Hello There, This past week was pretty good. I am not currently recollecting much of it so hang in there... oh yeah, one great thing was this lesson we had in which we invited a senior missionary in our zone to come. He and his wife are genealogy specialists and so we brought him along to talk dead people with the non member wife of a less active man that we had visited once before. It went amazingly well. This senior missionary is a great guy and he actually was serving as a mission president a while ago but was removed due to medical issues. He got right in there and we just sat back and munched on some interestingly delicious french toast custard dish that was quite good. The only problem was that I kept blowing on it to cool it down and that would disperse powdered sugar all over me. There wasn't much of a lesson taught, the senior missionary just got their basic family information and got working on their lines and there was just a wonderful spirit felt as they were able to work together to do family history work. At the end it was revealed that the wife has been reading the Book of Mormon and has been considering joining the church for quite a while. They had a daughter that desired to join the church but passed away before she could. So we're letting the spirit of Elijah handle this case until it's ready for us to teach a little more. Another new development occurred on Sunday. Everything just kind of worked out for us to finally get around to teaching the girlfriend of a less active guy that has been coming to church regularly now and bringing his girlfriend along. Sunday was mostly normal except that our mission president was the guest speaker along with his wife and my companion. So our less active friend brought his girlfriend again and she was able to attend sacrament meeting and hear the good talks given by these three people. After the meeting the branch hosted a dinner and so we all hung around and ate together and so it was just good to have the girlfriend getting to know everybody better over a meal. And then that night was the outgoing fireside for the missionaries going home. We had our less active friend offer to give us a ride (in his girlfriends car cause his is on the fritz) So the girlfriend came along as well. On the ride up I was given the front passengers seat due to my leg proportions and so my companion sat in the back with the girlfriend and worked wonders in just being friendly. At the fireside she was bombarded by testimonies of missionaries and recent converts and then on the ride back we basically taught her a bunch of principles. We set up to teach a more official lesson the following evening. Monday, we had a beach activity with the neighboring zone. So we all drove down to Monterey, or Carmel I think technically and had a few hours fun on the beach. The beach was not quite so nice as the beaches in Santa Cruz and I found myself upset with the lack of frisbee playing space. But there is always sand to dig in and structures to climb on and whatnot so we made our own fun. Lots of missionaries that I don't know so well and didn't bother to really get to know better. That evening my Irish companion was severely sunburned and I was but unaware for a while. We had the lesson with our less active friend and his girlfriend and it was good. Her main concerns are just a difference from what she's grown up learning being Catholic and then although we didn't teach it, she is aware that members of our church don't drink or smoke or party so much, or have pre-marital sex and so her worry is just changing those things while she considers herself to be in the prime of her life when that's what young people are "supposed" to be doing. She understood everything else and is a great investigator but much depends on just whether she really wants this. She's seen her boyfriend make a lot of changes and that may be the source of both her intrigue and trepidation when it comes to learning about our religion. We look forward to teaching her more and it's great to finally have an investigator, that is more legitimate than many others we've had. The difference is made when they have a tie to a member. They have a measuring stick into the church. "Well he's normal so his church can't be too out of whack." Makes a huge difference. Anyway, I lose my companion next Tuesday and I'm not excited. I always dread transfers. I guess for all the things I say about investigators being afraid of changes I'm not all that much better myself. It will be good though. One more companion to come and finish me off. Have a great week everyone. Sincerely, Elder F. Miller

Hello Everyone,

Our week was pretty great. After I wrote last week on Monday we had our normal preparation day and then we actually met with about our only investigator and the lesson went terribly. This is the former member surfer guy who lives out of his truck but then got a job and so we didn't see for a while but we finally met with again. He really wants to be baptized but the first time he was baptized he wasn't secure enough I guess cause he wigged out and allowed his parents and family to convince him to have his name removed from the church records. We met with him at the church building and about the first thing he said to start our lesson was "I think I'm going to grow some dreds." We were understandably confused by this. I probably should have just let it go but I couldn't resist the desire to hear his reasoning on this one. So I guess if I haven't already filled you in on his history then it's good to know that after he left the church for a while he joined up with the Rastafari and he still has a tendency to hold to their ways. But pretty much when I asked what his reason for wanting dreds was he said "cause I'm attracted to girls with dreds" Just to joke with him I pretended like I could only conclude from his statement "you want to grow dreds so you'll be attracted to yourself?" He thought that was pretty funny though I recognize it's not my best. Our lesson went downhill from there as one can probably imagine. More reasoning on his part for the dreds was that it fights "the system". He also said that a member had told him that generally it is encouraged for men in the church to be clean shaven. So he interpreted that as beards not being allowed so in order to express his rebellious attitude but still follow church council he would just grow dreds instead. I told him that I would much rather he grew a beard than dreds. Basically when we try to teach him he gets hung up on very trivial things and it makes it difficult to help him progress much. Also in that lesson he expressed how he "doesn't feel much of a connection with Monsoon", the whole proposition 8 thing still bothers him and we somehow got back on how it makes him sad that people call the holiday Easter instead of Resurrection Sunday because Easter is the name of a pagan god. Next lesson we will probably just attempt to be much more rigid and stern regarding what we'll talk about and be strict in sticking to the topic at hand. The last lesson was kind of my fault, my companion had already the resolve to stick to a single topic but the whole dreds thing piqued my interest and I just had to ask what the heck he was talking about. So while the lessons aren't going great I get a kick out of them and I really CAN see this guy getting baptized it will just take a while.

Other than that...we've also been visiting this less active man who most of the time when we try by he is pretty out of it. His liver is failing him and he won't be able to get a transplant so he knows that he doesn't have much time left and those thoughts must be weighing on him but also the drugs he has to take make him kind of incoherent so sometimes there isn't much point in talking to him. This week as we visited he was actually surprisingly lucid and up for a good conversation. The problem was that I was hit with one of those sleepy spells. Sitting there in his lazyboy just droopy eyed. At first you fight it and then eventually you just start to think to yourself, "eh, I won't miss anything." I started weighing the pros and cons in my head. "Well a nap would be awesome but would the embarrassment be too great?" I didn't fall asleep although I started leaning more towards the argument posed by the little nap devil on my shoulder. Had my brain been fully functioning then I probably would have recognized that even if I did try to fall asleep my companion wouldn't let me remain like that for long so it wouldn't be worth it.

I was with a missionary serving in Watsonville for a day, which is a predominantly spanish area and the missionary serves in the spanish program. I felt like I was back in Greenfield. We did service at a soup kitchen that they go to every week and it was alright. I handed out the fruit. First there were a bunch of mutant oranges (naranghas), those suckers were huge and I personally didn't think they looked all the great but to the people in line I think size means a lot. My companion for the day was in charge of desserts and at one point a very angry lady requested more and he refused to serve her more just cause it was the first round of serving and he was rationing them and she started raising her voice and then grabbed more cookies herself and continued in the line. When she came back around for seconds my companion actually removed the desserts to keep her from getting any more and then she threw a fit and the head boss lady of the place said she could have some more. Afterward when everyone was clearing out the lady came back and sort of apologized but at the same time was trying to prove a point, that being that no one is her boss. She phrased it as "your not my mother or my father so you can't tell me what to do". Really he didn't tell her what to do he just refused to let her have more but there was no point in arguing with her. My companion actually ignored her and so she tried to speak to him through me kind of, it was really awkward and I wanted to tell the lady she is a brat and needs to grow up, but instead I just said "I understand perfectly well that I'm not your mother or father." Then I thought to myself that I was extremely glad that I wasn't her mother or father. But also thinking that perhaps if I had raised this person then hopefully they wouldn't be the way they are. I don't know if I'm coming off as a horrible person in this e-mail for criticizing the homeless but I'm just saying that being around so many of these people you can usually trace their problems to uncorrected behaviors from childhood. It builds my faith that children are supposed to be raised by a mother and a father in a loving environment that teaches them the proper way to live and associate with others. It also makes me extremely grateful that I was blessed to be raised in such and environment.

Sincerely Elder F. Miller

Hello Everyone,

Our week was pretty busy. We had something out of the ordinary and big just about every day. From Monday night through Tuesday we had exchanges with some other missionaries which actually didn't feel a whole lot like exchanges because both set's of us ended up working together to help a less active man in our ward with moving a bunch of furniture and things out of his house. That took a few hours and then the rest of the day was spent in the far reaches of the other companionships area. They cover a string of little towns in what's known as the San Lorenzo Valley and then they also cover a branch called the Alma branch which is north on Highway 17. There isn't much going on in the Alma branch and so the missionaries only devote one day a week to working in that area since it is so far removed from the normal beaten path. I happened to be with them on that day. It wasn't bad. We tried to visit a bunch of potential investigators and less active members and then we finally had dinner with their Branch Mission Leader and his family who are awesome. The Brother showed me his prize rock candy crystal which was huge. Seemed like a neat little project to have going without having to devote really all too much time to it. You just let the sugar grow on the string and check it for months until you get a good sized specimen.

Wednesday didn't work out as we planned cause we had a bunch of appointments bail on us, but we had a member who just happened to need help moving stuff out of his storage locker. It was no coincidence that he needed our help exactly when we were left wondering what to do. It wasn't a miracle either though; that guy just always needs
help. He was moving his stuff from his storage locker into a much smaller storage locker and so a bunch of the stuff he needed to have taken to his tiny apartment. We were actually a little reluctant to try and move his stuff cause we didn't want the risk that comes from loading items into our new car. We were pushing it when his old heavy tv was crammed into the back seat and close to leaning against the window. Had we gone over any major bumps recklessly there's no telling the kind of damage that could have been done. But we helped him move what things we could and then we were off to some other appointments. That night we met with members of the stake presidency and our mission president as some new protocols are being put in place to try and help investigators who accept baptismal invitations into become better welcomed by the ward members. It's a whole phone texting chain that will result in assignments being given to members of the ward to go and welcome the investigator to church or activities or what have you. I haven't seen it in action yet but I'm skeptical as to how the average investigator will feel having even more strange people standing on their doorstep. Ideally we invite investigators to be baptized the very first time we teach them, and usually it's more of a conceptual baptismal invitation. In my experience a solid baptismal date acceptance right off the bat isn't common at all. Primarily we'll be dealing with people who agree with the idea of baptism but won't be fully committed to it until much later down the line. So I'm afraid the new plan may scare more people off. But I'm often wrong and I hope I am this time.

On Thursday we had Zone Conference which was great. We watched this wonderful talk in the spirit of Easter given on the subject of mercy and it was really insightful and funny. My least favorite part of zone conference was the lecture on proper dinner etiquette. I think I'm mostly a pleasant dinner guest, no major flaws to be done away with. The only things that came up that I think I can improve on are things that don't make any sense to me and therefore I don't want to improve on them. The main one is concerning the consumption of bread. They said that it is to be broken off bit by bit and if you're using butter then to slather it on an individual basis. Considering my love for bread, this particular rule would probably prolong our dinner visits by up to an hour, and no one wants us sitting at their table for that long. Unless the purpose of the rule is to keep people like me from eating too much bread. If that's the case then I REALLY don't like this rule. Anyway, after zone conference we actually drove to my old area in Redwood City because a missionary in my zone that we had driven up needed to go and pick up some shoes from another elder now serving there. It killed our day. I don't know why but sitting in meetings and driving a bunch just wipe me out. My companion as well. That night we helped set up for an activity that was being put on by our Single Adult Branch.

The activity took place on Friday evening and was essentially a walk through the plan of salvation. We started off with a plane ride. The hallway was decorated to look like the inside of a passenger jet with black plastic to cover up the brick walls and little oval windows cut out of blue construction paper. Seats lined the walls and our Branch Mission Leader was the pilot. A simulated crash was made by flickering the lights and banging on the walls and doors and then my companion and I dressed in white as angels bearing flashlights guided the deceased first to the spirit world and then through each kingdom of heaven. At each destination they learned more about the station and were left to ponder what it would be like to remain eternally in each place. The lowest kingdom was a dark room with only glow in the dark stars all around it and with a heater in it to make it a little uncomfortably stuffy in there amongst the 30 people crammed in. The middle kingdom was the relief society room which was nice and spacious and had some good plants but kind of plain and boring. And then the chapel was the highest or Celestial kingdom and it was brightly lit with pleasant music and a family from the Santa Cruz ward sitting on the stand just looking good. We had the father stand and bear his testimony on how this kingdom was the best and only place where families can be together forever. And then from there we went to heaven on earth, the kitchen, for refreshments of root beer floats and cookies. It was really great and such an eye opener for some people to get to physically kind of tour and somewhat feel on a more real level what it's going to be like.

On Saturday there was an emergency preparedness fair that we volunteered to go to and greet people and answer questions if anyone had them. It was small and not well attended but has been very successful in years past supposedly. There was a bread making class in the kitchen which we hit up often to get some good bread and there was a lady doing "Cave Man BBQ" which was just cooking chicken on top of charcoal in a pit in the ground. It was super simple but tasty.

And then yesterday I gave a talk in church. No topic was assigned cause it was assumed that I'd just talk about missionary work. Not that I didn't want to talk on missionary work it's just that I didn't want to go at it without a new or good angle to come from. So I infused service in there. That is one aspect of missionary work and so I just kind of focused my subject to that and it was okay. Super unresponsive crowd in the Singles Branch, made me very nervous while giving my talk, especially since I had just written it that morning and didn't feel sufficiently prepared.

Then last night we finally got around to performing with the stake choir as they were joined by the BYU-Idaho Sinfonietta. A bunch of string instrumentalists came and made us sound good. We rehearsed right after church and then had dinner provided by a lady in the stake and then we performed. We were expecting more people to show up but it was still a fine turn out. Our music was called or by Faure, I'm not really sure. It included pieces called Agnus Dei, Libera Me, and Sanctus. We also did a song by Vivaldi called "All Earth Rejoice". The most of our songs were in Latin and fun to sing though. And there were a few soloists, one of them in our ward and a member of the mission presidency. He has a killer baritone voice and stole much of the show. Then there was a soprano who was really good as well. But perhaps the most exciting thing for some people was the fact that Steve Young and his family were in the audience. I guess he is really good friends with the bishop of the ward that shares the building with us and so he came for the stake choir performance. He was surrounded at the end of the show and I didn't attempt to talk to him. Perhaps a cooler statement is that Steve Young applauded my singing performance. I guess it would be more amazing if he complimented my football skills, but that's never going to happen.

So that was my week for the most part. We are doing well and having fun. We have the same guy that really wants to be baptized but he has been too busy with work to meet with us. On Sunday we were able to set up an appointment with him for tonight, so we can better assess how long it's going to be before he's baptized. There was also this whole family that came on Easter Sunday that are good friends with many members in the ward and we are hoping to get to teach them soon. It seems likely that we'll get to eventually so it's just a matter of sooner or later.

I pray that everyone is doing well.

Sincerely, Elder F. Miller

**This was Fletcher's email from April 9th**

Hello Everyone,

This past week was great. It had a good start to it that is for sure. Coming out of conference we were able to visit the Oakland Temple and that was again a wonderful experience. Going only once every 6 months though is not enough cause you forget everything between visits. Once again we drove up in a small 5 passenger car with four missionaries and a driver. We met up at a church building and were kind of early before our ride came and there was a basketball hoop and we just happened to have a basketball in our trunk so we shot some hoops. I also had a frisbee and it was our preparation day so it was perfectly alright to do but we were just in our suits and it was a warm day so that made the first part of the car ride pretty uncomfortable for me until I got cooled down.

On Wednesday I was on exchanges with my district leader and that was fine. This was the first time I got to drive our new car all day. It was alright. I actually always don't like how soft the acceleration pedal is on new cars, much too sensitive. But I managed not to wreck it and so the day was successful. We walked along a popular beach strolling path called West Cliff and were passing out cards and inviting people to things. We have a couple of events coming up that we were also passing out fliers for to switch things up and not just pass out mormon.org cards or the normal missionary items. At first I tried passing out some fliers to people for this concert that BYU Idaho students are coming to perform along with the stake choir but lots of the people we were talking to were only visitors to the area and so weren't interested in something local going on that they wouldn't be around for. I was telling my companion for the day that these fliers were useless. I approached an older looking guy and figured the probability of him being savvy with the internet was low and so my mormon.org card wouldn't be much use and so I gave the concert flier another try and the mans reaction was kind of neat. As I turned about the walk alongside him and introduce the flier I was holding his initial instinct was to wave off anything that a missionary was offering him, so his action was to kind of hold up his hand like "save it" but my words were just "hey, here's a flier for a free concert you're invited to attend" so as he actually processed what I had said he turned his barrier of a hand into an upturned "gimme gimme" motion and he was genuinely grateful at the invitation and took the flier with interest. So that was pretty cool just to see a different reaction come from an invitation that I thought was useless. I'm not sure there is really lesson in this. In reality we have been taught that we should never change or lessen our message just to appeal to a wider audience. I think it was one of the prophets on his mission he found that as he just taught the Atonement and left the Restoration part of the message out of it than more people would listen to him but that is a sacrifice that isn't worth it. I don't think the concert invite was a cop out though. It's just a different invitation, the hopes being that the man will come to the church building and that step will possibly lead to many more in coming to know more about the gospel.

Anyway, I think on Friday we visited an inactive man who had stopped us in a parking lot and told us he was an inactive member. He told us we were welcome to come over to his place which was cool but he figured that we'd want to come over not to teach him, but to check out his pinball machine. I have to admit I was intrigued at the thought of a pinball machine free to use. So we went over and got him sharing his life story over a couple rounds of pinball and then we shared an Easter message with him and invited him back to church. We are supposed to help him move some of his stuff tomorrow so hopefully we can continue meeting with him and serving him however and it will lead to him trusting the church again.

Yesterday we had a great day at church. We got out of having to give talks for another week since our Branch mission leader wanted to speak in our place alongside his sister who is leaving on her mission in a short while. There was a non member family at church who were really nice and maybe we'll be able to teach at some point. And a few less actives came as well. We had dinner with a couple of families who live up at the college and that was fun. And afterward we drove up to the little town of Davenport to try and find a less active lady but we asked the residents and they said she had moved. Kind of a fruitless long drive but not so bad.

That has been my week. Thanks for reading.

Sincerely, Elder F. Miller

Hi Everybody,

This past week was okay. Obviously the most exciting thing was getting to watch General Conference. I'm not sure if I already mentioned this in a previous e-mail but we met with an older active couple who are extremely intelligent people and we were just talking about Conference and how our Prophet and Apostles speak to us and we asked their opinion of conference expecting the normal consent that it is a great thing to behold, but they responded that they felt that conference was "for the lowest common denominator." I think I would agree that General Conference is pretty basic in it's teachings. The doctrine shared is never exactly earth shattering but it teaches simple truths and insights that everyone can benefit from listening to. Perhaps it's not bad for this couple to think this way of General Conference, I'm pretty sure they still listen to the talks even though they don't feel like they learn much, they just feel like they learn much more from their own personal study. It rather seems like they are on another field of understanding. They have the basics down and are working towards exaltation on an advanced curriculum level. At first I kind of considered their opinion towards conference a bad attitude but they still watch it, just not for enlightenment so much as to feel the spirit and contemplate things that they do still wonder about.

At General Conference we had a goal to get two less active members to view conference and two non-members to watch it. We only got one non-member to watch that we know of and we weren't sure who else in the less active category we could get to come. Randomly on Sunday for the second session that day a lady just showed up. She said that she had been baptized a few years ago but had been moving around and hadn't been to church for a long time. She stayed for a lunch pot luck put on by the singles branch and then stayed and watched the session. What was really weird about it is that we tried to find her church records in the ward and she was mentioning that they may have been removed. So actually we're not sure if she would have counted as a non-member or a less active. We didn't count her in our goal cause it wasn't by anything we did that she came but it's almost like our goal was fulfilled by the hand of the Lord anyway. But I really loved conference. I took furious notes summarizing everything every speaker said. The problem with me is that when I just listen to conference I enjoy it but never am able to recall what the talks were about afterwards and then if I take notes I am not paying full attention and so I can't recall what the talks were about even worse. Theoretically I have those notes to refer back to and spark my memory but in reality I don't get around to checking back on them very often. Just today we had a District Meeting and asked everyone to stand up and just share a part of conference that they really liked and I had one in mind that someone else used so I tried to think of another talk but just couldn't come up with one. One of my favorites was the one by Elder Hallstrom I think his name was and it was just really meaningful to us as missionaries. It went into the difference between the church and the gospel. People who are active in the church aren't necessarily active in the gospel or vice versa. We are making a big effort to work with inactive people and it's clear that the reason they no longer come to church is that they never had the full conversion of being active in both the church and the gospel. And then it also makes a good case for missionaries teaching active members as well. Some people may go through the motions of going to church and participating in their calling but not actually practice the principles of the gospel. Some times it's astounding to talk to some inactive members and find that they used to serve as relief society presidency 1st counselor or something else that would indicate that they were pretty solid in the church, and perhaps they were but not in the gospel.

Then Elder Holland gave another phenomenal talk. "Downing a quart of pickle juice every time some one else has a happy moment." Enviousness, no thank you. So yeah, conference was fantastic. We had a less active man that we have been working with and seen amazing improvements in come to three sessions and watch another one at his home. He's just throwing himself back into church, volunteering to do stuff and showing up for all the activities, it is really inspiring to see.

Tomorrow we are supposed to go visit the Oakland Temple, as we do around General Conference time. We still haven't found a ride that can take us which is not good but hopefully we'll find someone. I recognized a little while ago that I have never really studied or even read much from the Doctrine and Covenants and so I found that if I read one section a day I would finish about the same time as my mission does. I'm already behind a little but that's because it's kind of lame to just read one section a day so I've been storing them up so as to spend a little more time on a few sections at a time. It's been good. Just little things that I never picked up on before through hearing the stories told and not reading them personally.

Sunday after conference we went and visited a less active man and his non-member wife who we had never met before. He suffers from some pretty serious medical problems and only has one leg having lost the other one to gangrene recently. It was kind of a sight to knock on the door and then wait for about 2 minutes not knowing if they heard us. Then the door opened and I saw that the man was in a wheelchair and then a dog came out to greet us and then I noticed that the dog was missing a leg as well. The man invited us in, I may have been a little apprehensive to enter a house where it seemed the price of entry might cost me a leg. We met his wife though and she was intact so I calmed down. They were really nice. They have a gated driveway, the pass code for which some members gave us, so we weren't sure how they react to strangers seeing as they probably don't get them visiting often but they were pleased to see us. Just a nice old couple happy to talk about their kids and lives. We had heard that the wife was interested in doing some family history work so we introduced the idea of having the senior couple missionaries who specialize in that field over to meet with them and they were all up for that as well.

I guess that has been my week for the most part. Our only progressing investigator has started working a lot and doesn't have time to meet with us now. We thought it was bad when he was just a surfer bum living in his car but at least then he had plenty of time to meet with us and we could teach him. But as we motivated him to get his life together he has found two jobs and is looking to get an apartment and has no time for us. I'm sure we'll eventually get to work more with him though.

I hope you all enjoyed conference as well and have a good new week.

Sincerely, Elder F. Miller