Greetings From San Jose

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