September Photos #2

Birthday Cheesecake

Gaucho Day! I couldn't get a very good picture, but there were a ton of horses. 

Last day for Elder Lima :( 

USA! 3 Americans in Brazil

Train track over the River Ibirapuitã

Cool view over the river

Don't Fall!!

The largest parade of poop errr...horses!

Olá família e feliz dia dos gaúchos!!!! Yep, this past weekend was Gaúcho day and it was pretty crazy here. This is the city of the gaucho and let me tell you - there were a lot of them. They had a parade of horses on Saturday morning and there were almost 10 thousand horses. I have never seen so many horses in my life. I think there were more horses than people in the city on Saturday. But the problem with 10 thousand horses is the fact that it´s 10 thousand horses pooping at free will. It was not the most pleasnt day to walk around the city haha. But it was cool to see the culture of the people around here and helped me to remember how much I don´t like farms hahaha. I´ll try to send some pictures if I find the time. 

So my companion left me yesterday :( He´ll get on a plane tomorrow morning and he´ll be home by noon, pretty strange. As a missionary, sometimes it feels like you´ll never got home but when you see someone actually go home it makes you realized it actually will end someday. And as excited as I am to come home, I really will miss being a missionary. Toward the end of these last few weeks, my companion really started to worry about money and work and school and everything, and I realized just how great it is to just worry about the gospel and your investigators. It really is a good life. Buut, on the other hand it will be nice to change my routine one day and spend my time how I want to spend it haha. It will definitely be a bitter sweet experience coming home. So good thing I don´t have to experience it for a while! My new companion is Elder Cotrim from Sao Paulo. He´s been out about 5 months. I met him at a zone conference a few months ago and found out he met my good friend Matt Woodruff while matt was serving in his ward! how cool is that! I´m excited for this next transfer. This week my comp basically was getting ready to go home, and there was a wedding in another ward we were involved with, so we didn´t get to work a whole lot. but Marcos will be married and baptized this Saturday and a member brought one of her friends to church yesterday who seems very interested and excited to learn more. So things are good! The marraige this past week was in the neighbor ward. A missionary found this couple a year ago and returned to the city just in time to baptize them before he went home. It was a really cool experience i´ll have to tell you sometime :)

I have to go, I have short time but I love you all! Have a great week!!!

Elder Weight

Talent show+drunk guy=enjoyment

The weeks just keep passing by here in Alegrete. Where did the first half of september go?! Time is just so strange. This is the last week for Elder Lima, so he´s feeling pretty weird right now. It´ll be sad to see him go cause he is the man. But he´s planning on coming to Provo next year, so then you can all meet him! 

This week was okay. We were planning everything for Marcos to be married and baptized this Saturday, but some complications came up with his birth certificate which won´t get here for another week or so. So we´ll have to wait until next Saturday which is too bad since Elder Lima won´t be here. But what matters is that he is baptized, right?! He came to church on Sunday and is really really excited to be baptized. So that´s cool. Our other progressing investigator Luciano, was travelling basically the entire week so we weren´t able to talk to him much. But there was another talent show in another ward on Saturday, and his neighbor brought him and he loved it! But the activity lasted until 11 pm and afterward he watched a movie with this member and stayed up conversing until 2 am so he didn´t wake up for church in the morning. Bah. But he has already made friends with the members of the ward and is really liking the church. We´ll work with him to be baptized on the 27th hopefully. We recieved a few referrals and have lots of people to contact these coming weeks, so the work should begin to pick up a little bit.

More on the talent show - after our miserable activity last week, some sisters in the zone had been planning a talent show of their own. All the missionaries in the zone decided to help out and make it a mega activity. We made invites, and starting inviting everyone we met to participate. We ended up having 3 band of non member youth who presented and there were more than 150 people at the activity. Which is huge for such a little city. We missionaries did a funny skit from the life of a missionary, and then I sang with another Elder. I really don´t sing that well, but I´ve found that when an American sings whatever song in english, brazillians freak out. Haha so it was pretty great. The highlight of the night was when a drunk guy showed up and started hugging all the missionaries telling us he wanted to be one of us, and then hugging all the people presenting and telling the crowd they were his best friend and that he loved them. It was hilarious. I even got a few videos I´ll have to show you when I get back hahaha. But the activity was a huge success, with lots of non members and members alike. 

I´m out of time once again, but yesterday I was thinking about how happy I truly am. How happy this gospel makes me. Not because I´m a missionary, but simply because I am a member of this wonderful church.Like Elder Uchtdorf said at conference - Why a church that requires so much time and effort and service would be a good thing, but I am truly, honestly, and completely happy because of the church. Maybe people are saying I´m a fool wasting two years of my life teaching about Christ and his church, but I´m a happy fool so that´s all that matters.

I love y'all and I´ll talk to you next week!!!

Elder Weight

September Photos

We tried to take a cool bus picture but...didn't turn out too great

Elder Limas Birthday Party

Oh say can you see...oh wait. Wrong country.

So we had a pretty good week. Not the best ever, but not every week is the greatest! The weather had a mind of it´s own this week, raining for 5 hours straight and then changing to unbearable heat, then changing to freezing cold with hail and then rain again. But I guess that´s how life is in the spring in all the world right?! And rain never kept a missionary down ha ha.

So we worked with Marcos and Luciano a lot this week, we´re trying to help them to be baptized the 20th of septembro. Marcos is the husband of a member, but they are not legally married. We checked everything out with their marraige and we basically just have to wait for his birth certificate to be sent here from Porto Alegre. But other than that, it should all go well with the marraige and baptism in two weeks! Luciano is the neighbor of a member who came to church last week, and is loving everything we are teaching. I think he´ll be baptized in two weeks as well. But the only problem is that nobody came to church yesterday :( It was independence day here in Brazil, so basically everyone was watching the military parade in the center of the city, or had family in town, or travelled, or some other excuse to not come to church. It was quite frustrating, but we´ll keep working hard this week to bring them to church next week!

We also had an activity this week which went really well. Well, kinda. The activity was awesome, the only problem is that nobody showed up. There´s a recent convert in our ward, who´s a professional musician and he got together a band with a few of his friends and they were so good! Seriously, I would pay to watch these guys play. I´ll have to show you the videos some day, cause they´re great. We had a mini talent show before the real show. I played piano and sang, a little adorable girl sang a song, my comp played piano, but all the other presentations didn´t even show up. I think there were about 30 people there. It was disappointing, because so many people said they would come and then didn´t show up. But hey, we had investigators thereand I enjoyed a good show, so it´s a win win situation.

I have been here way too long already, so I have to get going already. But I love all of you and miss you so much! Keep doing what you know to be right. The gospel really is the most important thing we have in this life, and we are so lucky to have it in our lives. Take advantage of the knowledge you have and use it to bless the lives of others and you´ll be happy. I promise! Have an absolutely fantastic week and I´ll talk to you next week!

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

Dogs kill cats in Brazil

This week was awesome!!!! Well sort of. It was insanely hot this week, and looks like summer is already coming back. Winter was good while it lasted...But seriously, 4 days straight without seeing a single cloud in the sky is not a good thing. Anyway, things are going great here in Alegrete! We found 3 couples this week that are all really great! They all have one who is a member, and the other is not. They all want to be baptized and be strong members in the church but...the problem of everyone here in Brazil? They´re not married. Two of them are still working on getting a divorce, so it´s gonna take some time. But the other one will probably be married in the next month or so, so we´re really excited about that! We´re doing lots of family nights, and really trying to gain the trust of the ward, to be able to meet and teach their friends. The ward is a little bit weak right now, but a little bit of hard, smart work will fix that problem real quick.

I did my first baptism interveiw of a 9 year old kid this week! Man, kids can be really smart! He really understood everything, and it was a cool experience. We´re going to have a talent show at the church in a couple weeks, which will be really cool. We have Zone conference tomorrow, and lots of service and family nights lined up for this week too, so should be a good one! I don´t have a lot of time, so I gotta get going, but I love you all! I hope you have a great week, and I´ll try to write more Monday. I´m happy and excited and have the best companion in the world, even if he is a little trunky ;)

No time for a spiritual thought, so check out this really powerful video we´ve been showing to our investigators:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyheJ480LYA

Love,

Elder Weight

Oh yeah, I saw a dog kill a cat this week, that was a pretty sad and interesting experience. Usually the cats get away...so a moment of silence for this cat please. Thanks.