As My Main Girl TSwizzle Once Said, "Shake it Off!"

Dear Family and Friends,
Man, what a week!  Every week is just jammed full of super spiritual moments, and when I finally get a chance to just sit down in this confined Almacen to write you guys, I never know how to start or where to begin. By the way, an Almacen is just basically a little tienda, which is a store, and they have computers, so it´s great. It is super hot today too so I´m sweating my eyes out while I´m writing this. These past two weeks have just been super hot! Now, I´ll get to why I titled this emal the way I did. 

So, this week we invited Alexander and Brian to attend church on Sunday. They have to Attend Sacrament two times before they be baptized so it was imperative that we get them to church this Sunday so that we can baptize them on the 22nd of this Month. We had a great lesson with them and their Mom, who is completely inactive, and they made a compromise to go to Church this Sunday. WOO-HOO! Well they didn´t end up going. So that was incredibly frustrating. We also made a compromiso with Silvia Masias to go to church and she didn´t do it. SO FRUSTRATING! Same goes for multiple inactives we´re teaching right now. That´s the thing with a lot of the Latinos though, they´ll tell you anything to make you feel good, but they almost never actually mean it. I love them nonetheless. After all, Soy Chileno. In Matthew 10:14 it says, “And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, SHAKE OFF THE DUST of your feet.” All of Matthew 10 is actually really great and perfect for any missionary who is down in the dumps. It´s basically all about Jesus telling his disciples how to be missionaries. Anyway, I´ve had to do a lot of that since I´ve been in Padre Hurtado. Most Chilenos are very familiar with the Church and so getting the door slammed in your face is an often occurrence. By the way, here in Chile we just stand outside the gate and yell "HALO" and we don´t clap. So in case any of you South American missionaries were wondering that´s how we contact here. The dogs are as annoying as they come too. I swear there are more dogs than people here. And EVERYONE has a dog. The German Sheperds are gnarly here too. It´s always fun though to mess around with the dogs and try to flip the cats on the street. Yeah, Dad´s been a good influece on me. I just love my mission soooo much. Every day is a new experience and a new adventure, and every night walking home I just look up at the stars and know that Heavenly Father is watching out for me. In the words of Tim McGraw “Somebody must be praying for me” because I feel the prayers from my family and friends every day. So thank you everyone for your love & prayers!  I love all of you so much, and you´re all in my thoughts and prayers everyday. 

So, Friday was a very interesting day in particular. Elder Ewell and I went on our first divisiones and I thought it was going to be an absolute nightmare of a day. Elder Ewell is from St. George, Utah and he was on the exact same plane with me traveling here to Chile. We get along super well and he´s a great guy. The problem is that his spanish, well let´s just say his spanish is not quite there yet. He still doesn´t really understand why he needs to conjugate words and his vocab is extremely minimal and... anyways, I was very nervous for these Divisiones. Elder Correra is our District leader though and he´s also Elder Ewell´s trainer. He felt that I was ready to take on the challenge. So there we were, two greenies taking on a day´s work in el campo. We ended up having 3 lessons! All of them went super super well! The people were very receptive of Elder Ewell and I totally felt the spirit. It was a humbling experience for me in particular and I learned a lot. I learned that my spanish doesn´t have to be perfect to teach with power. The spirit testifies of true things, regardless of how on point your spanish is. Yesterday, all of the people we taught did admit to Elder Ortiz and I that my spanish definitely is above and beyond Elder Ewell´s, but they felt the spirit and that´s all that matters. We actually ended up teaching a new investigator the whole Restoration. She started crying when I talked about Santiago 1:5 and she read it. It was a miracle we even got into her house, nevertheless got through the whole lesson! She committed to read the Book of Mormon and pray. I assigned her Nephi 11 and told her to pray to know if Christ came to America. Her name is Elizabeth.  Elder Ortiz and I are going to challenge her to be baptized today! 

So biggest lesson learned this week… I can´t get down on myself for not having PERFECT spanish. I also learned that while faith without works is dead, so is work without faith. I have been working like an aboslute mad man. When we´re walking or riding a micro, I always have my little vocabulary book & Spanish for missionaries book you gave me mom. I memorize at least 50 words a day. My companion thinks I´m absolutely nuts and so does my whole zone. Elder Harris, our zone leader, said that I need to just relax because "the language will come." One thing that I realized with Elder Ewell was that I´m working really hard, but I didn´t REALLY have faith. Sometimes I think that people are being naive or even a little prideful with their confidence that they´ll just learn spanish. I realized It´s not that they´re being naive or prideful though, it´s that they have faith the Lord is going to help them. They have faith that the spirit will testify of their words regardless of whether or not they speak perfectly. So yes, James 2:17-18 is right, ¨"Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: whew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works." I am going to continue to work like crazy, and demonstrate my faith through my works. I am going to continue to pray as if everything depended on God, but work as if everything depended on me. BUT in lessons, I just go for it now. I say my thoughts and feelings. Elder Ortiz has been just blown away with how much more I talk now. He says my spanish is actually really, really good for being 2 months into the mission. So there ya go people. Hopefully I didn´t bore alguien. I know this is the true gospel of Jesus Christ. I know that life can be incredibly hard. People go through worse things than I have ever gone through in my entire life and I am so blessed, but I KNOW without a shadow of a doubt that Christ is there for each and every one of us and knows our pains and our sorrows and our weaknesses. This Gospel brings me comfort, MUCHO CONSUELO! It is absolutely amazing to be here in Chile. I love every bit of it. The hard days and the great days. I grow and progress every single day. 

Now to answer some questions... The food here is great. We always eat a member´s home for Lunch and there really isn´t a dinner here. Just one big lunch. It´s not always rice and beans. In fact it has a lot of variety. I´ve had diarreaha for the past 2 weeks though so that´s been fun. I love the food though.

My feet are great. No problems. My shoes are already taking a beating, but that´s fine. Lots of rocks and dirt.

Elder Ortiz is great. I´ve learned a lot from him!  Everyone in the mission tells me that it was a HUGE shock when he was called as a trainer. He keeps telling me that I´m training him. He´s a fun guy though and he runs with me every morning so that´s good, even though I have to loop around a lot to keep in his sights. He’s a convert to the Church and he has a great knowledge of the scriptures. 

I do my own laundry and we have a washer at the pension.  We just hang dry everything else it’s crazy!

My pension is great. Elder Barraza really, really likes me and Elder Pedersen has a few medical issues, so he goes to the Doc once a week. There definitely can be tension in the pension between Elder Barraza and Elder Ortiz.

My team is La U! I am not of Colo-Colo, but unfortunately they lost this past Saturday! It was absolute mayhem down here. Soccer is life down here for sure. 

Mark 12:30-31 is a great scrip. Love the Lord and Love thy neighbor. If people do this first and foremost, then things tend to work out. Same goes for missonaries. 

We have a huge mission conference last Thursday and it was cool to see some people from the CCM. We watched Meet The Mormons in spanish and it was crazy because the last time I saw that movie I had my call and I was watching it with Daph, Kyle, Liz, and Abby! AHHH! CRAZY! 

Grandpa is in my prayers every single night.  I love that guy so much and this is killing me to hear about his health issues!

Soccer is actually jugar la pelota down here. Garabatos are cuss words. Regatone is rap and it´s played everywhere! Wawa is baby instead of Bebe . La Once is Cena which is dinner. Oh, chicatita or chicatito is small NOT pequeno. They hardly ever use pequeno. Oh, and barracho is drunk. And trust me I talk to a lot of barrachos. I straight up started testifying to an atheist in la calle last week too and Ortiz thought it was great. I basically just said that it´s sad that he has to live a life completely without hope.

Anyways, I love all of you! Hasta proxima semana!

Elder Weaver