Girls Only Like Guys Who Have Skills!

Eduardo, Elder Weaver's first Baptism.

What is up Family and Friends? 

So this week definitely had some days that were "un poco fome" or a little lame. But, I'm doing good! I'm not dead, my companion and I are getting along, I'm being obedient, and I'm trying my best. You can't really ask for anything more that that! Not to mention our calafome or calaphome or however you spell it was fixed this morning! So I can actually cook food now and take warm showers! This is a good thing too because it just started getting pretty chilly here this week. 

Elder Weaver's fútbol team "La U!"

So what can I share that's just going to grab your attention... I know that Dallin Farnsworth gets my emails. SO Dallin tell Mitchell Briggs I was running on my mission for a while. BUT this week I definitely was tempted by his words of advice before I left "take a two year break man, don't even worry about working out. Get fat, and enjoy not having to work out." So yes, this week I didn{t run. However, I still workout every morning. It consists of about 200 pushups, 200 sit ups, planks, leg holds, wall sits, and about 10 minutes of jump rope now though. Apparently I "have a body of a greek war god" in the words of Elder Barraza. So I'm trying my best to maintain that. I ain't doing the 6 months to sexy at the end of my mish, I'm staying sexy. SO TAKE THAT MITCHELL BRIGGS. Besides, what else is there to do at 6:30 in the morning? Nothin, so may as well do what Elder Nelson said we should do to fight off depression and work out. So there's that little update for all my friends out there wondering if I'm a chunkster yet. No, not yet. Oh, and yes Mark Currie I still plan on coming back and being a triathlete, blessing from the mission are real. 

Elder Weaver's goodies from home! Score!

So this week we only had like 23 lessons I think. Nothing really out of the ordinary happened. The normal stuff. Talking with Jehovah witnesses, having doors slammed in our faces, having people tell us we're evil, drunks trying to fight me, people with really messed up family lives, all of that jazz. It's all pretty normal really by this point though. 

A duffel bag full of goodies from home!

So this week I had splits with Elder Ewell again. He's a greeny too and when I do splits with him I feel really happy with where I'm at with my spanish. I just took charge of the lessons that day and it all turned out being really great. I definitely was a little nervous for the day, but Heavenly Father ALWAYS knows our situations and what'da know... Thursday ended up being just great and we had some really good simple lessons. 

I need to send some pictures so I'm going to end this thing. I love the mission. Elder Ortiz has gotten a little feisty with me because apparently "I work way too hard and it's impossible for anyone to try to keep up with my desire to work." Whatever, I get 2 years to give this everything I've got. So that's exactly what I'm going to do. I feel the love of my Savior every single day. Our investigators, our inactives, and our recent converts may not all have the same relationship with their Savior as I have, but that's why I'm here... to help with that. Ultimately though, everyone has to make their own decision on what they need to do, missionaries can only do so much. I've realized that since I've been out on the mission. I know that my redeemer lives. What comfort this sweet sentence gives. I know that my redeemer lives. 

Keep pushing forward. Always do the simple things like reading your scriptures, praying, and going to church. Look for the positive in your life even when everything seems to be negative. This gospel is true. End of story. Salvation isn't a cheap experience though. Keep the faith and pressforward. 

Con Muchísimo Amor,

Elder Weaver 

Walking on a Dream...

 Elder Weaver's Almuerzo

What is Up?

So, another week down in Padre Hurtado. Elder Ortiz and I worked super hard this week and taught 30 lessons. I don´t know how it is in other missions, but here 30 lessons in a week is a pretty solid week of work. Nothing super out of the ordinary happened this week. Yesterday there was a drunk guy on the street that approached us (as they always do), and his face was JACKED UP. I mean he had blood everywhere and a huge goose egg in the middle of his forehead. He was tripping and falling eveywhere, and we had to give him some support just to keep him standing. This guy was so beyond drunk it wasn´t even funny. Especially as a missionary, you just feel incredibly sad for people like this. So that was fun helping this guy get on a micro so that he wouldn´t die. It was super late too and we were heading back to the pension. Stuff like that happens all the time though... I just never have time to tell you ALL of my experiences. 

So I was a little frustrated yesterday. We only had 1 investigator show up to Church. I´m super grateful that we had one, but for how much we worked this week I was expecting more. That´s the mission though... you work super hard, the people feel the spirit while you´re teaching them, and then as soon as you leave their home they forget all about their commitments and go on with their daily lives and routines. I find incredible comfort and happiness though in the fact that I at least have the gospel, and I without a doubt feel the love of my Savior daily and the love of all of you who are praying for me! 

So I´m going to kind of just write about what it is I exactly do on a daily basis.

6:30- I wake up and say a prayer. It´s usually pretty cold in the mornings and it´s definitely a struggle to get out of bed. But I have yet to not get up on time! 

6:40- I have my running stuff on and Elder Ortiz rides his bike by me while I go for a 15-20 minute run. The mornings always smell like death because all the dog poop and trash just resonates from the previous day. I also always run faster than Elder Ortiz can ride a bike, so I still end up doing a lot of loops back to him, just so I can keep in sight of him. 

7:00- Without fail, I always do 100 push ups, 100 sit ups, 2 minutes of wall sits, and 2 minutes of planks while I wait for everyone in our pension to shower. 

7:30- I take a miserably cold shower. Our calafome doesn´t work. Hasn´t worked since I got here. And the pesnionists don´t seem to want to do their jobs here. But big whoop... it´s a cold shower. As it´s getting colder here in Chili though.... the cold shower is kinda a heartbreaking experience every morning and night. 

7:40- Eat breakfast while listening to Elder Barraza´s general conference talks or BYU devotionals that he has blaring ALL MORNING LONG. I actually really like the talks though and without them the pension would be deadly quiet. I also have talks in spanish that I listen to or I listen to my MoTab on my iPod. It´s actually an incredible pick me up in the mornings, so I´m grateful for music and church talks! 

8:00- Personal study. I always read the Book of Mormon in spanish out loud, then I read Doctrine and Covenants, Old Testament, New Testament, Jesus The Christ, and Predicad Mi Evangelio in spanish. I also finished Our Search for Happiness by Elder Ballard this week and that book was super awesome to read. I´ll talk about that later. 

9:00- Companionship study. Elder Ortiz and I sing a hymn in spanish, say a prayer, and read the missionary manual in spanish. Then we share what we learned in personal study. After that we do My First 12 weeks packet where we basically just practice teaching and read Predicad Mi Evangelio. 

11:00- I FINALLY GET TO LANGUAGE STUDY. I just am knocking out all the language study books they gave us in the MTC right now. 

12:00- Leave the pension and start teaching. Elder Ortiz is super slow on the bikes and he just learned how to ride one about 2 transfers ago... so getting to places takes some time. Our SECTOR IS HUGE! 

2:00- We have Almuerzo at a member´s house. They´re usually pretty good, but they are repetitive and it´s hard sometimes to stay within the 1 hour limit we ahve for lunch because the members usually don´t have everything prepared and Almuerzo is a BIG meal here. 

9 or 9:30- We head back to the pension and plan for 30 minutes for the next day. 

10- I shower, write in my journal, and go to bed. All of this while listening to more Talks blaring from Elder Barraza´s speaker. 

That´s the life of a missionary. Every. Single. Day. The day itself consists of a lot of highs and lows. Either people recieve ya or you´re just riding your bike around every where not accomplishing anything. 

So we have a new investigadora named Nataly. She is super, super, super awesome. We taught her the first 3 lessons this week and SHE CAME TO CHURCH. Here´s the problem. She´s living with a guy and has a child. So she can´t be baptized until they get married. That´s the problem with quite a few of our investigators right now actually... But, her husband really liked the lessons too so we´re just praying that they make the move to CHANGE THEIR LIVES. 

This week while reading Our Search for Happiness by Elder Ballard, I realized how blessed I am to have the gospel in my life. Without it, I know that I honestly wouldn´t have TRUE happiness in my life today. No, I have never seen God and I´ve never seen Christ. But, I know that this gospel is true because I have feelings of incredible peace and comfort and joy that really can´t be adequetaly described and that´s because it´s from the Holy Ghost. Even this week I had a sudden feeling that we should go to this house of a person we contacted my first week here and I wasn´t sure why I felt so strongly to go there... Turns out that this lady was having a really bad day and a really bad week. She confessed that she has depression and that she´s extremely worried for her son right now. She talked with us outside her house for close to an hour and we´re going to visit her later this week. She was extremely glad we stopped by and she wondered why we did because that time we contacted her she didn´t want much to do with us. It´s stuff like that, I can´t describe how that feeling was or why I felt that we should visit this random contact, but it turned out that Heavenly Father NEEDED us to visit her in that moment to simply give some comfort. That´s the essence of how I KNOW this Gospel is true. Not only do I know it through feelings, but I know that it´s true because IT MAKES PERFECT SENSE! 

Anyways, I´ve talked enough. Hope all ya´ll have a fantastic week! Keep strong and find the joy in the small things in life. LIVE IN THE MOMENT! Everyday can be a good day if you choose for it to be!

Love,

Elder Weaver 

Speaking of Families This Conference…Mine's the BEST

Oh, Alexander and Brian didn´t get baptized. Which kinda sucked. Their dates fell through because their Dad doesn´t want them to be baptized into our church. They tried to defend themselves and their testimonies but the guy is super stubborn. Pray that his heart will be softened! Elder Ortiz and I worked really hard with these kids and it definitely was lame to get the news that they couldn´t be baptized. We're going to talk with their Dad this week, so we´ll see how that goes. 

This is Elder Weaver's 4/62015 Letter. Sorry I've Been Slacking...

Friends and Fam Bam,

Primero que nada, YOU GUYS TOTALLY FREAKING ROCK! Thank you so much for the "care package." Everyone in my zone was super jealous of me. When I shared Mom´s cookies with them, they said "I want to be in your zone for the rest of my mission if your Mom keeps sending you chocolate chip cookies like these." Haha, and they weren´t even fresh! Still, everyone absolutely LOVED THEM! They all said that Mom´s cookies were the best they´ve ever had. Not to mention the rest of the package... HOLY CRAP. Mom must know me or something, because I loved everything that was in that bag. Thank you for the yoyo´s too. I´m thoroughly enjoying mine. It also draws the attention of a lot of the people here, so it´s actually a great contacting tool. Obviously, I know when to be playing with it, and when not to be... so for any ex-missionary out there reading this, no se preocupe, I´m not letting a yoyo distract me from the work. I saved opening the letters from all of you guys until Easter or Día de La Pascua because I wanted that to be my "gift" Easter morning. Thank you so much for the letters, I really really loved reading them. Mia is so freaking cute. There´s a family in our ward who have like 3 daughters and a son that are all super young, and one of them is named Mia and is about 10 years old just like my sister Mia. They act EXACTLY THE SAME TOO. Their Mom is Colombiana and their Dad is from Chile, and all of their kids are super cute kids. I kid you not, this Mia girl is just flat out cute. The whole family is great too because Hermano or Presidente Gonzalez is a couselor in the Stake Presidency here in Peñaflor. Anyways, I got side tracked there, but you guys are great! That package was super super "genial." 

Now, General Conference was just an absolute spiritual high, am I right? Guess what? ALL THE GREENIES GOT TO WATCH IT IN ENGLISH! In reality, all the Americans used to be allowed to watch it in English, but President Barreiros changed the rule this time. Some of the Elders and Sisters were definitely not happy about that... Even Elder Ortíz and Elder Barraza who speak fluent spanish were super mad they couldn´t watch conference in English. They said that the spirit just isn´t the same watching Conference in spanish. Both Ortiz and Barraza understand English perfectly, so that´s why they enjoy it so much, by the way. So my favorite talk? I don´t really know... they were all super good. Families were definitely the focal point Saturday Morning, which was awesome, because families and marriage truly are the key to eternal happiness. When you think about it, our whole Gospel revolves around living with our families for eternity which is just something that really makes me feel great. 

Something else that was cool was seeing Linda K. Burton and Jorge F. Zaballos speak in conference. I got to listen to them talk to us in sacrament meeting my 5th week in the CCM! Anyways, I think I´ll focus on the talk by Dale G. Renuld. 

I love the quote "A saint is a sinner who keeps on trying." Ain´t that so true? There isn´t a single soul in this church who is perfect, but a true saint is someone who is constantly trying to improve and NEVER EVER QUITS! I also love how he said God cares more about who we are now and who we are becoming than who we were. We can all look back and say "twas I, but is not I." I also love how he said that the moment we decide to try again is the moment that the Atonement begins to go to work in our lives again. If we don´t try, we´re just latter-day sinners, and if we don´t perservere we´re just latter-day quitters, and if we don´t live by what we believe, we´re just latter-day hypocrites. 

Michael T. Ringwood´s talk was also super awesome. Truly good people are people without guile. We should also be striving just to be good people because we want to be good people. We shouldn´t be striving for positions or titles or rewards. 

I could go on and on, Elder Bednar´s talk was super awesome, Holland´s was amazing as always. I JUST FLAT OUT LOVE CONFERENCE. We weren´t allowed to go to Priesthood session though. That was a little lame, but that´s alright. I´m sure it was awesome, and I told Elder Ortiz that my brothers and my dad were at the stake center watching priesthood session and after they would go to Chili´s and get some food, and then order a chocolate lava cake for dessert. They would also be watching the Final Four basketball game while enjoying their food. That was definitely something that made me smile. Weaver traditions are just the best. 

So today we had Changes meeting. It was my first one in the mission and it was pretty great. Obviously, Elder Ortiz is going to continue training me for these next 6 weeks, but the next changes meeting will be interesting for sure. It was also really cool to talk to everyone from the CCM and see how they´re all doing. A kid that I went to BYU with over summer term is actually in my mission! Elder Pomar! So that was super cool to talk with him. 

Hermana McNevin y Elder Weaver

Other than that, everything is super great here in Padre Hurtado! I absolutely love the mission. It´s still hot here, but it´s cooling off! Hermana McNevin and I are in the same zone by the way... I don´t think I ever told you guys that. So we got to talk a lot this weekend over conference about our families and Colorado and BYU, it´s acutally kinda a blessing to have someone from your high school in the same mission as you, nevertheless the same zone. She´s doing great and her spanish is definitely better than mine! But seriously, I´m way better at speaking than I was even 6 weeks ago. Even Elder Ortiz doesn´t understand this one guy we teach named Christian. He speaks total Chileno and Elder Ortiz literally can´t understand what he´s saying. It´s funny to see a fluent spanish speaker just nod his head and smile like a greeny while this crazy Chileno rambles on and on... haha. Fast doesn´t begin to describe how they talk down here. As my spanish improves too, I can definitely start picking out grammar mistakes and mispronounced words while they speak. It´s funny, Chilenos truly do talk horrendous spanish. 

Love all of you guys a ton! I´m into my second change! I´m alive, I´m super happy, and I´m working super hard! I count my blessings every single day and there is always at least one miracle I receive daily! 

Love all of you guys! Keep me in your prayers and keep sending support! I love the letters from all my friends and family!

Les Quiero Muchisimo,

Elder Weaver