Good Tidings of Good, Well we had a great week. Especially the weekend. On Saturday we joined along with the young men in the ward to do service for a less active lady who lives in the hilly part of Santa Cruz and she keeps a few horses. The duty was to tear out this cinder block retaining wall on one side of her small horse arena. The job was made pretty easy by the fact that the young mens president in the ward has his own construction company and brought along a little skid rider CAT thing that did all the hard work. By pressing down on the wall with the bucket of the CAT he collapsed it for us and then us and all the young men went to work with sledge hammers and busted up the cinder blocks a little more to be dumped at another members house. But the CAT would scoop up all the rubble and dump it in his hauling truck. So we just had to smash and shovel a bit. I'm not sure if they are going to replace the wall but he had us slope the wall of earth so that it would cause water to run off much easier and not collapse or avalanche down. I have like one particular spot in my back that is sore and I think it's from when I was using the pick ax to lever out the foundation of the wall that we had torn down. The base of it had stayed encased in the hillside a little bit so I had to dig behind it with the pick ax and wrench it out. Pretty efficient but tiring. We also that day had the opportunity to go to an Eagle Scout Court of Honor for the Stake Presidents son. We were invited cause they like us I guess and also there were supposed to be some non-members there for us to meet. The thing got started late and we figured we'd have to cut out early cause we had an appointment with an investigator the next hour. When we first showed up there was this older gentleman on the front row who called us over and then started asking us a bunch of questions saying that his wife was a member but he was not and he never got straight answers out of her and so he'd like to ask us about the church. I think his first question was to ask if the whole white shirt, dark pants, and tie ensemble was a uniform that we had to wear. Then he asked what the deal with tithing is, saying that his wife pays but she doesn't make any money, so I told him she must be donating 10% of his money, and then he asked us if Mormons don't believe in dancing. He was a pretty suspicious character so I asked for his name and he said he'd be reluctant to do that cause then we'd know that our whole discussion had been a ruse. Turns out he was the Stake Presidents father, who had been himself a stake president and a mission president over the Salt Lake City Mission. He was a super nice old guy and we go to sit by him. When the Eagles nest was called we weren't going to go up cause we knew we'd have to leave part way through, but they practically forced us up and it actually was no treat having to sit in the hot sun unprotected and no back rest, when before we had been standing under a shady tree. We ducked out early though and went to our appointment only to find our investigator wasn't home. We pretty much just have one investigator at this moment. The one I just spoke of above we have met with a number of times and her interest is slight but she reads from the Book of Mormon and agrees with what we say so we're still trying to figure her out. She missed our appointment cause she was in the hospital. Man, some guy just came up and started asking a bunch of questions and used up all my time talking to him. Have a good week everyone. Sincerely, Elder F. Miller

Hola Friends, Well this week was pretty fantastic. Quite well rounded which we are proud of. I've probably mentioned it too many times before but when we total our numbers at the end of the week, a goal for everyone is to strive to teach at least 20 lessons and contact 140 people. So we have done that quite a few times and the mystical romance of achieving such numbers has lost a bit of it's prestige. While we were preparing for a baptism this week we naturally cared a bit more about working with our investigator and making sure that everything was on track for that and took focus away from the every week goal. So we got our investigator baptized on Friday and then found ourselves on Sunday, the last day of the week and we needed to contact like 60 people and teach five more lessons. We went before church to Pacific avenue, where all the shops and Father's Day tourists were and we picked up 70 street contacts no problem and then miraculously throughout the day, even though we had church for 6 hours, we managed to teach 6 times. So we felt pretty accomplished to have gotten a baptism in the week and then, even though it DID distract from the rest of the week, not have it distract from the rest of the weeks goals. Anyway, I assume you all want more details about the baptism. It went well. We really rushed the investigative process on this one. When we first taught this gal she rejected our offer of a baptismal date because she had accepted them in the past and always bailed out at the last second. So at first it seemed like she wanted us to teach her slowly and make sure that she grasped everything before moving on. Leaving nothing to faith pretty much. She has definitely been the investigator with the most random questions. We taught her and got her a baptismal date and then upon meeting again she said she'd like an earlier date, which we didn't argue with. We let her pick her own date and it was June 15th. And so we baptized her. I did the honor and also spake on the gift of the Holy Ghost which she got on Sunday. She was 10 minutes late to the baptism and then on Sunday she didn't come to church due to allergies that she gets from peoples cologne and perfume. But we had her come after church to at least be confirmed and we gathered a group of fragrance free men (more commonly known as FFM's) and my companion confirmed her a member and gave her the Gift of the Holy Ghost. So it all worked out well. After I baptized her I tried to change out of my wet clothes and into my suit as fast as possible and try and beat her back into the room where the well wishers were waiting. All the baptisms I've been to the women always beat the guys in the changing game, unless the women try and blow dry their hair, then all bets are off. But I tried to go fast and I didn't even have a towel cause our investigator showed up unprepared and so I gave her mine. But she beat me. I got to the room a little winded and she was sitting there calmly beside her mother. Schucks! Next time maybe. Suits are very impractical, unlike their counterpart... jumpsuits, which are amazingly practical. Anyway, I recall being a little critical of the former baptisms to take place where the guys failed to pull the stopper and drain the water. Well I have to apologize for that cause I nearly did the same thing. You are just so excited about performing an ordinance that there is no room for concerns about unplugging the font to be lingering in your head. My companion reminded me to pull the plug before I got out luckily other wise I would have had to perform the equivalent of a circus act to get it out again. Today we plan to take a hike with some other Elders and there is supposed to be a bigfoot museum which I'm excited for, hopefully it's a quality fake sasquatch museum, I've been to some really lame fake sasquatch museums let me tell ya. In other news I received a letter from one Elder Wiederholt and in it was a picture of he with a former companion of mine. I had written Shain about my companion cause he's serving in an area where my companion used to live. And then they ran into each other at a stake priesthood meeting and Shain sent me a picture of the event. Pretty cool. Have a great week everyone. Sincerely, Elder F. Miller

I Extend Greetings, A little while ago I decided to try and make each start to my letters a little different than the previous ones since I've been doing the same thing for two years. I didn't think it would be so hard to come up with original starts to my e-mails, I'm going to have to start studying up on synonyms for Hello if I intend to keep it up. This past week was pretty fantastic. We had the opportunity to attend three different baptisms. While none of them were for investigators that we had taught they were all good none the less. The first one was actually just a normal eight year old baptism but the father of the child is less active and the mother was trying to organize the whole thing herself and so asked us if we'd be able to help fill the font and set up and do whatever so we agreed. Actually to guarantee that we did help she signed up for dinner and told us that she'd feed us at the church after we'd helped set up and got the font running. The baptism didn't go very smoothly after that though. The boy was baptized by his grandfather who didn't really know what he was doing. I had lent him my Missionary Handbook so he could practice the prayers and have them down and he studied it beforehand but when it came time he couldn't repeat the prayer word for word at all. The bishop coached him through it and then he submerged the child but the kids foot came right up and breached so they went again and the same thing happened. I beat myself up about this cause the thought came to me while we were about 15 minutes from starting the baptism that I should ask the grandpa if he and the child had practiced or if they wanted to. I dismissed this thought telling myself that it wasn't my baptism and so it wasn't my place to be checking up on people and telling them how to baptize or practice baptizing their grandchildren. I realize now that that was a prompting from the Holy Ghost that I ignored and if I hadn't then the baptism would have gone a lot smoother and I wouldn't be lamenting it all now. They tried baptizing the child again and this time the child was focused and kept his feet down but the grandpa was also focused on the foot and so he failed to submerge the child's head completely. Everyone thought that this time it was perfect and some people even clapped, I guess cause it had been so suspenseful, but then our bishop cut in and said "now that was good but not quite all the way, we'll just do it once more." The child was unhappy about this and they took a recess at the bidding of the Stake President during which they practiced in the changing room and came back out eventually and finally did the ordinance correctly. Afterward I remembered that since we had filled the font we should probably also drain it. As I walked back to the font I thought about it and remembered that there is no chain attached to the rubber stopper that needs to be removed from the drain sitting under 3 feet of water. The grandpa and child were already dried off and dressed so I went about trying to think of another way to remove the plug. I was recalling the assets of our church building mentally trying to picture all the long stick like heavy objects I could use to reach down and loosen the plug when a lady in the ward noticed our problem and said that one of her sons would probably jump at the opportunity to strip down to his undies and yank the plug for us. So we scouted out the son she mentioned and waved him over and told him we had a special assignment for him, trying to play it off like it was the coolest thing in the world that we were about to offer him. "We need you," we crack the entrance to the font open so he can see the dilemma "to go down there and pull out the plug that's stopping the water for us. Think you can do it?" He didn't look too certain. So then my companion suggests "How about if we and maybe your Dad as well just lower you over the glass viewing wall holding you by the ankles?" The kid's too logical for this plan, says "I'd probably just fall in." So it was back to plan A. I found a metal table leg that was for some reason not attached to anything and I leaned out and down over the glass viewing wall, nearly bifurcating myself and just barely managed to scrape up the edge of the stopper and get it to shift allowing some water to start draining but it was very slow since the stopper was still mostly in place. I realized that basically hanging off of the glass wall wasn't the best idea and so we taped a pasta claw utensil to the end of a broom handle and I got the rest of the plug removed. And that was my font drain adventure for the week. At that baptism was a non-member friend of a lady in our ward who has now come to church twice and knows some other members and it's seeming likely that she'll eventually require some missionary lessons. For now we're keeping at bay, letting her develop roots on more of a friendship level with the ward members and then when those are strong we'll add some Gospel Miracle Grow. I don't normally view people as plants but there can't be anything wrong with it since Jesus did the same thing in parable. Anyway, we have been teaching a lady in the singles branch and it's going alright. She tends to play devils advocate during the lessons. This greatly vexes my companion cause ultimately I guess it tears down a bit of the reverence that should be there when discussing the Gospel but I notice that she knows when to be serious and not poke at the points we're making as well. We originally had a baptismal date given to her for the 28th of this month and then when we were discussing that my companion asked if she was still good with that or if she would like to more definitely set it for another day. He and I were assuming that she'd go for more time but she surprised us and said that she'd prefer a sooner date. She has been taught in the past and bailed on two baptisms but she's seeming pretty committed this time. So her date was set then for the 15th, as in this Friday, but we talked to our ward leaders about it and they want it to be on Sunday at the earliest, and that way everyone from the branch can just be there and attend right after church. So it may be the 17th, oh, Fathers day, didn't even think about that. Maybe some branch members won't be around anyway for that. Yesterday she almost didn't make it to church. We called right before sacrament meeting and she was saying that there was a dead rat in her car. I don't think she has mob connections, it was just a literal rat that I guess had gotten in there and died. I don't understand how this hurts the proper function of her Volks-Wagon but we had to send a branch member to go pick her up. And then she got super emotional as a man performed a song in honor of Pioneer Day about pioneers laying their dead babies on the side of the road. If this baptism happens it will definitely be a miracle. We have a few other people the we are working with and things seem to be picking up around here. Getting the hang of things, took me long enough. I hope you are all doing well. Sincerely, Elder F. Miller

Salutations, Well it's pretty rainy here today. We had to be in San Jose last Friday for the first part of the day and so we were in the church building from 9 to 3 about and then when we got around to going outside it was a scorcher. I haven't ever actually served in the city of San Jose so I was never aware of how hot it gets especially compared to Santa Cruz. It made me extremely grateful that I wasn't serving there. The places in which I've spent the summers on my mission have generally been close to the bay and so stay cooler than the inland spots. So I've had it pretty cushy. Yesterday was pretty great. We had church like normal but since it was fast Sunday we have a linger longer break the fast with the Single Adult Branch we cover. This time we forgot to put them on our dinner calendar so a family in the Santa Cruz ward signed up as well. We were conflicted until we found out that the branch dinner was just a build your own potato. I've never cared for plain old baked potatoes much so that made our decision for us. I did manage to sneak into the kitchen and convince them to let me have dessert early cause we were leaving though so that was pretty great. One of the most delicious cupcakes I have ever had in my life. The frosting was just right and there was raspberry filling. I think I've been told that I talk about food a lot when I write home. I guess I see the truth in that. Anyway, we had some time to try and make the goals we set for ourselves this past week. As a zone we were expected to teach 20 lessons per companionship and contact 140 people on the street per companionship. We were down 2 lessons and like 40 contacts. We didn't get all the contacts and actually we didn't bother because we were counting the totals as a group, so other companionships that exceed in certain areas make up for people who struggle. Instead we focused on getting some more lessons cause we figured that was where we'd be hurting. We only got 2 lessons so we met our goal there. And then when they were all added up for everyone in the zone we had exactly the right number of lessons. And I think we were over on contacts a bit. I thought it was pretty crazy that we met the goal exactly. We have a few ladies that we are teaching now. One lady was supposed to be baptized at the end of the month but she still hasn't come to church. She wants to post pone to August so that her sister can be here for her baptism. So we'll keep working with her but I guess this isn't a new problem. She's worked with missionaries before and her home teacher is a stubborn opinionated old guy who has been working on her for 30 years and still she never comes to church. It's a challenge that I'm not sure how much of a dent we'll put in it but we're giving it our best. Then we have a younger lady who is also set to be baptized at the end of this month. She doesn't like to come to church but her reason is that she is allergic to like a bazillion things and when she encounters them she loses the use of her legs temporarily. I'm not sure how legit this problem is, she may just be feeding us some symptom from House M.D. but that's what we're working with. And then we have a lady who is the mother of a semi recent convert. She used to be a member but her records we are pretty sure got lost. She isn't sure if she wants to join the church and so it's a very sincere situation we have going with her. She likes the church, just not the hymns. We are very optimistic that we can guide her to be baptized. She already has no problem coming to church and she doesn't seem to have any future conflicts with the Word of Wisdom or Law of Chastity. All we need to do is show her the what the church is all about and get her reading and praying. I realize I talk about investigators like this all the time, mentioning that the process of getting them baptized should eventually work out and yet I have few under my belt. So either they're not as ready as I think and need more than I'm anticipating or I'm driving them away somehow. I certainly hope it's not the later but I better look into that just in case. I hope you all have a good week. Sincerely, Elder F. Miller