December 19, 2011

Dear family and friends,

          This week has been good. We finally got a chance to catch Rex on Sunday and so we got a hold of Pres. Willmore to do the interview and he just did it right there in church and everything got cleared up. So we're going to have Elder Parker finish the interview on Wednesday and then if everything goes well, we'll set him for the 31st of December or maybe January 1st because that's when Josh is planning on getting baptized.

Josh is doing really well; he came to church yesterday with his wife and we got to teach him some more this week. We taught repentance to him and he felt like he had truly repented of his drinking problem because that was one of the things that was taking over his life before we came into the area. We also finally got to meet Damian and Chardonay this week (some kids that we hadn't seen before because they were in LA until December). They seem like they already know a lot about the gospel and so we're planning on baptizing them within the next few weeks as long as their parents are in town (I think they live with their grandparents).  We also taught Christine and Michelle this week about the Word of Wisdom and they had a problem with everything on the list except for illegal drugs! But we explained to them why we have this law of health and the blessings that come from it and they said that they would follow it.

          This week we also had a leadership training meeting on Tuesday for our whole zone and so we all went down to Lake Havasu for the meeting and then after the meeting, we had a little bit of fun. We were decorating gingerbread houses, we had some musical numbers, and we even had a bell choir and sang some carols. After the meeting, the vehicle coordinator introduced us to our new car and it's a red 2012 Toyota Corolla, so it's brand new (the one that we had before was a 2008 Mazda 3). I think it's kind of funny how back home we have bought all mission cars. For example, the 2003 Toyota Corolla and now you also just bought a Chevy Malibu, which are pretty common in our mission. In fact, when I was in Central, I was driving a gray 2011 Chevy Malibu, so we have pretty new cars.

          At the leadership meeting, they just announced that we have permission to Skype home on Christmas. So I will probably Skype at around 2:00 or 2:30 Mountain time (4:00 or 4:30 Eastern time), so that's when I'm going to do it. Transfers didn't affect us at all this time. Elder Kynaston and I are both staying here. Elder Parker in our apartment will be getting a new missionary today and so he'll go to transfer conference and won't be back until about tomorrow night because of the new thing that they're doing.

          Our area is doing pretty well right now. We always see room for improvement and I think that now we'll be more motivated to work (not that we haven't been working before) since we'll be having a new missionary in our apartment. Well, I think that's all I have for this week. I'll be sending a Christmas card home and to other family members and so some of you might be getting Christmas cards within the next week or two. I'll let you know if I need anything. So Merry Christmas to all!

I love you!

Elder Meiners