Hey family!
It´s still hot here. Nothing much has changed with that. I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. I sure did! With my rare meal of rice and chicken. I was quite scrumptious! 4 really neat things happened this week.
1. For our district meeting on Wednesday we had a really nice surprise that no one knew about. The surprise was President Känhlein! He showed up unexpected and suddenly the room got all tense, yet more spiritual. It´s funny how quickly the feeling of a room can change. But it was a great meeting. We discussed the investigators in each area throughout the meeting. Elder King and I started telling everyone about Patricia, a woman that has a lot of trouble with the Law of Chastity. We began explaining how nothing has been going well with her and then President Kähnlein stopped us. He told us that if we showed her the ¨The Family: A Proclamation to the World¨ then she would get baptized. Just like that. What a man! We are going to follow his guidance this week and teach it to her. We really have faith that the President´s words can be fulfilled but we know that it is only through our own actions and faith. We are really going prepare for this appointment with Patricia.
2. On Friday of this past week, we were at the church preparing for an activity and a baptism. (I will explain about both further on) While we were preparing, we started smelling smoke and ran outside to see what was up. We saw a cloud of smoke right behind the fence of our church building, so we quickly grabbed a shovel and hurried to the fire. It seems like we got there just in time because it was starting to spread pretty fast. We used the shovel to put dirt over the flames and we saved the day. If we hadn´t have been there, the church building might have burnt down! Not really, but I like to think that. There´s a homeless man that lives on a mattress right behind our chapel and we think that he started the fire trying to burn his trash.
3. We had an activity Friday night called ¨Yo Soy¨. I got permission to dance to ¨Staying Alive.¨ by the Bee Gees. Nice missionary appropriate missionary dance moves. The branch loved it! They all asked me if I could teach them some dance moves and I told them I would only if they brought their non member friends. Who knew that dancing could be a way to find. Elder King played trombone. We are very musically talented.
4. Just yesterday was the baptism of Gerardo! What a conversion story. He´s an amazing example for me. He started taking lessons because of his girlfriend but overtime he began to have a desire to know for himself. I don´t know if I already talked about him or not. Yeah I did last week. All the missionaries of the zone were able to make it to his baptism. We sang ¨Come Thou Fount¨ and this brought tears to his eyes. He´s never been the emotional type, but yesterday that changed. Elder King baptized him but I was glad that I was able to observe and see how much this baptism meant to Gerardo. Once he came out of the water, his face was shining. I could tell that he understand the amazing step that he had just taken in his life. He was crying then as well. Tears of joy. After he changed, Gerardo agreed to share his testimony for the first time. What an amazing testimony. His love for God is tan fuerte. He said that the time when Elder King and I came over the weekend of conference was the turning point for him. He said that our scriptures we shared were exactly what he needed. He knew that Heavenly Father was aware of him at that time. These experiences are the reason I´m here. The conversion that I saw in Gerardo was amazing. And it isn´t over yet. He will always be converting as long as his testimony is growing.
SO I realized that I haven´t ever told you about my area or companion. Or dad helped me realize. My companion´s name is Elder King. He is from Salt Lake City. He just told me that a Elder Mackillop at steak at his parents house the other day. Richard Mackillop! Anyways, Elder King has been out for around a year and a half. Since next week is a new change, we both think that he´ll be transferred. He´s been in Limarí for 6 months now. The zone I´m in is called Ovalle, and the area we cover is called Limarí. It is divided into 5 different sections and has many hills... It´s a huge area but the chapel is in the middle which is very nice because we have to make bathroom stops many times during the day. The food does a number on our American stomachs. We share a house with another companionship who covers an area called Canihuante. All the school kids just started summer this past week so we get hollered at alot. They always say ¨hello, what´s your name¨ in a really thick accent. We ignore them since all they want is trouble.
I´m jealous of the snow that everyone except the Texans are getting!
I pray for you all.
Elder Weidman
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