Guten tag!

Well I've made it to my last week. I'm not sure if I'll e-mail the Monday before I catch my flight so this is probably my last address. I better make it good. This past week we went on two exchanges. So on Thursday I had a pretty new missionary in my area and in the morning we went over and helped out doing service for Habitat for Humanity. We mainly helped one of the regulars as he put up these soffett like eaves. We had had an appointment with one of our former investigators for 2 o'clock and so we meant to finish up with service at 12:30 to make sure we had plenty of time to travel and change and travel to the next appointment. Every time I've been to this place of service they have lunch time at 12:00 on the dot just about and I was counting on that so then we could eat lunch and then take off like we usually do. Lunch didn't come as usual so the next time I looked at my watch it was 1 and we had to go. This younger missionary I was with was complaining about not having any lunch and I was pretty annoyed with him cause he was going to make us late to this appointment we had in which we intended to get a new investigator and invite them to be baptized. It's like the best set up lesson that a missionary can hope for and this guy is going to make us late while he's whining about lunch. We're walking back to our car when we get a call from the lady we're supposed to meet next and she reschedules for the next day. So then we had nothing better to do but help out some more at build site. Long story short I got a wicked sunburn on the back of my neck. It's weird how sometimes you don't realize that you're getting burned. I recall the night before I went into the MTC we were up late talking to my brother in law and a friend of his and they were giving me advice or just stories from their missions and the MTC. The friend told about a time that he went golfing on his Preparation day and just wore a t-shirt and got such a bad sunburn on his neck, a part of his neck that is usually covered by the collar of our white shirts. He said that the pain of his white collar on his neck for the next two days was unbearable. Well mine wasn't that bad but it reminded me of his story. It was painful at times but it was bearable. We didn't have any aloe in our apartment either. I was just looking for any sort of lotion that might help and the only thing I came across was neosporin. I think it's mainly to prevent infection but on the tube it said that it also relieves pain a little bit and it was the best stuff I had so I walked around for the rest of the day smelling like neosporin.

The next day I was actually on exchanges with a companionship serving in San Jose and I went there so this was the only time that I have ever served in the capitol city of my mission. We did service as well and luckily it was indoors and we were helping a less active man mud the ceiling of a house he's working on repairing. Later though we went street contacting in downtown and at times the sun was at my back and that was hard. I tried to scrunch my neck down further in my collar to protect it from the harsh slap of the sun rays. At one point it felt like my ear might catch fire. I checked around to make sure there wasn't some random person standing behind me holding a magnifying glass on me. But the exchange was good.

It's getting kind of annoying having to tell everyone my plans for after the mission. When you first get to an area they want to get to know you so you recite about your hometown and family and hobbies and whatnot but after a while they either remember and don't ask anymore or they don't remember but realize that they should know and are too embarrassed to ask anymore. So I've been in this area for almost 7 months so not many people ask me the newcomer questions anymore but now I have to endure the repeated, "So what are your plans after the mission?"
I'm not really that annoyed with it. I'm sure every missionary goes through it almost like a right of passage. Perhaps it's designed that way just in case a missionary hasn't really thought about what they're going to do after the mission, this process guarantees that they will have thought about some plans.

Well we did get a baptismal date with the same woman who has had many in the past. She just never comes to church. We're set to teach her more regularly though so that should be great. This week should go much like the others I expect which will be good. This has been "a most excellent adventure". This Month and transfer have probably been the best of my mission. Just as far as pushing myself and doing well fulfilling goals go.

I thank all of you long time subscribers out there (if there are any) seeing as this is my last edition I just want to thank everyone for their prayers and letters and support in general. I have greatly enjoyed my mission and just want to let everyone know how grateful I am for this Gospel and the knowledge that is available to us. Christ surely did come and fulfilled the plan that allows us to change and make possible our future admittance into the company of our Father in Heaven.

Sincerely, Elder F. Miller

Hola Mi Amigos,

I hope I wrote that correctly, of course I don't know how to make a tilde on the keyboard and that phrase undoubtedly has one, but besides that I hope I did it correctly. And I think I'm going to give up on capitalization for this e-mail cause we're at a different library and this keyboards shift key is amazingly uncooperative. seriously my pinky hurts. well this week was pretty good. we got a new investigator from a recent convert that we teach and meet with a lot. he took to inviting a certain friend upon our challenging him to do so and now that friend has come to church twice. we have not taught him a very substantial lesson as of yet however. we were set to meet him once and he called in sick and then just an hour ago we were supposed to meet again but he had called saying essentially that he was sick again but this time it was a problem with his medication and he had to go to the doctor to get it straightened out. so the first time he called in sick and missed our appointment it was cause for concern thinking that he didn't actually enjoy attending church but then he came to church again and so this time we're not as concerned that we didn't get to meet with him assuming that his excuse is real and it's just a matter of time before we do get to teach him and really we just really want to invite him to be baptized. that invitation is always a thrill.

we still have a lady that has now come to church about 8 times and we aren't teaching her yet but i think she's becoming more comfortable with us and we always see her in the gospel principles class and there are members that she is close friends with that are helping her along and so she's just a matter of time as well. i recognize that i keep saying "matter of time" as if i can hold out forever when in reality i don't have long to go, but that doesn't really matter. it's fun to be a part of it while i'm here but if i miss out on the end that's not too upsetting. one would think it would feel diminishing to know that once you're gone nothing will really change almost that you didn't make a difference, but in the realm of missionary work it's more of a comfort knowing that it will go on unimpeded. hopefully i made a difference, or am making a difference but it's easy to recognize that it shouldn't be too difficult for someone else to come in and carry it forward. it makes me think of the princess bride. how the infamous dread pirate roberts has actually been a bunch of different men throughout the ages but all with the same name so they carry on the legacy. perhaps i shouldn't compare the work of the Lord to piracy but i think you all understand what i mean.

anyway, we also received a call from a lady that we worked with a while ago but didn't go anywhere and she wanted to meet again. there's no telling whether or not it will go anywhere this time but we're always willing to try. she is one of those investigators that seems to agree with everything in theory but actually committing to do the things required to demonstrate what you believe is where things fall apart. coming to church is very hard for her and it's evident why and i'll admit that if i were in her shoes i would not jump at the idea of the kind of preparation that would be required to make it to church, but we can't be sure if she's really very committed until she accepts that challenge. you would think that being baptized and accepting the commission to take upon oneself the name of Christ and always remember him and keep his commandments, would be a harder invitation to accept and accomplish than coming to church. i guess that is the point that this investigator is missing so we'll need to focus on that when we meet this week and see if we can't help her progress and come to church regularly.

well that's what's going on around here. it's fun. i hope you all have a great week.

sincerely, elder f. miller

Wuz Crackin',

Well this will probably be short since the computers are once again in high demand and my companion and I are sharing a time slot. My Fourth of July was fine. We actually were on exchanges with another companionship so I missed the ward breakfast that was put on and instead attended a different one with a different companion. It was really good. Some of the tastiest pancakes I've ever had and the members somehow got the word out enough to have a bunch of people not in the church show up.

This week we have zone conference coming up and so my companion made sure we washed our car today cause often times the car coordinator for the mission will inspect the vehicles while we're in the meeting. We washed the car decently and then we got a call from some other Elders saying that to save miles we were just going to ride with them down to the meeting. But that's okay, we really needed to wash our car regardless if someone was going to inspect it or not. That's probably the hardest thing for me, convincing myself to spend a half hour of Preparation day to wash the car.

We were at a baptism for a little boy in the ward last night and he had to be baptized a couple of times and then it was good. It was kind of funny cause the first time his foot came up so for the repeat I'm sure they counseled him to keep his feet down and subsequently I think the kid locked his legs on the second try cause you saw him kind of just lean back and his dad almost toppled over him cause he was pushing him down but was forced to reach back and back. And then the third time was counted good and everyone dismissed back to their seats and then someone inquired as to whether the kid had a middle name cause the father had just used first and last and it turned out that he did have a middle name and so they repeated it and it went well the fourth time.

We were super hopeful that our investigator would come to church. In the past the problem has been that she didn't have a car and she still doesn't but she said her father was interested and was going to drive her and her son and come himself on Sunday. They didn't show up and we have yet to figure out why but it's starting to look like she just doesn't really want to come. But we have been meeting with a recent convert quite a bit and building him up and encouraging him to share his beliefs with others and this Sunday a friend that he has invited a bunch of times finally came. They had to walk a ways to get to church and the convert kind of tricked his friend into the long walk so we'll see if he comes back but he seemed to like it and shared his feelings during a gospel essentials lesson. Then he was invited to come and attend "bible study" with us when we usually meet with the recent convert on Thursdays.

So we have a few odd things that seem likely to pick up. This past week we finally were able to catch up with a less active guy that we had been teaching regularly but then I guess we just happened to never catch for like two weeks straight, of trying about every day. I figured he was avoiding us but then we found him. I even tried to fix his bike for him. Really all I did was mess it up more and then fixed the part that I messed up and the original problem was still there so I just told him to stay away from the low gears and he'd be fine.

Well I hope you are all doing well. Have a great week.

Sincerely, Elder F. Miller

**This is the attachment that he sent**

Hey Peoples, All of the internet capable computers are taken so I’m trying to see if I can just use the word processing computer and then just save this and plug it into my e-mail when I get the chance so that I’m not wasting time. I’ll probably only be able to make this an attachment which would be super annoying for people I’m sure but maybe not. I’m not much of a computer person.

Well this past week was pretty good. We got a call from an older sister in the ward telling us that she had broken her ankle and wanted a blessing. The thing was she wasn’t at her apartment but was house/cat sitting for a less active lady in our ward who we had never met. The house was super nice. Set on a big piece of land and it was just decked out with art and had a pool and I’m sure many other amenities. The less active lady who owns the house actually is an opera singer and performed back around Easter when that symphony from BYU Idaho came and the Stake choir sang with them. She had a couple of solo parts that were really good. Everyone was talking about her and how great she was and I assumed that she lived in the stake but didn’t realize that she was in our ward. I have never seen her again at church. I’m not certain if she is less active or if she’s just super busy with her career. I think she travels a lot perform all over. Anyway that was just a weird realization.

This other older less active lady we stopped by. A while ago we stopped by and I took the opportunity to play with her husbands Rubik’s cube and she was impressed that I could solve it, but she wondered why my companion couldn’t solve it, so she told us to take it and that I should teach him and then bring it back when he could do it. Normally we aren’t supposed to play with toys but the thing was kind of our return ticket to meet with this less active lady so I commenced in teaching my companion how to solve it and now he can do it. Then we stopped back by the ladies house by impulse and so didn’t have the cube with us but she still let us in and we talked with her a bit and asked if there was any service we could render her and she mentioned weed pulling. We got out of that one by not owning any pairs of gloves so instead she said that if we wanted we could come back and fix her shutters. So on Saturday we went and it was a simple matter of lining up the dowel holes and gluing them in and putting some vices on them. We didn’t really think about it at the time but I’m afraid we may have undermined her husband by fixing those. Cause that was the project assigned to him and he had found it too tedious and resigned to just buy some new shutters. Her husband is not a member of the church and he’s held out thusfar, being like 60 years so I don’t plan on converting him especially not when we’ve gotten off to a bad start by showing him up in his shutter assembling skills.

Anywhootenanny, all of our once investigators have become scarce. We called and set up an appointment with one of them and then when we went they weren’t home. They’re kind of old and so I’ll believe that they plumb forgot, but as a missionary we’re pretty used to living by our appointments so it becomes hard to understand that some people just don’t remember or don’t consider an agreement to meet a binding contract.

Hey Peoples, Sooo, rather unorthodox today but the internet capable computers were all occupied for a while and so I endeavored to use the word processing computer and I just saved what I was writing in the hopes that I could add it here and then continue writing when a computer opened up and so I wouldn't waste time. I can't open it and paste it in this e-mail cause they really limit these computers but I did add it as an attachment. Sorry for the inconvenience but I can only imagine that I have about 10 people that follow my weekly e-mails, and they're usually all about the same so missing one every once in a while can't be too disappointing. I don't remember all that I wrote in the attachment so I don't know what to add here. But long story short, I had a good week. We were able to meet with some less active members and those were enjoyable visits. We have this old guy that we keep stopping by and chat with. He's hilarious. Just so old that he no longer gives a crap. I think he's 90 but still in admirable health. He still gets around and drives and reads a lot. Fine enough to even travel a bit. He's fun to talk to and try to convince to come to church but he claims that he's just too old and he'd fall asleep and it would be of no benefit to him. Fast Sunday was great, but let me tell you that the pressure you feel to get up and bear your testimony when there are only 20 people in the room and 40 minutes left is amazing. After that the singles branch had their break the fast and we had pulled pork sandwiches which were really good. Alot of people manage to bear their testimony on the 4th of July or about the blessing of living in a free country but I totally failed to bring that up. Actually much of the time I found it funny that everyone was talking about America when it was actually Canada Day. Nobody probably would have appreciated it if I had gotten up there and just praised Canada though. It would be pretty funny to just start out speaking really ambiguously and lead everyone to assume you meant America and then state your appreciation for Canada. But I wouldn't do that, maybe. Well I hope everyone has a great week and Independence Day. Man I wish I could watch that movie right now! Sincerely, Elder F. Miller