Week 6: July 16, 2010

Dear family,

Today, our district worked on cleaning the temple because it's not ready to go just yet because people have been cleaning it for a few weeks. We got to work inside one of the chapels. We all changed into white scrubs and got to work. I got to dust the walls, wash out dust from the edges between the carpet and wall, and our favorite: work on the pews. The big job there was detailing and so we got toothpicks and scraped of the scuff marks near the bottom of the pews and got Q-tips to dust out the little corners on the benches and in the little edges on the sides of the pews. It kind of reminded me of when James and I spent 6 days painting the basement, but it was 3 days of painting and 3 days of details because Mom would always find something she didn't like or something that seemed miniscule.

Yesterday, we got the opportunity to speak to Spanish natives just as missionaries. We didn't give a lesson or anything, we just shared our favorite scriptures and mostly listened to how they spoke the language. One of the elders that was teaching us the Plan of Salvation was Elder Rangel from Venezuela and when he wasn't going slow for us, he spoke so fast I couldn't even pick out any words.

I think my habit of saving candy and money and things like that has really paid off. We get $6 every week and so most Elders just blow it on the vending machines or ice cream. But I never bought anything like that and so when I swiped my card to show my district how much money I had, it said I had $31.97. They were all pretty amazed at how little I spent and how much money they could have.

The gym is going to be closed the whole time we're here from now because they're going to put the bleachers back in the gym. We've been using plastic chairs for our Devotionals and Firesides. But I'm glad because we really need to get outside onto the field more because we're always inside every day. Our district usually plays softball (because baseball for some reason is too dangerous) when we're outside, so I've started to play with them. I'm playing right field again, just like the 4 years I played right field when I played for Savage.

I'm glad that it's gotten a little cooler in Maryland. It can get pretty sticky there. I'm glad I didn't adjust too much to the MD weather when I was back for the little bit from college.

That's cool that you guys will be a host family for Youth Conference again. I remember when you hosted James and Alex and some of his other friends for Youth Conference a long time ago.

In fact, our district got a letter this week saying that our whole district will be host missionaries for the new missionaries coming in next Wednesday. You may've remembered right when you dropped me off, there was a missionary waiting for me and he took my luggage for me and showed me to my room; I'll be that missionary on Wednesday. So that'll be fun.

That's it from me.

Elder Meiners