November 25, 2010 Happy Birthday Cheri and Happy Thanksgiving

Dear family,


Well, we had our baptismal interviews for the Rojas family yesterday. The mom and dad both passed, but the zone leader that interviewed Christopher (the 8-year old) didn't pass him because he said that Christopher didn't know enough about the doctrine and that we should wait until Christopher's ready. Elder Boschi didn't think that that was a reason to fail an interview, especially for an 8-year old. How many 8-year olds are going to know and remember everything that we taught them? So I talked about it with President, and he gave us a couple of suggestions to consider.

 We came to the conclusion that we should still have the Rojas family get married this Saturday, but have the parents along with Christopher get baptized next week on the 4th of December. We thought it would be too little time to teach Christopher in just 2 days, so we'd have plenty of time to teach him in a week. That way, the family will all get baptized on the same day and we can also have one day specifically for the marriage and one day for the baptism. Elder Boschi referred to Preach My Gospel for help too, and it said that we shouldn't separate the family's baptism if possible.

We also have Jose LaGuardia still set for the 4th of December also. He's still doing great from what we can tell. He's been good at coming to church these past couple weeks.  There's going to be a lot of baptisms from our district on the 4th: 4 from our companionship, 4 from the Sisters, and at least 2 from Elder Arbizu and Gonzalez.

Having Elder Bowen come here last week was really awesome. He talked a lot about some deep doctrine stuff that not a lot of people know about. He talked about how the Church organization works and who becomes prophet when he dies and who has priesthood keys in the church. He also talked a lot about the oath and the covenant for priesthood holders and relating it to the Abrahamic covenant and who we really are. He said that once you know you are, you will act accordingly. And we all have blessings in store for us if we're willing to show obedience.

Thanksgiving sounds like it'll be pretty cool at the Hermosillo's house. We had sort of a Thanksgiving dinner yesterday, too at a member's house. We had turkey and mashed potatoes and all that. We've also been throwing a lot of stuff out that we don't need in our apartment. We had 2 days this past week where it was all devoted to cleaning up the apartment. The first one was for when Elder Bowen came and we thought that he might check some missionaries' apartment. The second one was for when we got our carpet cleaned on Monday and we had to get everything up off the ground. That was probably the first time that carpet's been cleaned in about 5 years, so that's good. I took some pictures of that and also us throwing off our old couch, an old bike frame, and an old table with 2 legs missing off our balcony. We got pretty lucky because the day that we had our carpet cleaned, we found 2 sofas that were in perfectly good condition sitting next to a dumpster to be thrown out, so we asked a member to help us pick them up and move them to our apartment real quick because we knew that those sofas wouldn't be there for too much longer. In fact, the trash people came yesterday, so if we would've waited till P-Day, they would've been gone.

There was also a baptism the Sisters had and there was a lot of family there, especially some in-laws that only spoke English, so they needed some missionaries to translate for the baptism. I was one of them, and then Elder Boschi was too scared and so he asked another member to do it for him. That was an experience to remember. I was only able to translate about half of what they were saying for an older couple sitting next to me. The wife was pretty nice about it, she said that anything was better than nothing, and the husband thanked me, too after.

 I also crashed for my first time on Monday. I was stopped at a dirt road intersection and then as I started to go, you put a lot of weight in the front as you start to go, but I did it right into a huge divet in the road and I flipped over the front of my bike. I'm okay now but Elder Boschi said that I fell pretty good.

It's been really cold this past week or so, but I think we're surviving. There's some snow on the top of some mountains to the west, but we don't have any snow down here. We finally put the heat on in our apartment because it's a unanimous vote now. Before, Elder Tuione said that he always sweats and is hot no matter what the temperature is, but today he said "Turn that mug on", so everybody's in agreement now. haha

Well, I think that's it. I'm doing pretty good over here, and we've actually started to pick up the area a little bit. I'll tell you all if I need anything else. Happy Thanksgiving! And Happy Birthday to Mom, Erika, and Andrea!


I love you!


Elder Meiners III