2015!?!

Happy New Year to all of you! If you are getting this/reading this email, know that I am so appreciative of you in my life! I love you and hope you had/have a great new year! This has to have been one of the strangest new year´s in my life. Ever since I was little I always planned on serving a mission from 2013-2015 and it always felt so far away. So when I realized on Wednesday night 2015 had ACTUALLY arrived, I almost didn´t believe it. I think I still don´t believe I´ll actually be coming home this year and get back to real life. It´s a feeling I really don´t know how to explain. So for now I´ll try to forget about that and focus on the work!

This week was a bit difficult with all the new years festivities. A lot of people were traveling or partying or sleeping or getting drunk which makes out for depressed missionaries. But we did find some new investigators luckily, and visited a lot of the members. I think we finally got to know every active member now, so that´s nice. This week we met a single mom with 5 kids and she was really open to the message. Her mother-in-law (well, ex) is a member of another ward here, but she had never met with the missionaries! Her kids are all younger, but they are so dang cute! We were only able to teach her 2 times until now, but both lessons have been great. She has begun reading the book of mormon already and she is great! We´ll do a better follow up this week to see. We found a few others as well, but we´ll have to wait and see this week.

New Years was pretty great as well! We got together with some other elders, made a bunch of food, played games, and just had a good time together! There were tons of fireworks at midnight here and continued all night long. People are still lighting them off until today! Made it a little hard to get a little bit of sleep, but what do you do about that, eh?

Well, sorry this is so short, but I have to get going! Know that I love you and think about you always! Y'all are so important in my life and I´m so lucky to have you. I really don´t know where I´d be without you, definitely not here on my mission. Have a wonderful week and a wonderful new year! I hope you all made some good goals. I heard a good story this week I´d like to share. A man was teaching a class at church and grabbed a jar and called it life. He got a bunch of big rocks and stuck them in the jar and asked the kids if the jar was full. They responded yes. Then he grabbed a bunch of gravel and put it in the jar to fit inbetween the cracks. He asked again - is it full? They responded kinda of a yes. Then he put some sand in the jar and filled it to the top and asked - is it full? And finally filled the rest of the jar to the top with water and asked - is it full now? Then he asked the kids - what can we learn from this. The kids responded - even when we think we are doing everything in our lives, we can always fill it with more things to be more productive. The man then responded - NO! You missed the whole point. We have to place the big rocks in our lives first, or we will never be able to fit them in. 

So at the beginning of this year ask yourself - what are the big rocks in my life and am I putting them first? And remember that the biggest rock of every one of us should be the gospel. "Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven, and all these things will be added upon you" As you make goals for this coming year, make sure you make the big rocks, and the small rocks small rocks. I love you all!!! Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Weight

Christmas in the new area!

Hello friends and family!!! Sorry I didn´t have the chance to write last week, but we didn´t have much time with the computer. But I hope y'all had a wonderful Christmas! It was hard to be away from all of you, but next year will be the greatest Christmas yet! 

So my new area is called Setembrino, and it´s basically at the very edge of the city here in Uruguiana. The area is pretty small, but we live about a 40 minute walk from our area. But I guess it´ll help me to stay skinny for when I get home, right?? Haha it has been really hot lately, but with lots of rain too, so that has been nice. Friday night there was a ginormous storm with tons of lightning and wind and rain and hail and everything! The power went out and everything, it was actually pretty cool. We took some videos I´ll have to show you someday. Anyway, my new area pretty great. It´s really, really poor, but the people are very humble and receptive here. There are a lot of good members as well, and a nice chapel close to the area. There are a ton of recent converts as well, but most of them are already inactive. So we are trying to search them out, as well as finding a lot of new investigators. The elders who were here before left us a few good investigators as well. We are teaching two youth who are liking the church a lot. They were supposed to be baptized the week we got here, but their parents ended up not allowing them to be baptized. Then this week the young man´s grandfather died, which was really hard on him. We are going to teach him about the plan of salvation tonight - what a blessing to have the gospel right? I can´t imagine how hard it would be for me to not have the knowledge of this gospel in my life. Families really can be together forever, and that is the greatest piece of knowlege that exists!!! 

Christmas was great as well. It was so wonderful to get to talk to you, and made me even more excited to get home!!! Haha there´s still a lot of work for me to do here, but I am very excited to finally see y'all again. This Chrismtas I realized just how much you all mean to me. I honestly didn´t need all the presents and food and festivities, I just neeeded to be able to talk with you and my Christmas was wonderful. I love you all so much and miss you with all my heart!!! Have a great new year, and I´ll talk to you next week!

Love,

Elder Weight

December 2 Pics

Last day with Júlia! (With the tie she gave me!)

We´re pretty cool.

Last day with Marcos, Graziele and Hector

My adopted family here in Alegrete - Salete, Sue Helen, and Wesley

I'm gonna be a grandfather!!

So on the mission, we have a way of talking that might be confusing to normal folk. For example. Throughout my mission I have killed 2 Elders, I have 3 sons, and I will now become a Grandfather. Haha in other words, I was with two Elders on their last transfer, I have trained 3 elders (Technically I only trained one. The other two I was in a trio and I wasn´t technically the trainer. But I still count it :) ), and now Elder Ribeiro Gomes is going to train a new elder, thus making me a grandfather! How exciting, huh? 

In other news, I´m being transferred!!! I will spend the last 3 months of my mission in Uruguaiana - on the border of Brazil and Argentina! Although I will probably not be able to enter into Argentina because of border security. Close enough though. Right? It was actually a pretty big suprise, I thought I would stay one more transfer here. At Stake Conference President Parrela told the entire stake I needed to teach them piano so that when I left they would have a pianist. One week later, he transfers me! How am I supposed to teach piano now? Haha I guess the Lord has other plans for me. I will be serving in the Setembrino de Carvalho ward, which is a pretty humble area I´ve heard. I´ll spend Christmas there, so hopefully there will be members to take me in! Although I´m pretty set with all the Christmas packages you´ve sent me - I´m sure there´s enough food in there to sustent me until the end of the mission! Haha!

Anway, this past week I spent basically saying goodbye to everyone in the ward. Goodbye´s are like the worst thing in the world. It has been so great getting to know so many good people here, and I will never forget this ward. They were so great to me, took such good care of me, and I really grew to be great friends with all of them. It feels like they adopted me into the ward, so to suddenly have to leave is pretty heartbreaking. But the one thing that made it okay was the fact that I´ll be back in 3 months. Also, the fact of this little thing called the internet. I can´t even imagine how it must have been for missionaries 15+ years ago - how lucky we are! But anway, I am so grateful to have served here in the Ibirapuitã ward. I learned so many things from the members and investigators here. As I bore my testimony yesterday, and saw the few, but strong members that were there, I just felt such a strong love for each and everyone of them. Especially as I saw Julia and Marcos, each with their families and so happy to be there. This is truly what a mission is all about. As President Parrela told us at a Zone Conference - the three greatest things we can take from our missions - Our converts, our companions, and the importance of obedience. I truly have taken these three things out of this area, and more importantly, from my mission. There are two things that are eternal - our relationships and our knowledge. The rest will be left behind - so do everything in your power to strengthen your realationships and increase your knowledge! 

I love you all bunches! Merry Early Christmas!!!! Next week our P-Day was moved from Monday to Thursday so the next time we talk will be Christmas!!! Hope the preparations are special and remember - next year I´ll be right there with you!!! 

Love,

Elder Weight

Conference!

This week was quite a good one! I don´t have a lot of time left, so this´ll be kinda short but I´ll try to get you updated on everything! So on P-Day, we went to this rice farm outside of the city. It´s owned by a member and her non member husband, so they invited us to spend the day with him. I´ll send pictures next week, but it was really quite cool. They have this huge man made lake, and miles and miles of rice fields. He took us around in his tractor to give us a tour of the farm, showed us all his animals, showed us his guns - it felt like I was in America again! Haha guns aren´t quite a common thing here in Brazil. But it was a really fun day, and at the end we had a family night with them and began to teach her husband. He really liked us and the message and everything so we´ll see what happens!

We spend a lot of our time this week searching out inactive members with the ward roster. A lot of people on the list have moved, or died, or don´t even exist haha. So it leads to a lot of investigators living in the houses of these people which leads to lots of new families! We found a 11 year old girl that hasn´t been baptized yet whose parents are less active members. She´s already been to church a bunch and came to Stake Conference this weekend! So now we just have to teach and baptize! We also found a few other really good investigators so that´s great.

Conference was awesome this week! Elder Cruz, an area seventy presided and it was a really special conference. He´s a really great speaker, and gave some powerful, spiritual talks. The stake has been struggling a lot lately, and really needs a lot of help, so hopefully this conference woke up the members a little bit! If the frequency doesn´t get better soon, it looks like Alegrete might become a district, so we´ve got lots of work to do. Hopefully I can stay another transfer here to help out a little bit more, but who knows? A member invited one of his work buddies to the conference, and they came! We started conversing with them and found out they are legally married!!! It´s a miracle! They seem like a great family, and tonight we set up a family night with them and the member. A young woman of the ward also brought one of her friends who we´ll start teaching hopefully this week. So things are looking up! 

Shout out to Esther Olsen and the Foothill Ward beehives!!! Nothing beats some good ol American candy - especially those carmel apple pops! Thanks! I also got the ward newsletter, which was basically the highlight of my week. I love seeing all the updates in the ward! So thanks Brother and Sister Jensen!

Sorry this is so short, but I love you all! God loves you, don´t forget that. The gospel is the only thing that matters in this short life, and we have to make the most of every before we don´t have any left! I pray for you all every day, and can´t wait to see you again here in a little bit. Have a wonderful week, and send some of the cold weather down here! I´m already sick of 100 degree weather!!! 

Love,

Elder Weight 

December 1 Pics

Baptism of Marcos! 

Some of my favorite people in the world right now - Marcos, Graziele and Suehelen!

Awwwwww - They´re officially married!

We´re getting festive here in Alegrete!

I´m a true gaúcho now...

Weight and Pereira sang as they walked and walked and walked

And walked and walked and walked and walked and walked aaaaaaaaand walked. Seriously, I don´t think I´ve ever walked so much in my life. And it didn´t help that it was 95+ degrees all week. But with hard work, comes great rewards, and man was the reward great! Marcos and Graziele got married on Friday and Marcos was baptized on Saturday!!! Finally, right? I think I´ve been telling y'all about them for about 3 months now but it all went so well! We made cute little invites for them last week, and helped them deliver all of them to the ward members and their friends and family this week. We also had to go to the wedding registry with them to get the papers all ready and pay for everything, but it all worked out just great. There were about 80 people at the wedding, which was more than I expected. We found a suit for Marcos this week from a member, and he was looking pretty spiffy if you ask me. He was so happy, but so nervous as well haha. When he went to put the ring on her finger he dropped it and spent about 30 seconds on the floor trying to pick it up. It was pretty funny. It turned out great though, we had lots of fruit and salgadinhos (little salties, kinda like mini pastries) and soda and cake. Oh yeah, this was the thrid wedding I´ve played piano at, so that´s pretty cool i guess! I think I´m the offical Alegrete Stake Pianist, because I play every week in my ward and now they´ve asked me to play at Stake Conference this weekend. So thanks Mom, for forcing me through all those piano lessons cause it really payed off!!!

So then his baptism was on Saturday. He chose me to baptize me which was really special. I really think I was sent here to baptize him. I remember the first time I taught him I invited him to be baptized, and he said yes without hesitiation. I had a feeling at that moment I would be able to see his baptism, even with all the marraige complications. So for the big day to finally arrive was a special day for me. The baptism was very small and simple, but the spirit was very strong. Marcos has the most contagious smile, and he was just shining of happiness, it was wonderful. They truly are a special couple, and I can´t wait to see them go through the temple in one year! It will be a great day.

So other than that, nothing too exciting happened this week. Oh yeah! Thanksgiving! So we couldn´t really have a full on thanksgiving feast due to a lack of funds, time, and food options, but we did have our own little celebration! We bought some chickens (turkey is extremely expensive), mashed potatoes, rolls, juice and brownies and cooked it all up that night. We went around the table and talked of the things we are thankful for, just like Mom loves it. It wasn´t close to the same as being with the family, but it´s better than nothing right? And it´s the last one ever with out y'all!!! I was really missing the whole turkey bowl part haha!

I have to get going, but I love you all! Happy December!!! I´ll talk to you Monday!!!

Love,

Elder Weight