Elder Daniel Meiners

                    According to missionary tradition, Daniel is burning a shirt at his 1year mark.
Dear family and friends,

This week has been pretty good. We haven't been teaching that many people as of lately. Marco is set for baptism for this week and I hope everything goes well with that. Rafael is also doing really good. We saw him on Saturday and we got to set him for baptism on July 16th. He's awesome and I think that he's ready for baptism. We haven't been able to see Gabby in at least a week and a half, so I don't really know what's going on there. She hasn't been answering her calls or answering our texts, and if she does pick up the phone, she hangs up like right after. We think that maybe her husband is starting to get more involved with the situation, but we really don't know that much.

We also have an investigator named Juan Carlos Pina, but I haven't really talked about him that much because he has cancer and so often times he's too sick to have a lesson with us. The reason why I bring him up now is because his cancer has gotten so bad that he's on his deathbed. We gave him a priesthood blessing on Sunday, but we think that he might die any day now. His wife is a member, but she goes over to the West mission for church because she has more friends there or something like that.

So the Relief Society president in our ward gives free haircuts to missionaries, so I thought that I might as well get one and it looks really good.

On Tuesday, it was Elder Cunha's birthday, so we ate like 3 times that day. We went to a Chinese buffet after our district meeting, and then we went to Marco's house because we thought that we were going to do service, but we didn't, and so we ate some more. And then in an hour, we were supposed to have dinner with a member and so by the end of that day, I was stuffed.

I was also wondering if you could put enough money on my Chevy Chase credit card that I could buy a new bike. I'm probably not going to buy one this week, but my bike has been having a couple of problems, and if by some chance it broke altogether, then I'd be left without a bike and that wouldn't be good.

So President Neider just came in yesterday, and he's probably stressed out right now. We're going to have interviews with him this Saturday to get to know him and then next week will be the week that he figures out transfers because he's the one that's going to do them for next transfer. That's why this transfer is 7 weeks long and it's ending on the 12th of July (if it was 6 weeks it would end this coming Tuesday on the 5th, but that wouldn't give President enough time for transfers).

So as far as I know, we're not doing anything super special for the 4th of July. Our apartment was thinking about going on the roof of our apartment to see the fireworks, but we don't know for sure yet.

That's pretty much it from me. Not a whole lot has happened this week. I'll tell you if I need anything else.




I love you!




Elder Meiners




P.S. I did send some pictures, finally. The first one is my 1 year mark and me burning a shirt. The second one was us going to McDonald's and I got 4 burgers and my district wanted me to stack them on top of each other and eat it like that, but I didn't. I only ate 3 of them and it was separately. The third one was Hna. Becerra's sodas that she has because she sells them (she's also the one that gave me my haircut). And the last one is when we drew with Expo markers all over Cao's apartment window (the same one where we helped clean her apartment).

Dear family and friends,

Things are going pretty good with me. Gabby is still in the same situation where her husband won't let her get baptized, so we've been praying as a district that her husband's heart might be softened and for all of our investigators that need special help.

Marco is still doing okay. We had a lesson with him yesterday and he had a lot of questions that didn't necessarily matter or apply to anything that we were teaching, so we tried to tell him that he has to walk before he can run and that he should understand the basics of the Gospel before he tries to have more knowledge.

We haven't had the chance to teach Rafael, but he did come to church last week and so that was really good. We hope that he can be able to progress more and be set for baptism. We also have this one guy named Ruben who was a referral from another zone and he lives up by Las Vegas Blvd. He also came to church this past week, but sometimes he seems a little out of it (maybe drugs), so we'll see how that goes this week.

It's kind of interesting how you said that Andrea got really worried about her iPod touch because Marco's sister was offering Elder Cunha a 32GB iPod touch for $50. But then he found out that it was locked, so he asked a lot of people how he could unlock it, but nobody knew until he went to a member's house. But then it only temporarily worked for about 4 hours and then it was locked again. So he tried restoring and updating everything, it still didn't work, so finally he just gave it back. He wanted to buy it so bad, but it was too much trouble for him.

This week at church there was a big argument in one of our classes because the teacher was teaching about obedience and then somehow it led into "God doesn't punish people" and so Elder Cunha stood up in the class and said that that wasn't true and a lot of people started arguing against it, and the other missionaries tried to have Elder Cunha's back by showing them scriptures like D&C 95:1, but the WHOLE class was just going against us, and we just let them believe what they wanted.

I told you about the family that all works at McDonald's a couple weeks ago. They all live in our apartment complex and since we went over and it was hot, dark, smelly, and messy when we went over, and so we offered to help them clean their whole apartment. We spent like 2 hours just cleaning their kitchen, doing the dishes, organizing all of their clothes, taking out the trash, and it felt a lot better. I only realized on my mission that cleaning your room or your apartment has a LOT of spiritual significance to it.

The new mission president, President Neider is supposed to be coming in within the next week or two, so that'll be exciting.

Everybody thinks it's super hot, but it's not that bad as long as you drink water every so often and if you have AC in your apartment. And plus you get kind of used to it after a while.

So I heard about the good news! It sounds like Kara is doing good with her new baby and that everything went pretty quickly! Thank you for the pictures. I'll try to send some pictures soon.

I also heard that Andrea got into marching band and that's great also! It'll be a lot of work, but you can do it!

So I guess that's it from me this week. I'll tell you if I need anything.

I love you!

Elder Meiners

Dear family and friends,

This week has been good. Gabby is still doing pretty good, although we haven't had any lessons with her this past week. However, she did come to a ward party last week and it seems like she had fun with that. We also gave her a little bit of the food that was leftover from the party because she is starting to run out of food and money, and neither her or her husband have a job. We've been trying to pray really hard that they can make it each week. Marco is also doing pretty good and now we're starting to teach his cousin's son, Rafael. He's 17 years old and he seems really interested, too. If he's there, he usually actively participates in the lessons. We're going to try and set Rafael for baptism the next time we have a lesson with him.

So this past week, it got pretty hot. I think yesterday it was 112 degrees and on Thursday last week, our AC broke. It was 88 degrees in our apartment and we were sweating pretty bad. We told the apartment office to fix it on Thursday, but they didn't fix it until Saturday, so hopefully everything's working now. Also on Friday, I felt kind of sick when I woke up and plus I had blisters all over my feet, so for a couple days it hurt to walk, but I'm getting better.

The other missionaries in our apartment, the English missionaries, were having a couple of arguments last week, and then there was a pretty big argument on Saturday. I probably won't tell you everything that happened, but they called President and they had an emergency exchange for a couple of hours that day. Then around lunch time, they were supposed to meet back and have a companionship inventory, but only say the positive things. Luckily, my companion and I haven't had any fights like that. I'm telling you all this because when they get into an argument, the whole apartment is affected because then nobody feels like they can talk to them.

Yesterday when I was on exchanges, we found some CD's on the ground. Usually we didn't think anything about it because usually stuff like that is cracked or broken in some way, but we went and put them in the CD player of the district leader's car, and it was some mariachi music, and it was in perfect condition! Obviously, we can't listen to any of that stuff while we're on our mission, but I think it's kind of funny to say that I now have some mariachi music.

I'm going to ask my mission president if I can do any names at the temple the next time I go. The only thing is that we can only go to the temple every 6 weeks, so we have to wait another 6 weeks until I can go, so I'll ask about that.

Well, I don't have too much time left, so I'll let you know if I need anything.




I love you!




Elder Meiners

Dear family and friends,

This week has been pretty good. We saw Gabby a couple times this week and so we saw the movie The Testaments and also Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration. She really liked both of them and I think that she knows what the movies were trying to show and why it was important, which is the good thing. We also have another investigator named Marco who's 24 years old that apparently took some of the lessons in Mexico and his Mom is Mormon and his dad is Catholic. So he knows a little bit, and both he and Gabby came to church this past week, so that was good.

Today was the first time that I've been to the temple since January because if you're in an out of valley zone, you can't go to the temple. But now that I'm back in Las Vegas, I could go and it was good to be back and be able to feel the Spirit that was there and be able to renew our covenants.

On Saturday, it was really busy and hectic because there were 3 families in our ward that got evicted out of their homes and so we tried to help them move out all of their stuff in a certain amount of time. It's kind of a crazy story, but they were all paying their rent on time to the landlord, but the landlord wasn't making those payments to the bank because he was keeping it for himself and so the bank was wondering where their rent money was and so they just evicted the families. We helped one of the families on Saturday and then we helped another family on Tuesday. On Saturday, it was also the first time that I went to a funeral, and it just so happened to be in Spanish because I think it was a Spanish member that died and so they asked a couple missionaries in our district to give "speeches". Luckily, I didn't have to give one.

I think James would be proud of me. My companion was getting pretty good at chess in our apartment against the English Elders because we have a big chess set on our table. And so he wanted me to play him in chess because he thought he could beat me, but I beat him twice in a row. I never even thought that I could be good at chess, but I guess I am.

On Monday, we had interviews with President Christensen, except it was a little different because it was in our apartment! So we had to clean up a lot and have our suits on and everything and we even had the interviews in our room. While President was doing the interviews, Sis. Christensen showed us how we can clean the collars on our white shirts and shine our shoes. She said that when she used our bathroom, it was the first time that she had ever used a missionary bathroom because usually they're so dirty.

So it's getting a little hotter, probably not as hot as Maryland, though. Actually, sometimes I wear long sleeve shirts because that way you won't get sunburn on your arms. Since it's getting to the summer season, Sis. Christensen said that for Fast Sundays you can drink water just so that you don't pass out or anything, so that's what we did this past week. It was kind of hot to be biking around on Fast Sunday, so we stopped at different member's houses for water.

So it sounds like Kara's baby will be born pretty soon! I saw her picture and she is getting pretty big, haha. Whenever it does come, just make sure that you guys send me some pictures.

I'll try to send you guys a picture of the shirt I burned for my 1 year mark. Don't worry, it was a shirt that I couldn't wear anyway because it didn't have a front pocket.

So Erika and Tyler are working at Quality Associates? Is that the one that Julia worked at? And which one was the one that Kara, Erika, and James all worked at? That kind of reminds me of a family we have in our ward. There's a girl named Cao that works at McDonald's, and so does her older sister Alexis, and so does her younger brother Poe, and so does her husband, Dominic. So they have like 4 family members working at the same McDonald's. I just thought it would be funny if we did the same thing.

I would hope that my room is clean enough for them to use. I've been gone for more than a year now, so that should be enough time to clean up any messes that I left.

As for applying for school, I still have like no idea what I want to do or how I want to do it. I think what Mom suggested sounds pretty good because I guess I can't even apply for the School of Music at BYU until January, so that'll give me at least something to do. But other than that, I haven't given anything much thought.

I guess that's all I can think of. I don't need any more shirts or anything, I still have like 13 left. I'll tell you if I need anything.

I love you!

Elder Meiners

Dear family and friends,
Yes, today is my 1 year mark! It's definitely a little different seeing all the missionaries that have gone home and the ones that have come in since I've been on my mission because now people are going to start asking me how many months I have left instead of how long I've been out. But that's still really far away. I'm now going to repeat all of the holidays that I just went through and I'm probably going to have a lot of memories come back from this past year of what happened.

Anyway, so we don't really have too many people in our teaching pool right now. We have an investigator named Gabby and she and her 3 kids have almost been taught everything, it's just that she has a boyfriend that is living with her and they either have to get married or break up. Gabby wants to get married, but one of the problems, though, is that the boyfriend isn't sure if he wants to marry her and she can't break up with him because she depends on him for money. So we're still trying to work that out with the bishopric about how they can help.

Oh yeah, I did fix my brakes. I guess I had a blonde moment and didn't figure to actually click it on. But then one of them was only half working, so I went and fixed that up a little bit because our apartment has a couple of tools to fix bikes at least. And then for my flat tire, I tried putting some patches on it, but it was kind of stressful because they weren't working and the holes were too big anyway to patch up and so I just went and bought myself a new tube altogether. So now my bike is pretty much fixed and it's probably as good as it's going to get.

The Monte Bello ward is about the size of a normal ward, probably around 200 or so people. That's the only ward that I cover. Elder Cunha is really cool and I'm getting along with him really well. He said that the Monte Bello ward sometimes doesn't teach everything correctly in the Gospel Principles class and so we have to make sure that we're paying attention to make sure that they're not teaching anything wrong. I've heard on more than one occasion that missionaries would try and tell the teacher what was right and that the whole class would try and argue against it.

We live in an actual apartment with just us 4, and it gets a little dramatic because sometimes the English Elders would argue with each other but nothing major has happened yet. My bed is kind of ghetto because there wasn't a comforter or a thick blanket to use when I got there, so I opened up a sleeping bag completely and I just use that as my blanket and it actually works pretty well. Our apartment complex is a little run down but it's kind of funny because it's still better than most of the other complexes, which aren't that great. The English Elders sometimes get annoyed because there's so many Hispanic people and we offered to teach them how to do a street contact in Spanish, but they kept refusing because they thought it would take too much time. So yeah, there's a lot of Spanish people. Oh yeah, Memorial Day was just another day for us, haha. Nothing special happened.

So our mission has also instituted a new system of obedience starting yesterday. Before, we would only judge ourselves on how well we obey the morning schedule (up at 6:30, exercise for 30 minutes, 5 min. showers, personal study by 7:30, companionship study by 9, and leave by 11). If we obeyed all of that, we would get 100% for the day, but now, all of that is only worth 40%. The other 60% is 20% of having lunch under an hour, 20% of leaving dinner before 6 and proselyting from 6-9, and 20% of planning using all of the planning guidelines. It's going to be tough because now the bar is raised and we have to try harder to get 100%, but now it's more black and white and when you follow the rules, you get more blessings.

So yeah, everything is going pretty well. Elder Cunha and I are having a lot of fun and we enjoy each other. I'll tell you if I need anything.


I love you!


Elder Meiners