Dear family,
I saw some of the wedding pictures and it looks like you guys had fun. You all looked good, too. I'm probably not going to send you a picture of myself to put in the wedding pictures because it seems really awkward and plus it wouldn't be telling the truth. I'm starting to get into more of the hang of things as I continue to learn from the past few days and it's going well, I think.

I don't know exactly what city I'm in right now, but there's a big hill and if you go up the hill, you can see the strip at a far distance. I actually learned this week at a meeting that missionaries aren't allowed to go to the strip and if they do, they'll be sent home. Don't worry, I'm not going home. Anyway, I'm in the Los Feliz ward in the Sunrise Stake and my first Sunday was okay. Everything was in Spanish, and sometimes it was hard for me to understand everything, but I could usually get the flow of things if I was paying attention. There was another Sister in our district that was English-speaking for 6 months and now they want her to be Spanish-speaking, so we're kind of in the same boat in terms of speaking and understanding Spanish. She and I had to bear our testimonies in Spanish, which wasn't that bad, I don't think, maybe it was.

So yeah, an investigator just gave me a bike that they had. The only problem I saw with it was that the brake pads in front sort of skid against the bide when I ride it. But when I went on exchanges with our district leader, Elder Quito, on Monday, he said I could just let off the brake pads altogether, and so that works fine. Also on Monday, we visited an investigator named Luis Lopez who hadn't been coming to church because he was always out with friends. And then when we went over, he said his car got stolen. So basically Elder Quito had us turn to 1 Nephi where they were on the ship going to the promised land and that he didn't murmur against God.

We have 2 investigators with baptismal dates and one is on the way. We've set Pablo Pacheco for the 21st of August and he was brought to us by some other missionaries that said that his girlfriend attended church at their ward. He's a really great guy and I think he has a genuine interest to learn more and be baptized. Pablo came to morning church and that was good because he still needs to be fellowshipped a little.

We also have Yolanda Guardia who is set for the 4th of September. I don't remember much about her background story, but she is also really interested and she has 2 kids. We went over the 1st lesson briefly and talked about baptism. She didn't come to church, but she said that she would this Sunday.

Arlene is the one that we're still waiting to set a date for. She has a child and is trying to take care of a warrant issue. Her court date is on the 23rd of September and so we can't set her until that date. She sometimes has problems when she doesn't read her scriptures and it shows a lot. When she does read her scriptures, she's more happy and optimistic, but now she's not. She came to night church, which is just sacrament meeting, but she really needs to come to morning church, but her dad won't let her for some reason.

I should take some pictures of myself because I've gotten seriously tan and I have a huge watch-tan that I got in just a week. I'm starting to blend in now, but it won't be for too long. Oh, I just remembered. My bike that I'm using doesn't have any kind of rubber to cushion my hands; it's just metal, so do you think that you could send me my biking gloves? That would be nice. I think that's it at the moment. I'll tell you if anything else comes up.

Elder Meiners III