Week 13 September 2, 2010

Dear family,
Thanks for wishing me an early Happy Birthday! We got to go to the Temple again because it was the day that our zone and a couple others could go again today. We usually only go once a transfer and today was that one day. The temple's in our boundaries. In fact, it's only about a 10 minute drive away from our apartment. There are some places where I bike and I can see the temple. I like what Brother Edwards said about the temple: "You can see the strip from the temple, but you can't see the temple from the strip." Somehow I know that's true because when I went to the strip before my mission, I wasn't even looking for the temple.
The stake I'm in is called the Sunrise Stake and the area that I'm serving in is pretty much like the suburbs. There's a ton of Spanish speaking people here, I'd say about 65-70% are Spanish. There was a missionary that came out the same day as me and he's English Speaking and he's kind of disappointed that he doesn't know Spanish because there are so many of them. He asked me how you say "Do you speak English?" in Spanish and I just said "Habla Ingles?". I'm starting to understand a little more but it's still hard sometimes if they speak really fast.
Yolanda and Jose LaGuardia are still progressing toward baptism and they'll have an interview with Elder Pinto, the district leader, tomorrow so they can be baptized on Saturday. Luis Lopez is still having a hard time resisting the temptation to smoke and he's given in a couple times now but we're going to try and have some more members go out to teach him because he's getting baptized next Saturday and he needs to have quit smoking for at least a week. We also found this sweet investigator named Pedro Pacheco. We've only had one lesson with him so far and he said that he already knows that the Book of Mormon is true. He's really humble and has good questions to ask because I think he has a real desire to learn more. Nobody else is progressing that much
That's really cool that you got a new calling after all that time with helping with the buildings. So what does your new calling entail? I also just got the biking gloves today. I'm not sure if I'll still need them, but I'll just keep them for now. I've gotten quite a few compliments on the different tans I've been getting, haha.

I think that's it for now. I'll let you know if I need anything else.

Elder Meiners