally but have been in California for a long while. They were actually debating the pros and cons of living in Utah. They ultimately plan on moving and they fear it might be to Utah. They used the word fear because they feel that Utah isn't exactly the bubble that everyone not from Utah thinks it is. In reality you end up with a large spectrum of members and so in Utah there isn't as definite a line drawn for Mormons as in other places. This was particularly discussed in terms of school aged kids and the peer pressure issue. When you're the only Mormon in school the expectations of others can kind of help you keep your standards. But when everyone is a baptized member but half of them don't follow church standards then it becomes harder to really define what a Mormon does and doesn't do. My companion backed this up saying that when he lived in South Dakota it was way easy to know who he was and what he stood for cause he was alone, and then he moved to Utah and it became harder since there are lots of Mormons there that seem to break the definition. I just found all this interesting especially since I haven't lived in Utah and so I was an outsider and one of those naive people who assumes that Utah is perfect. Anyway, sorry to bore you with things that you probably already recognized. We stopped by one name on our list that we didn't know and found the address to be in a 55 and older retirement mobile home community built around an old mill. There was a sign that read "Ye Old Mill" and it was pretty cool. The lady we visited was like 80 years old and her husband has never been baptized. She joined the church in Argentina while they lived down there and her husband was the financial officer for a company that was building Argentina's first highway system in the 60's I think they said. She said the missionaries knocked on the door and gave their approach in Spanish and she said to them they better try again in English or move along. And they were relieved to have found some Americans being two guys from Utah or Idaho or somewhere. Her husband was awesome. He came in and had this really deep voice like a radio announcer. The lady had recently had her hip replaced and neighbors kept bringing them food so they sent us off with like two boxes of cookies. They were super nice and we'll be sure to visit there again. She told us her husband is a devout Agnostic, which perhaps I don't know the full definition of the term but I thought it meant that the person is basically undecided as to whether they believe in God or not. It sounded funny to me that someone would claim to be devoutly uncertain. Anyway, I guess this lady was active up until about a year ago when perhaps she called it quits just due to medical ailments. So we're having some fun and a little success. More to follow I'm sure. Another inactive fellow that we have been meeting with has assumed that we mainly come over to play on his pinball machine. I can't lie and say that it isn't pretty awesome. So we teach a lesson and then don't want to disappoint him and so play a round or two with him. I view it as bonding time. President Hinckley said "Every new member (or returning member) needs 3 things,a friend," and then I forget the rest but I think he also mentioned something about a job and perhaps he mentioned that everyone needs a good pinball opponent as well. Well I'm out of time. Have a great week. Sincerely, Elder F. Miller