Monday, March 25, 2012

Dear family and friends,

          This week has been pretty good. Everything went well for DeeAnn's baptism on Saturday and she was confirmed yesterday. I'm sure that she will also be a great member and asset to the Church. She actually lives in the Needles' ward boundaries, but she said that she plans on moving into our ward within the next month.

A few days ago we saw Tamara and she's going through a really rough time with trying to divorce her husband and still trying to take care of her kids physically and mentally, so we tried to give her a little bit of counsel. We still haven't seen Nikki this past week, but she did come to church (along with Tamara and her kids) and we plan on teaching her sometime this week.

We did get a chance to talk to Joseph M---  yesterday with his wife Leilani, though. However, Leilani just asked us a ton of questions about why we needed the Book of Mormon and some "peculiar beliefs about the Mormons" that we don't even teach investigators (quite frankly) because it would be more than they could comprehend at that time). So we just answered her questions the best that we could

We also had a lesson with one of Coral's friends this week (Coral is Rex's wife). So Coral came with us to teach her friend Rochelle, and I think that the lesson turned out really well.

           Josh Furr (our recent convert) is having a rough time with his life, to say the least. He's living according to gospel standards, but it seems like he's living life day by day because of how much his feet hurt. On April 16th, they'll start doing preparations on his feet so that he can have surgery right after, but until then he's just enduring. It's hard for him to read the scriptures because he's really slow and can't understand most of the words and he doesn't come to church anymore because he just complains about his pain the whole time. And then on top of that, Amanda was in the hospital this week because she had a blood clot in her left leg and it made her foot swell up really big. So that's their situation and if you guys could pray for them, that would be great.

           We had a mission conference this week where Bro. Lee Donaldson from the Missionary Department came and gave us a couple trainings. He also mentioned a couple of mission changes that will happen throughout the next month. Most of them are logistical, but some of them are changes like district meeting for our district will be on Thursdays instead of Tuesdays. Also, each individual zone is no longer allowed to meet up unless it's a zone conference or interviews with the mission president.

            We've tried a slightly different tactic at nighttime and I think that it works out pretty well. If we have nothing to do, we think of a member that we don't know too well or know at all and we visit them to introduce ourselves and get to know them for a few minutes. We usually don't try to stay for longer than 30 minutes, but it helps the members know who we are and that we care about them. We also usually invite them to have us over dinner to get to know them more and share a spiritual message when we're done. We've been doing that the past week and I think it works.

            So to answer your question, our ward is mostly English (they're thinking about having Spanish translation for any Spanish people that show up, but they usually don't) and we teach mostly in English. We only have one investigator that we're teaching in Spanish, but it's good because Elder Smith also speaks Spanish.

           That's great that Julia got her Personal Progress award. I remember that I had everything passed off on my Duty to God and that my priest booklet has Bishop Nuss' signature on it, but I was never presented the award because I only had one week because of my transition from Philmont to BYU and it just didn't get around. I wonder if I'll still get it...?

           That's also cool that Andrea got to see a Broadway show in New York. How come I never got to do that when I was in the musicals? haha

            I think that we could always use more people to teach, but I guess we should be happy with what we've got also. We're always trying to do our best and I know that we just have to keep doing what we're supposed to and work hard to find those people that are ready. That's it for now. I'll let you know if I need anything.

I love you!

Elder Meiners