Welcome to Uruguay!

Hello friends and family! We had another awesome week here in Alegrete. Tuesday we had zone conference in Uruguay err...Quaraí. Haha it´s a city right on the edge of Brazil and uruguay. When we got into the city, we recieved a text saying - "Welcome to uruguay! If you use your phone here, we will charge you thousands of reais, okay?" So I´m totally counting that as being in the country. Haha but the conference was awesome! I learned so many great things and felt the spirit so strong. One interesting thing the church seems to be focusing a lot on is retention of our converts. Especially here in Brazil. Cause there have been so many missionaries who baptized tons of people, but then they go less active and then move and get lost. Like my ward right now - there are almost 400 people on the ward list, and the frequency is less than 60 people. So this was a large focus point at Zone Conference which I thought was interesting.

Wednesday was my companion´s birthday and we were invited for dinner by the stake president. We show up and he tells us he called the mission president and got permission for us to stay until 10:30. Woohoo festa!!!! Haha they had a barbeque and a delicious cake and it was lots of fun. My companion will go home in 3 weeks, and I´m dreading it haha. He´s such an awesome guy and I´m learning a ton from him. This week we had a family night with some members, who invited their neighbor. He loved the family night, and came to church on Sunday! He told us he has never liked going to church because he feels like all the churches are corrupt and that they don´t live what they teach. But he really liked church on Sunday so hopefully things work out! 

So this week there was a temple trip at the stake here. They leave on Friday night, get to the temple Saturday morning, barely have time to do one session, one sealing and some baptisms and then they already have to come back. They only ordered one bus, and when it came up to the day, there were 60 people who wanted to go with only 45 spots. One sister in our ward wasn´t able to go, but said "It´s okay, I will go at the next trip in November, at least I don´t have to drive 24 hours like I used to when the temple was in Sao Paulo." I started thinking about the sacrifice these people make to be able to go just once every four months. And they make a trip all the way out there just to stay for a couple hours, it´s truly amazing. And we have 5 temples within 30 minutes in Utah, and I barley went once a month when I was home! We really don´t take advantage of the amazing blessing to have a temple so close to us. I cannot wait to get home to be able to go to the temple again, it really is the house of God and we can find peace, happiness and anwers inside. So take advantage of the temple! :)

Love you all so much!!! Have a great week!

Elder Weight