September 12, 2011

Dear family and friends,

        Things have been going pretty good. Rafael has been coming to church like always, but we recently found out that he is actually planning on moving this week to the stake right next to ours, so he won't be too far away, but we won't be able to teach him anymore or anything like that. We had a lesson with Rafael's mom, but she still doesn't want to read the Book of Mormon or pray about it and she knows that if she does, she'll know if Rafael needs to be baptized, but she hasn't even done that first step. I hope that everything goes well with him.

      Byron didn't come to church mainly because he didn't have a ride and we couldn't find anybody to give him a ride. Jose Garcia also recently told us that he's not really interested in having us keep coming over because he feels more comfortable with the religion that he's been growing up in. We also had Lurdes and Pamela come to church yesterday, which was really good, but the other daughter Giovana didn't come because she was sleeping, I think.

We also had Jose Flores come to church and it was funny because his friend Edgar Cortes lets him stay at his apartment and when we went over to check up on them last night, Edgar said that based on Jose's past of drinking and doing drugs, he never expected that Jose would change this much and come to church. But he did and we can see that he has a really strong desire to follow God and do what's right.

We also have an investigator named Marlon that caught on the street the English Elders that live with us and he said that he wanted to come back to church. So sure enough, we had a really good lesson with him on Saturday and he came to church yesterday. Marlon was taught some of the lessons when he was 13 or 14 years old (he's 21 now) and he said that he wanted to be retaught the lessons and go to church.

     So we have been having really good weather as of late. It's usually been in the 90's or 80's for the past few days and it even rained for about 30 minutes yesterday, so that was really good. We went to the temple for the first time in about 2 months this past Thursday and that was good. We couldn't go last transfer because they were doing some cleaning in it, I think.

     My birthday was really good. I did get the package. We didn't really do anything special on my birthday. I think the only special thing was that my companion gave me a penny and another English Elder in our apartment gave me 3 pennies.

     That's cool that you guys are going to the Grand Canyon for your anniversary. To be honest, when I went there, it was really early in the morning when I went, and so I don't know exactly where I went, but it was all really beautiful. I'm sure you'll love it.

     So you wanted to know who our mission president was and it's Michael Neider. He's from Tyhee, Idaho and he used to be the 2nd counselor in the General Young Men's Presidency. The senior center was open today, but all throughout September it will only start to be open at 2:00, so we'll just keep coming here to the chapel to email. Our PEC meetings on Sunday are okay. We go in and we tell them about our investigators, but they usually don't do anything about it or offer help. I think our ward mission leader helps out a lot, though. He's usually there if we need help with any emergencies or if we want him to come to a lesson.

      So things are going pretty good over here. We're starting to get a lot of investigators again that want to learn more again, and so it's getting us excited. Elder Pirir said that he doesn't want to go home because he wants to see how all of our investigators are progressing. Well, I don't have much time left, but if I need anything, I'll tell you.

I love you!
Elder Meiners

[To see Dan's pictures go to:  http://learningtogetalong.blogspot.com/2011/09/daniel-in-nevada.html#links ]