Hello Everyone,

Let's see, this past week was great. One highlight is that we got a new investigator to come to church which was good. He is very easy going and had no problem accepting our invitation to come, in fact I think he propositioned the idea before we could spit it out. He naturally holds more to his old faith and he introduced himself to many of the members as a Christian Fundamentalist/Roman Catholic which is an odd religious stance but we take who we can get. He was going to come last week but didn't answer the door when we went there to get a ride for him. Later he said that he slept in, and then even later he said he was sick so we aren't sure if it's a combination of both or if he was lying and couldn't keep his stories straight. Either way, he came to church this past Sunday and was actually crying during Fast and Testimony meeting. We hope that he was just feeling the spirit really strong and not that he was upset over our sunday services. He actually told us that he wasn't feeling well after that though and we got him a ride home before sunday school. But he remembered to remind us that we had scheduled a meeting with him on Wednesday so that was good and a sign that he still likes us. Actually today we got a referral from the the mission office saying that someone from the same address that this guy lives at requested a book of mormon. Our investigator lives in a government funded home I think so one of the other room renters I guess intercepted one the pass along cards that we left for our investigator and requested a copy of the book of mormon. This specific residence may prove pretty open to our message.

And then we had a member call us to say that her friend was interested in learning more last sunday and we taught him again this sunday. The situation is a little odd to me. The member is a lady that attends the spanish ward cause she served a mission to Argentina and is holding onto her spanish I guess. But her boyfriend doesn't even live in our area yet he plans on moving at some point so we are just taking him as ours cuase the fellowship is in our area. The guy works on sundays until November when his shift changes hopefully so maybe he'll come to church then. The man is very verbose and can just go on and on and on concerning his religious past and his understanding of principles. He has pretty much surmised on his own everything that we believe and the rest he is very open to accepting. On some level I feel that he is perhaps only taking the discussions cause the member he is dating is very outspoken and perhaps they have plans to get married and she has probably told him not unless he is a member and they can go through the temple eventually. Not that that is a bad thing, but if the investigator is just going along with everything we say just so he can pass the test but in the back of his head he's disagreeing with some things then that is not ideal to the conversion process. We'll learn more as we continue to meet with him though and hopefully my skepticism on the matter is without cause. Those are the two main additions to our teaching activity along with some regulars we have that aren't really going anywhere.

My companion is really anxious to baptize someone before he gets transferred out of here but I'm not sure if it will happen. There are only so many weeks left that our only options are current investigators who have already attended church a number of times. We'll see what happens when the family that we have been teaching returns from their vacation to Hawaii. They may have visited my companions family and my companion keeps joking that perhaps his Dad will convert the family for us. That would be cool.

That's about all that I have for this week.
Hope everyone is having fun.

Sincerely, Elder Miller

Hello Everyone,

This past week went by real fast. Mainly due to the busy end to the week that we had. Friday contained an odd surprise as we were invited by our Bishop out to breakfast cause he said that there was a waitress who he had spoken to before who was interested in joining the church. So we went to this little breakfast place and ate outside as a tree with millions of little flowers dropped them on us and in our food. The place was surprisingly busy for a Friday morning so the waitress didn't have time to sit and make small talk with us and allow us to invite her to church or anything but the free meal from our bishop was still pleasant and perhaps we'll be able to talk to the waitress some other time. Then in the afternoon we were asked to attend a blood drive at our stake center that was going to be inter-faith organized. So we were supposed to show up and answer questions if anyone had any, plus my companion and I were both pretty excited at the prospect at donating ourselves if we could. But we got the building and were disappointed to find that no one was there and there was sign saying it had been cancelled.

On Saturday we were informed that a man who isn't a member of the church was moving into the ward boundaries and his family were members and so called and set up for us to help him and our bishop had communicated with the man and he seemed interested in coming to church as well. So we helped with the move and invited the man to a BBQ that one of our ward missionaries was putting on for just the purpose of inviting non-members to. The BBQ's turn out wasn't very good and the man didn't come but he did call us in the middle of it and asked for our help with a crisis that had occurred. His wife was supposed to drive and pick him up and take him back to their old home to continue packing some stuff but she was injured an didn't come to get him. We couldn't do much for him but our Bishop in the end helped him out I think. Not that we really hold him indebted to the ward or anything but we feel that he has relied on us enough that hopefully he will consent to coming to church and listening to the missionary lessons.

Then on Sunday we were invited to do sharing time in primary cause it was the fifth sunday, and we had a couple of activities and weren't sure if we had enough planned to take up 20 minutes though. But when we got to actually doing the sharing time I don't think the primary left us even 15 minutes worth of time and so we went kind of long on each activity and were cut short by the bell. It wasn't that bad of an experience but I'm glad that the next fifth sunday isn't probably until I'll be out of this area.

We received a referral from some other missionaries and met the guy and he was super nice and had no qualms accepting our invitation to church but needed a ride so we got our ward mission leader to go with us to pick him up and he wasn't there or at least the cleaning lady lied or something. It was really disappointing. We went back by after church cause he had also told us we could teach him then and he said that he had slept in accidentally and that he would come to church next week and we could teach him then. I'm not sure how reliable he is but perhaps he'll come along.

So those were some hightlights of my week. For the primary lesson acutally it was on temples and so my companion and I thought we'd make a big ole' sugar cube temple but it turned out to be kind of hard after we had used up one of our 4 boxes of sugar cubes. And we didn't quite know how to cement the cubes together so our structure would hold. We abandoned the project but I made some Kool Aid so the sugar won't go to waste.

I hope everyone has a great week.

Sincerely, Elder Miller

Hello Everyone,

This past week was a bit of a downer. We have a nine year old girl scheduled to be baptized but her parents aren't quite on board with all the commitments that that entails and so we feel like we'll have to post pone her baptism until we can get everyone excited and committed to coming to church and meeting with us. Busy lives are the missionaries worst enemy. I have also come to the conclusion that it is unhealthy for missionaries to visit a Tongan household more than once a week. So much food I almost died. Just joking. But really, I don't know what it is but they are way too generous. I appreciate all the nice things the members do for us but it is too much. I guess they really take the fact that we are servants of the Lord seriously and they expect blessings from taking care of us and I'm sure they do. But I wonder if they can be held accountable should I develope diabetes or something. They do practically force food upon us and expect us to eat a few times what the average pulangis' (white boy) stomach can hold. They are great people though.

Anyway, things are looking up here in Redwood City. We are expecting to have to cancel that little girls baptism but thanks to the wonderful members we have other people to work with. There was a part member family that recently had a new born and the members, props to the relief society, took over and provided meals and baby clothes and all that jazz and now the father is interested in taking the lessons and coming to church and the mother is interested in becoming active again. So really everyone benefits and us missionaries just get to piggy back on the success of the awesome ward. Christ like service is where it is all at. I'm really looking forward to getting to work with this family and hopefully my companion and I will be able to find some people on our own and show that we aren't totally dependent on the ward. Though that's not a bad thing.

I hope everyone is doing well and enjoying the summer. How is the summer in Oregon so far?

Sincerely, Elder Miller

Some Quotes

In Fletch's last letter to me he included some funny quotes he's been keeping that his companions have said:

"Freak! I feel like deaf people can feel the spirit way better than non-deaf people"
"I know...but she's like a nice witch"
"And where does the meatball come in?"
"Could you please not rub my missionaries."
"Come on, I can hug you in your chair or are you going to stand up and hug me like a man?"
"Did you throw that piece of bread away? It's like 10 inches thick! Just cut that side off. Someone will eat it, they won't know!"

Fletcher also is trying to set me up with his companions older brother. At first I was skeptical but he sounds like he has some nice points.

Hello Everybody,

This past week was good for my companion and I. We had a tentative baptism scheduled for a nine year old girl whose aunt and uncle are members and we are trying to get the parents ready as well for baptism. I was counting on the baptism to be postponed and it was. The girl was really unsure about that particular date in the first place cause her dad told her that he'd be on call for work and might miss her baptism so he convinced her to reschedule it and we are kind of glad that that happened cause we want them to be baptized as a family cause ultimately that will work out better in the long run considering prolonged activity but in Preach My Gospel it tells that baptism should not be post poned just to wait for other family members to get on board. So as missionaries we couldn't really enact what we really wanted to happen. We couldn't tell her to wait cause that goes against our guidelines. It's correct that baptism should never be put off and the reason is that some missionaries in the past have tried to get people to wait until they get their family members on board as well and in the process they lose everyone even the person that was ready from the start. I felt along those lines but wasn't too worried about it. I figured that she would want to wait and will ulitimately feel more comfortable when her parents join her and she will be the driving force for the parents to eventually come along. So the girl is rescheduled for the 30th of this month and we are really pushing to get her parents with it as well.

On Sunday we were lucky to have our new mission president speak in our ward and actually join us in attending the ward counsel beforehand. The problem with it all is that my companion and I had not really been aware that we were supposed to speak alongside our mission president and so we had no material planned. We both gave very poor talks that were shorter than the average youth speaker and our mission president had to revert to telling some stories in order to take up all the time we left on the clock. I think it worked out for the best. Everyone loved the stories and his talk and they hopefully forgot about us entirely.

One of our investigators just seems to remember everything about sports especially local sports and players. We brought a less active young man with us to teach an investigator and this less active Tongan guy just so happens to be a really good running back and has a few full ride scholarships to BYU and other schools. He comes from a high school that was our investigators rival high school growing up. But he got talking about a bunch of players that are now big. Apparrantly Tom Brady and Barry Bonds came from his high school. And there is another local high school where Dana Carvey graduated. I just find that interesting and am trying to think if I know of anyone famous from my high school.

Well that is about it. Oh, anyone who regularly writes me letters be aware that president Watkins has changed the policy requesting that all mail is sent through the mission office. He now wishes us to just have our mail sent directly to our addresses. So if you'd like to write me then here is my address. 450 Redwood Ave. Apt. 20 Redwood City, CA
94061. So the only issue arises if I get transferred which shouldn't be for a while but I'll tell people to stop mailing me if I sense a transfer is getting imminant.

Have a wonderful week everyone,

Sincerely Elder Miller