Elder Daniel Meiners

Dear family and friends,

          This week has been pretty good. Everything went well for DeeAnn's baptism on Saturday and she was confirmed yesterday. I'm sure that she will also be a great member and asset to the Church. She actually lives in the Needles' ward boundaries, but she said that she plans on moving into our ward within the next month.

A few days ago we saw Tamara and she's going through a really rough time with trying to divorce her husband and still trying to take care of her kids physically and mentally, so we tried to give her a little bit of counsel. We still haven't seen Nikki this past week, but she did come to church (along with Tamara and her kids) and we plan on teaching her sometime this week.

We did get a chance to talk to Joseph M---  yesterday with his wife Leilani, though. However, Leilani just asked us a ton of questions about why we needed the Book of Mormon and some "peculiar beliefs about the Mormons" that we don't even teach investigators (quite frankly) because it would be more than they could comprehend at that time). So we just answered her questions the best that we could

We also had a lesson with one of Coral's friends this week (Coral is Rex's wife). So Coral came with us to teach her friend Rochelle, and I think that the lesson turned out really well.

           Josh Furr (our recent convert) is having a rough time with his life, to say the least. He's living according to gospel standards, but it seems like he's living life day by day because of how much his feet hurt. On April 16th, they'll start doing preparations on his feet so that he can have surgery right after, but until then he's just enduring. It's hard for him to read the scriptures because he's really slow and can't understand most of the words and he doesn't come to church anymore because he just complains about his pain the whole time. And then on top of that, Amanda was in the hospital this week because she had a blood clot in her left leg and it made her foot swell up really big. So that's their situation and if you guys could pray for them, that would be great.

           We had a mission conference this week where Bro. Lee Donaldson from the Missionary Department came and gave us a couple trainings. He also mentioned a couple of mission changes that will happen throughout the next month. Most of them are logistical, but some of them are changes like district meeting for our district will be on Thursdays instead of Tuesdays. Also, each individual zone is no longer allowed to meet up unless it's a zone conference or interviews with the mission president.

            We've tried a slightly different tactic at nighttime and I think that it works out pretty well. If we have nothing to do, we think of a member that we don't know too well or know at all and we visit them to introduce ourselves and get to know them for a few minutes. We usually don't try to stay for longer than 30 minutes, but it helps the members know who we are and that we care about them. We also usually invite them to have us over dinner to get to know them more and share a spiritual message when we're done. We've been doing that the past week and I think it works.

            So to answer your question, our ward is mostly English (they're thinking about having Spanish translation for any Spanish people that show up, but they usually don't) and we teach mostly in English. We only have one investigator that we're teaching in Spanish, but it's good because Elder Smith also speaks Spanish.

           That's great that Julia got her Personal Progress award. I remember that I had everything passed off on my Duty to God and that my priest booklet has Bishop Nuss' signature on it, but I was never presented the award because I only had one week because of my transition from Philmont to BYU and it just didn't get around. I wonder if I'll still get it...?

           That's also cool that Andrea got to see a Broadway show in New York. How come I never got to do that when I was in the musicals? haha

            I think that we could always use more people to teach, but I guess we should be happy with what we've got also. We're always trying to do our best and I know that we just have to keep doing what we're supposed to and work hard to find those people that are ready. That's it for now. I'll let you know if I need anything.

I love you!

Elder Meiners

Dear family and friends,

          This week was pretty good. We had everything go well for Damian and Chardonnay's baptism this past weekend. Since they were going to be out of town the next 2 Sundays, we had them confirmed there at the baptismal service.

If all go as planned this week, we should be having DeeAnn's baptism this week also (in fact, this will probably be the fastest investigator that I've seen get ready for baptism on my mission as far as teaching them and coming to church).

 We are also teaching Nikki and also Tamara and her kids, but we haven't had the chance to teach them this week.

          So my new companion's name is Elder Smith and he's been out for about 8 months and is from New York State. We were actually in the same district in Monte Bello in Las Vegas (my previous area) and he's stayed there ever since I left there. In fact, he was one of the missionaries that replaced me in my area back when Elder Pirir and I got double transferred in September. So now he's with me and things are going good.

          So you guys probably wouldn't guess who we met this week. So his name is Joseph  and he just recently started coming back to church and he even brought his nonmember wife, Leilani. When I said that I was from Maryland, he asked me if I knew the M-----s and I said yes. He then said that Bob M---- is his uncle and that Bob knows him as "Billy". It's amazing how small of a world this is and he said that we could come by and teach him and his family the lessons.

          We're also teaching two older ladies named Dorothy and Donna. They're neighbors of a member that lives in Bullhead and we had a really good lesson with them. So we're excited for them and to see how they'll progress.

          We had a crazy experience happen with Elder McClure in our district in Needles. He went "hiking" (more like rock climbing) on a mountain with his companion and a member on P-Day. He got all the way to the top and started to head his way down when he had a stumble of about 30 feet at around 2:00. He had left his companion before he got to the top, so his companion didn't know where he was for about an hour. They eventually found him, but because of where he had fallen to and how awkward the place was, they couldn't reach him and he couldn't get up on his own. The member called 911 and his companion called Sis. Neider and eventually they had rescue teams and helicopters trying to search for them and then get to him. Again, because of how awkward the place was, the rescue team couldn't even get to him until about 11:00pm. They evaluated the situation and decided that it would be too dangerous to attempt getting him off the mountain until Tuesday morning. When morning came, he was flown to the Sunrise Hospital in Las Vegas and was soon discharged. It turned out that all he had was lots of scrapes and scratches, about 8-10 stitches, and Jessie (our recent convert) also found a broken toe. But considering how dangerous his fall was, he's lucky to be alive and have that little injuries. He's up and walking with a cane because he has a pretty big limp, and so he's back and working at Needles now. But that was one of the crazy stories of the week.

           So that's all that I can think of for this week. I'll probably contact Pres. Neider to see if I can have permission to look at registration and what kind of classes I want to take (by the way, I have no idea what classes I want to take) because I know that registration is coming up on April 2. But if I need anything, I might call you guys or call the Registration office just to make sure I've got everything settled. I'll let you know if I need anything else.

I love you!

Elder Meiners

Dear family and friends,

        Things have been going really good this week. Everything went great for Cynthia's baptism this past weekend and she was confirmed yesterday at church. She's actually really excited to get some of the temple work done for her family because she was requesting her membership record number so that she can go online to do family history and also do baptisms for the dead. I think that all of the members are excited for her especially with how far she's progressed and how much she participates in everything, so that'll be great.

 We have Damian and Chardonnay's baptism coming up this Saturday

 and then we also have DeeAnn's baptism coming up the week after hopefully. In fact, we have quite a few new investigators that came from Dr. Stout's office in some way.

        First, we have Nikki that has been working for Dr. Stout for about a month. She grew up in an LDS family, but she stopped going to church when she was about 12 years old, and she was never baptized. She's had a couple of brain surgeries, so her memory fails her sometimes about things that we've taught. She said that it was a miracle when she was hired because she had applied to around 100 places and nobody would hire her because of the struggles that she was going through. We recently set her for baptism this week on April 14th.

Also, we have another family that are patients of Dr. Stout and they said that "the wind blew them in to his office" when they were also having some struggles. The mom's name is Tamara and she has two kids, Suede and Kai. Tamara was in an abusive relationship with her husband and so now she's trying to get a divorce and find solace somewhere else. We were also able to see them this week and set them for baptism on April 24th. So right now we have about 7 people set and all of these 7 people came to church yesterday!

        That's funny how you guys went somewhere else for church because the water pump was broken. That happened to our chapel a couple of months ago, but we only had sacrament meeting and that was it. That's good to hear that Grandpa Jim is doing a lot better and is recovering quickly.

        We did a lesson with Jessie and Nick this week about temples and how we can prepare
ourselves to go there.
We've also been trying to see Josh more frequently because his feet are always in pain and has a hard time walking around and coming to church.

So what's happening with transfers is I'm staying in the area and Elder Kynaston is off somewhere else. We'll know tomorrow exactly where he's going. But I'll be getting a new companion and I guess that the Lord has more for me to do in this area. It seems more real that I might be finishing my mission here in this area because after this next transfer, I'll only have one left.

        Well, I think that's all I have for this week. I'll let you guys know if I need anything.


I love you!


Elder Meiners

Dear family and friends,

        This week has been pretty good for us. We had Jessie and Nick get baptized together on Saturday, and everything turned out great. They were confirmed yesterday at church and we're really excited to see the progress that they're making.

 Cynthia is still planning on getting baptized this Saturday on the 10th, and everything is practically ready.
Damian and Chardonay are still set also on being baptized on the 17th, but we didn't have a chance to see them this week.
We had another lesson with DeeAnn this week and we taught her the Plan of Salvation and everything went great again. She wasn't able to come to church this week because she was sick, but we did have Cynthia come to church.
We taught another one of Dr. Stout's employees yesterday at their house. Her name is Tanci and she brought her daughter Courtney and we had a really good lesson with them.

         I think that a little bit of our work is diminishing again. This may be in part due to transfers being next week. We've both been in the area for 3 transfers and so one of us is for sure leaving this time. I'll tell you what's happening next week if I'm staying in the area again or if I'm leaving.

         We had a dinner with one of our investigators Michelle Montana this week, and that was pretty good. It's a little hard to see them now because they work so often. We found out that one of our old investigators that worked at KFC for a while, Michelle Padden, got evicted from her house, so we have no idea where she is.     

         Sometimes we'll get a call during the week from members to fix this or fix that and Elder Kynaston is a lot better with those kind of tasks. For example, he's fixed a flat tire, a sprinkler system, we dug a trench a while ago, built a fence, we've done all sorts of things.

         Well, sorry I don't really have that much to say this week. Maybe I'll have more to say next week.


I love you!


Elder Meiners