All Sorts of Miracles

From: Joseph Weiss <joseph.weiss@myldsmail.net>
Date: October 27, 2013 8:45:01 PM MDT

Buenas Dias! Man yous are gonna call me and want to hear some Spanish and I won't be able to speak English or Spanish! My Spanish has improved so much and it continues to improve. I really hope that I get another transfer or two here in the Spanish ward. Things are happening. We had 9 members do visits on our Missionary Trade off/ Rescue night. The ward is coming along really well.

On Saturday we did a training with the Elders Quorum on how to work with the missionaries. We role played them inviting their friends to come to an FHE. Then missionaries coordinating with the member what role they want the member to have in the lesson and then teaching together. We did the same role play in District meeting and I think it will really help us.  Tonight we have an FHE with two investigators and hopefully we can commit them to baptism.

Our teaching pools got cut in half when Elder Jones got his new companion Elder Fitzner from Canada. Right now our teaching pool is mostly gone. We have to find new investigators. We had to resort to tracting on Sunday because we need investigators so bad. Being district leader is so fun! You get to hear all sorts of miracles and collecting numbers I get so excited to see how the other missionaries are just smashing it!

Maybe the numbers wouldn't suggest it, but I love this area. It's very challenging and at the end of the day, being a missionary is such a good life style. You know for sure what your purpose is each day that you wake up. Find, Teach, Baptize. I hope soon our members will do most of the first part and we'll do the last two together.

WILL! You're dying! It's so sad to see missionaries go home. Two of the AP's are going home after this transfer and it's super sad. They were the first missionaries I met in australia. Mission life is too short. Some days you just wish there were like six more hours in a day. There is no time. The weeks go too fast and we only have 5 more guaranteed to make a difference in this area so we've got to make or break it right now.

Now that we have four missionaries we can play 2v2 touch every morning. Hopefully it helps me lose some weight. Cats! That is the only downside of mission life is there isn't enough time to exercise. Wednesday we are going to go play tennis with a potential that a member is bringing. I'm ready to throw down! The other day we went to pick up Elder Fitzner from the mission office and he had missed his flight. So we did weekly planning and played ping pong while Elder Jones had meetings and my double handed backhand is really coming along at least in ping pong.

I'm learning a lot about working with the spirit. One of the fruits of the spirit is peace. And something that allows someone to have peace is trust. When someone you are teaching doesn't trust you it is very hard to reach them. Especially with Spanish people that don't trust "Gringos" too much. On Thursday we had 7 people turn up to the chapel for ward splits which was a great sign of that things are moving in our ward. But when I went on my trade off I took a Nicaraguan man. Earlier that day we taught a women from Nicaragua and she said she didn't have time for us anymore. So that same night I took this member to go drop in and talk with her and try to establish a connection. It worked!

They talked about their home country and he asked her about her life. He testified so powerfully that she is not alone in her busy life and that she has our whole ward to help her. She said at the end that the missionaries can come back once a month. I'm not too sure she'll be baptized but the experience taught me that members can connect in ways 19 year old boys cannot. I asked the member if he would offer a prayer before we left. He prayed so lovingly and I felt the spirit. Without the trust, the spirit couldn't be there. Sometimes the spirit builds the trust and sometimes the trust invites the spirit.

Things are still slowly progressing in our ward. Our ward is changing! HAh! It's improving! I love seeing it happen! 
Love you all!

Elder Weiss VI