October 25, 2010

Hola,


"Elder Wiest, the Lord has inspired me to call you as a District Leader". Those thirteen words have been replaying in my head for the past two days. Transfers are this week. I’m staying with Elder Bishop and, yeah, I’m going to be District Leader. Actually, I’m not too worried about it at all. We are getting a set of Sisters in the Branch...Yikes! Transfers are probably the biggest news of the week.

This past week we carved pumpkins for District meeting. One side was dedicated to Texas and the other to Jesus. Halloween is the best.

This past week we found some pretty potential people, I think. They are a mother and her daughter. We taught them last night. I’m actually way excited for them.

We had a couple of members teach with us this week and they stressed me out. They just talked too much. So now, not only do we have to teach our investigators but we have to teach our members, just making more work for ourselves.

I could tell you about all the people we meet but I’ll just leave it at this, people are nuts!

In the past week and a half I’ve eaten at Sonic like 6 times (thanks to a gift card). That place is delicious. I think another sign that I’m maturing is the fact that I ate TWO hamburgers this week without picking off the tomatoes and pickles. Leaps and bounds.

Love,


Elder Wiest

October 18, 2010

Hola,

Well...I have a new companion, Elder Bishop. This is still his first transfer so I'm like half training him, I guess. He is a good kid and it will be fun to serve with him for a little bit.

I've realized that when we do a lot of work there isn't much cool stuff to email home about. We taught lots of lessons this week, found lots of new investigators, and knocked on lots of doors!

We've been teaching this crazy lady, named Rita. She might be a witch. But regardless, we saw her on Thursday and we made a haul! She gave us 7 mini plastic pumpkins, one bottle of hair gel, two bowls of ice cream, a toaster oven, and an aloe plant. We refuse to take money but I love taking people's junk1 Also, I got a cool Bible this week from a crazy "prophet" man. It's a long story, but somehow I'm good at hustling people.

Yesterday we had a pretty fun experience at Church. We went to Gospel Principles in the 2nd hour and there was no teacher. Hmmmmmmmm. Long story short, me and my greenie taught the class. The lesson was on how families can be eternal. We did a pretty good job, considering we didn't prepare or read the lesson and it was all in Spanish. We had 4 members, 3 investigators, and 4 missionaries in the class. It was fun, but I'll be okay if we don't have to do it ever again.

Love,


Elder Wiest

October 12, 2010

Hola,

When I sit down at the computer it’s so hard to think of everything that happened during the week. Hmmmm...

We had one investigator come to Church. We found him about 3 weeks ago and I really didn’t think he would go anywhere, but when people come to Church for the first time I get so pumped. It's sooooo hard to get people just to come out. After we stopped by his house Sunday morning I was just screaming in the car for like 3 minutes. This guy is freaking way funny but I don’t think he’s really trying to be funny. Quote: "These guys knew I was short on money so they asked me if I wanted to drive a car full of marijuana from Mexico to El Paso. So I did it and went to jail for 4 years". He made us tacos this week, yum. I bought pida pockets, also yummy. I found an AK-47 bullet on the ground, how sweet is that?

We have an older investigator who has a boyfriend in Juarez that she visits on the weekends and what not. Well, she gave him a Book of Mormon and he loves it. I won’t say everything she told us but basically he wants to come over here and talk to us and go to Church with us. She said, "Why has he changed like that? Is it my prayers, your prayers, the book? You guys told me about miracles if I had faith, right?" We explained it was all of the above. Our message brings the Spirit and if he reads that book and feels it, it will change him. So, apparently were doing missionary work in Mexico now.

Yesterday was pretty awesome. We had our Zone Conference with Elder Claudio Zivic of the First Quorum of the Seventy. He’s from Argentina and his English wasn’t perfect but he was really amazing. It was very informal and he was just really humble. He helped us focus on our purpose and how we need to do things we’ve never done before in order to get goals we’ve never achieved before. I love a scripture he shared with us: D&C 112:5, I want that to be me. Also, I loved seeing a bunch of the missionaries at the conference. They are some of my best friends. 4 of my 5 past companions were there. My trainer is in the Tucson Arizona Mission.

Anyways, that’s all I can think of for now. Go Ducks!!


Love,


Elder Wiest

October 4, 2010

Hola,

Oh geez, where to begin? We worked way hard this week and got some good things done. We got 5 new investigators this past week, much needed. Our most solid and coolest new investigator is a hardcore ex-gang member. He basically spent half his life in jail. He LOVES Jesus, a lot. Good thing that’s what our message is about! He found Jesus while in prison and so far he’s been really receptive to our message. He came to Conference yesterday.

Speaking of Conference, it was awesome! As for my favorite talks, ummm, number one I think was Elder Oak’s especially from a missionary’s standpoint. I really liked Elder McConkie’s talk about teaching and I liked all of President Uchdorf’s talks. You get a lot more out of Conference while on a mission. I wish I could just have an Apostle for a companion. We watched Conference Saturday in the Branch building in English on our own little TV in the RS room. On Sunday we went to the Stake Center because the satellite wasn’t working at the other building.

I ran out of food like half way through the week, just because we didn’t go shopping last Monday. It was fun being creative with bread and bacon bits and pop tarts for a few days.

Last Monday we went to downtown. "El Centro", which is just TONS of Mexican stores where you buy cheap stuff. And I do love cheap stuff. This morning we had to change our tire because we got a fatty screw in it so we’ll be going to Pep Boys later this afternoon.

One day this week we were in a three-some and we were in the other Elder’s area. We tried going by this lady’s house who was supposed to have a baptism interview with the Mission President that night and she was way sick so we were going to give her a blessing. We went by her house 3 times during the day and she was never there and we were getting worried she wouldn’t make it to her interview. We were driving around Anthony and decided to go visit this other kid and we turned down the street and I spotted this lady with her daughter walking into the Pharmacy. I yelled at my companion to pull over. We jumped out and she was good and she had her interview and is getting baptized! You had to be there, I guess. Stuff like that just doesn’t happen in real life. I love it.

BTW, I probably won’t email until Tuesday next week. We have a General Authority coming in on Monday.

Love,

Elder Wiest