Greetings From San Jose

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