August Photos

Bishop João and family

Making pastels. mmmmmmmm

One of my favorite families ever! 

Utah FC is now in Brazil!!

Baptism of Luis and Saria!

Saria, Abel, Luis and Cimara

Executive Priesthood Meeting

My buddy Sérgio!

Baptsims and Transfers!

What a whirlwind of a week! Of course the best part were the baptisms on Saturday! It was a really cool experience. I just love baptisms so much! It´s so rewarding to see people make this important decision in their lives, and to see how happy they always are after the baptism. So there were actually a total of 8 baptims in the city between the three wards on Saturday. Two were baptized in the morning, and 6 in the afternoon. In our ward, we had three - Luis and Saria and Iris. Iris was a ward baptism, and Luis and Saria were our investigators. They are such good kids, really smart. They really understood everything, asked lots of questions and they were so happy after the baptism. All 8 of the Elders in the city sang a special musical number, I gave a talk, and it was just a really cool baptism. But there always has to be a bitter to the sweet - I found out I will be transfered! I only stayed here 3 months, so I´m pretty sad to be leaving. I really grew to love this ward, and this city. The minute I learned how to get everywhere I need to go and really get to know the members well, I´ll have to start all over! I will serve in city called Alegrete, which is close to the border of Argentina, so it´ll be an adventure for sure. I heard there´s lots of gauchos there, which is the Brazillian version of cowboys. They drink lots of chimarrão, have a funny accent, and love to sing and play guitar. The best part is that Gaucho Day is next month which is the biggest holiday here in Rio Grando do Sul. Should be an adventure!

So these past two days, I have been visiting all the members, saying goodbye and taking lots of pictures. I´ve been telling everyone that I´m going to come back at the end of my mission for them to meet my parents, and they get so excited. I´m guessing I´ll have to do a lot of translating for both sides, but it´ll be lots of fun. I´m so excited for you to meet them all, because they´re such great people. And be prepared to eat lots of good food :) Yesterday was the BYU-Utah of Rio Grande do Sul - Inter vs. Grêmio. When I first got here, everyone told me I had to pick a team, and I picked inter. I really don´t know why, cause usually I pick Blue over Red, but I felt like they were my team. And then I got here where almost every member I talk to is a huge Gremio fan, and they all told me I would regret choosing Inter. Then yesterday, Inter won 2-0, and it felt great :) Haha but it was pretty crazy around here. Lots of angry, drunk people which led to lots of fights and accidents. Who knew soccer could bring so much chaos. 

But anyway, I´m very excited to get to know a new area. It´s always hard at first, but I always get used to it and fall in love with the ward. There are definitely people waiting for me to help there and I´m anxious to find them! I think that´s my favorite part about the mission - making new friendships with people through the gospel. I have met members, investigators, and companions who have helped me learn so many new things, and there´s no way I could have learned these things/met these people at home! Sometimes I think about what I would be doing if I had never come on the mission - and maybe I would still be doing good things at home - but each time I help someone here I get more of a surety that I really was sent here for a reason. And that´s what makes my mission worth it! 

I love you all so much! I´ll write you next week from Alegrete, have a wonderful week!

Love,

Elder Weight

Address: 

Caixa Postal 310

Centro - Alegrete - RS 

97541-910

Steadfast in Christ

Another week gone by, and August is upon us! Man this mission thing goes by quick. Once again, nothing too interesting happened this week, but I do have a few spiritual insights/experiences. So this Tuesday, we helped the Bishop a little bit more with the drain in his house. We started digging out the path for the drain from the outside, through the middle of his living room. It was pretty easy going until we got to the foundation. I know we use this analogy in the church a lot, but man it´s true. The foundation was about 10 times harder to break then the rest. I was hacking at it for like...2 minutes and I was already dead tired. We all took turns working away at it but it seems like we were never going to get through it. This is exactly how we need our own spiritual foundation to be. When we use Christ as our rock, and build our foundation upon Him and his teachings, it will be much harder for the adversary to break through. Something interesting though - after lots of hard work with the right tools, we eventually did break through this small piece of the foundation. So even when we have our foundations set - even when we have a strong testimony and we feel safe, we must always be on the watch. Satan is always working hard and tying to break little pieces of our foundation, and unless we continue to endure and persevere, he can and will break through our foundation. So how do we keep our foundations strong? One of my new favorite scriptures of late gives us one of many answers: 

"Yea, and I also exhort you, my brethren, that ye be watchful unto prayer continually, that ye may not be led away by the temptations of the devil, that he may not overpower you, that ye may not become his subjects at the last day; for behold, he rewardeth you no good thing." Alma 34:39

We must always be watchful, we cannot afford to be caught sleeping. And we must always remember - Satan will not reward us with anything good at the last day. Only guilt and regret.

But yeah, it was a good week. We contacted a few people we had met in the last few weeks, and taught some good lessons. We had a family night at the church on Thursday, and brought some less active kids and their friends. It was good, but way too many kids. Kids are the easiest to teach and bring to church, but without their parents, it´s hard for them to stay active. So we´re trying to find/teach the parents of these kids to bring more families into the church. But yeah, these kids loved the activity and came to church on Sunday as well. But it looks like they´re going to move to another city which is too bad. But we´ll continue working with them and their parents and get them excited to go to church in their new city. We also got a referral from the Bishop of a return missionary who has fallen away from the church. He is living with his girlfriend right now, but told us he wants to get married and bring her into the church so that´s exciting! They look like really good people, and him being a return missionary will help as well! It seems like people always pop up out of nowhere to teach on the mission, in the most unexpected ways! Of course we are always trying to find new investigators, and I think the Lord sees our efforts, and rewards us with the elite. It´s so cool to see the Lord directing His work firsthand! So this weekend will be the baptisms of Luis and Saria, along with two baptisms of 8 year olds, so it´ll be a Dunkfest! And Cristiane could be baptized as well, she just has to make a firm decision first. Should be a great week!

I´ll end with another short spiritual thought. Sometimes I feel like I have a lot of faith and I really try hard to show it by doing what´s right, keeping the commandments, reading my scriptures, helping others but without results. Sometimes it feels like my efforts don´t bring the results I want and I get a little down. So this week my comp and I were reading the sciprtures about hope in PMG. I read in Moroni 7 which says 

40 And again, my beloved brethren, I would speak unto you concerning hope. How is it that ye can attain unto faith, save ye shall have hope?

 41 And what is it that ye shall hope for? Behold I say unto you that ye shall have hope through the atonement of Christ and the power of his resurrection, to be raised unto life eternal, and this because of your faith in him according to the promise.

This was a clear, forceful response to my questions. Sometimes we have faith, but we don´t see how faith helps us in our lives if we don´t have hope. I realized I had begun to lose hope and I was not looking at the future, only the present. Something interesting is that to hope is the same word as to wait in portuguese - esperar. We must always be patient, and not look at our present situation, but how our situation will become one day. Sometimes it´s hard to keep our faith up, but we are promised eternal life through the atonement of Christ if we continue steadfastly. God sees all of our efforts and our faith, and will reward us. Maybe it´s not today, maybe not even in a year, but one day we will live with God again, as long as we have continual faith unto repentance and endure until the end. So keep it up, and continue, as President Hanks would say - Steadfast in Christ! Love you all so much! The church is true and God loves you! Have a wonderful week.

Love, 

Elder Waitch, Weitch, Witch, Wait, Waght - pick your favorite.

Rain and children and pizza and bushes!

Another week has passed and here comes August! Did July even exist? It feels like just yesterday was the 4th of July. Tomorrow will be Christmas and the next day I´ll be home at this rate. It was a pretty good week, but I don´t have much to report so sorry if this is short. Tuesday we helped the Bishop out with a service project at his house. He is installing a drain beneath his house and so we basically got to tear up his entire floor. It was pretty fun. But it is making realize that I basically don´t know how to do anything with redesigning/construction. I think I´m going to make that my summer project when I get home - learn how to do everything I will need to know how to do when I have my own house. So that took up basically all day Tuesday, cause we had a meeting that night. Wednesday it was raining all day. But not just a light rain, it was basically downpouring with lightning the entire day. But nothing can stop the work, so we busted out our umbrellas and rain coats and went to work. We taught a few of our investigators and tried to contact a bunch of potential investigators but when it´s raning, basically no one wants to let you into their house. But luckily we had a family night planned so we weren´t stuck with nothing to do at night in the rain. The family night was with the Dorneles - that one family that has two kids who will be baptized soon. We taught the kids about the Book of Mormon and began reading with them. They all love us so much, and get so mad when we have to leave. I feel like I´m becoming a part of their family! We sang Christmas hymns next to their fire stove and it felt just like i was home. The kids are so excited for their Baptism and I am too! We´re planning a special musical number, it´s going to be great!

So Thursday was raining all day too, and basically no one wanted to talk to us. It was kind of a depressing day, but we had a ward family night which was great. I gave a message about accepting the will of God in our lives, and remembering that God gives us trials that will push us, but will not break us if we use his help. I showed the video of the bush that gets cut down, and complains to the gardener asking "how could you do this to me?" The gardener responds that he knows what is best for the bush. He didn´t want him to become a great tree, but a bush with good fruit. It seems like God cuts us down sometimes, but he´s really just shaping and forming us to be the way he wants us to be. We must trust in his judgement, show our faith in Him, and accept his will. 

Saturday we had a dinner dance at the church, and it was insane. I guess it was just supposed to be for couples, but they announced it for everyone on Sunday, so we assumed we could bring some kids to the activity. Some kids turned out to be like 10 kids who lived nearby. But the ward had planned a special part of the activity for the couples, so we ended taking the kids up to the second floor of the church and we basically got to babysit. I have changed my mind about wanting to have lots of kids haha. I think one or two is okay. Maybe three. It was a madhouse up there. We tried to take control, but they were just running around screaming doing who knows what. We finally got them settled down for a little while, singing hymns with them, but that was over soon enough. It was a crazy night, but secretly it was a lot of fun :) Kids really are cute, even if they´re a lot to handle sometimes. To end the night, we ate a lot of homemade pizza and it all turned out great.

I have to get going now, but I love you all! I hope you have an amazing week, and I am praying for each and every one of you! Te amo!!!!

Love,

Elder Weight