You Guys Just Made My Halloween (ew)

October 27, 2014

Yo Familio & Friends!

Well as luck would have it, you guys just made my Halloween (ew) all the brighter with your package of sweet treats! Elder Stephens said that we have to be in by 4:30ish on Halloween so hopefully we'll be able to get some appointments in (yeah right, on a holiday?) haha but all will be well :)

Brittany and a mysterious boy...interesting :) haha I hope she waits till I get home to get married! Make sure you let her know.

Sad to hear about Josh, he is truly a fighter and will continue to be, I know it! I'm sure this was a good decision for Jessica...she is strong as well.

I heard about Allison...sketchy, but I applaud how she handled it, she is wise and beyond her years.

I hope that your week is going well! Dominique is progressing very well and has been completing much of the scripture reading suggested in the back of each pamphlet we have given. We are going to strive harder to get her into a member's home this week so that she can receive more fellowship from members while preparing for baptism. We had to push her date back to November 29th, seeing as she won't be able to come to church next week, but is committed to come the week after. She grasps the Gospel of Jesus Christ very well and looks forward to her continued work ethic and progress in her quest to find truth.

We set a date for November 22nd with Claire Castleburg, the 21 one-year-old with a 3 year-old daughter, and she has been feeling the Spirit enrich her life! We have taught the Restoration and the Plan of Salvation in the Williams' home and they are both so wonderful in offering their love and support as she strives to make the changes necessary to prepare her self for baptism. Neither her parents or her roommate are supportive of her being taught the gospel, since she has been raised non-denominational, but she cannot deny the witness of the good fruits of the gospel that have already helped her start to overcome the affects of the sin and guilt that have so often plagues her life. She cried during our last lesson, when she felt that she was worried that she could never become clean, but Brother Williams boldly testified to her of the reality of the Savior's Atonement and the Spirit was SO strong! I love members and the sweet Spirit they bring! Claire has only 2 weeks to find a new place to live, because her roommate won't let her live with her as long as she keeps seeing us, so we are not sure how to best go about helping her with that.

We went on a church tour with Ken! The Catholic young adult that was interested in learning more. He was able to meet the bishop and asked some very inspired questions regarding the Priesthood (it seems that we are getting a lot of Priesthood questions lately). He said that he would be baptized if he received witness that the church was true!

So we've been re-reading the BOM as a mission by Christmas...underlining everything pertaining to the doctrine of the Atonement in red and then how we can access the Atonement in green. It is our gift to the Lord this Christmas and I am SO excited :) I read the parable of the Olive Tree AGAIN, but I think that I am FINALLY starting to get it!!! It's about us! It's about the work we have and must do in preparation for what is to come! I encourage you ALL to read it and underline the heck out of it, because it really is, in essence about each and every one of us as we seek to bring more of God's children unto Him! Please do this, I know that it will bless your and everyone else's lives who you are working with.

Love you all! Stay strong, stay pure, stay spazzy! Thank you for everything!

-Sister Weaver-

Me and Sister Rousseau being spazzy

Sis. R being Muslim

My Anticipated Mission Release Date Is July 28th!

October 20, 2014

Dear Family of Awesome Adventurers and Epic Kingdom-Builders & Friends,

My anticipated mission release date is July 28th, so you can either come down and get me and we can all go to the Nauvoo Pageant that ends August 3rd or something like that OR I can come home then we can all go on the awesome church historic/mission trip that is our goal for this summer. I hope we do get to see the pageant though, I hear it's phenomenal!

For sure, the weather here is getting COLD!  And rainy, like home :) I sent an email to the Pukahi's and I did get the address thank you so much!! Josh continues to be in my prayers as well. I appreciate all of the love our family has for one another and the amazing opportunity we have to learn more about families. I don't think I have learned so much abut the importance of families than I have thus far on the mish (besides the beautiful experience of having the best family in the world, of course :)

THIS AREA IS ON FIRE!!  We have 4 baptism dates and the Elders have like 12! (One of them from us, an awesome guy named Scott, who's totally ready for the gospel, Thank you very much :) We're working with a couple of new families, one with a baptismal date. In one of them are Rena (who has stage 4 cancer), her husband Byron (who is struggling with a drinking problem worsened so by his wife's declining health), Trisha (their granddaughter who was our initial contact), and Kiesha (who we have met with the most and takes care of Rena a lot). We were not sure whether or not Rena may survive past her scheduled baptismal date, so if she cannot make it to church 3 times, we hope President will let us know how to go about preparing her. The other one we have taught the Restoration to both of the sons, but have yet to teach it to their mother Krisha. She is very interested in changing churches and appreciates our visiting them since her grandma passed away, whom she was close with.

We met Claire and Tyler, sisters, at one of our less-actives Cynthia's, and they were very interested to learn more. Tyler is a pregnant transgender and Claire is 21 with a 3 year-old daughter. She wants to find a church that she can raise her daughter in and realizes that baptism is something that should be important, since she's been baptized twice trying to find the right one. She was iffy about how the church judges people who have had children out of wedlock. We told her the story of one of the women from Meet the Mormons and how she was able to raise her family in the church, even when she too had made that decision herself. They were both really excited about the movie and said they'd see it before our lesson with them and the Williams family on Thursday. 

Set a date with Dominique who is very excited to work towards baptism. She knows that there are many things she has to get in order before she does so, but she is willing to work towards November 22nd.

One of our investigators, Eric, came to church on Sunday and although he wasn't comfortable with how formal sacrament meeting was, he enjoyed the discussion in Gospel Principles and Priesthood. The Garcia's, especially Brother Garcia, fellowshipped him wonderfully.

Jessica, Nick, and their mom Chris, are hilarious. Chris, who is not religious at all by any means, has such great questions about the church and missionary work. We told them of our purpose and Chris expressed how miraculous it was that after Nick had posted on Facebook that if God was there, he could really use the help, not two days later we met them! I hope that things continue working out for them. Jessica has been reading a little of the Book of Mormon and also more about Mormons. We referred them to lds.org and urged them to continue meeting with us, praying, and reading on their own. Even though they have not set a baptismal date yet, if they continue on this path I know that they will discover the truth for themselves and what a blessing it will be for them!

Thank you so much for everything, sorry this is so short, I will write more next week!

-Sister Weaver-

I Can Definitely Testify To Obedience

October 13, 2014

Dear Family & Friends,

RE: OH FAMILY, MY FAMILY,

Here's me, Sister Trent, and Maggie
(one of the epic youth missionaries)
at mutual :)

I know it is so crazy she just emailed me and I said those exact words, no joke! And let her know what to bring.

Yeah the song David Archuletta sings is a popular one on the mission. I was so happy to hear he did a rendition right after his mish :) We get to see it this Thursday woohoo!!!!

Don't worry Mom, that's Sister Trent in the baby pic. Yeah, after eating cheese for every meal this week (we are getting groceries today so no worries), I AM getting a bit burned out.

Yes, I love President and Sister Cutler! They want us to be all that we can be. The only people who stop us from doing so is ourselves.

I can definitely testify to obedience too! I never realized how slacky I was until Sister Rousseau got here. She talks with everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) and we have found and taught SO many people in the last few days. Every minute truly is precious, and I think as I have gotten comfortable here it has been harder for me to become fully consecrated, but she has definitely helped me rekindle that fire for missionary work that I left the MTC with. She is getting the members excited too and we are seeing them work so well with our investigators. Our numbers went from 12 other lessons to 26 a week! She is amazing! She is VERY determined, but not overboard and she has genuine love for all the people who we are teaching. I don't think she has a comfort zone, actually. I hope that I may continue to share in her enthusiasm for the work as we continue to teach so many new people!

We met so many new investigators this week! Ryan and Diandre (who's Moms had died a year ago), Scott (who has three kids and he lost his wife to cancer a year ago), Ken (a young adult), Kat and Abby (who we found on accident, were hesitant at first, but then invited us in to see a cool lesson with a friction pen and had lots of questions). We encountered a miracle meeting when trying to contact someone who wanted a flier for the Music Night at church: we could have both sworn she said Apartment 7...but when we got there we didn't find her, but Rita, a woman who said that her daughter was looking for a church! We eventually tracked down the woman to give the invitation to, but she said she told us Apartment 4...I guess the Spirit was talking!

I love how wonderful our ward is in coming to lessons and sacrificing their time to teach the gospel with us.  On Saturday we scheduled a church tour with Nick (the brother of Jessica, a PI we met last week) and President Alsop and Sister Couch both came, but Nick didn't show up :( So we tracked him down and ended up teaching the intro to the Plan of Salvation with Jessica and her mom :) They are such a sweet family!

When we visited Bro. Emery at the Colonial Club, three other women ended up joining us for a lesson on the Restoration. Two of them wanted BOM's! The Archer's in our ward had a referral who they invited to Time Out for Women come to church! And we just finished teaching her the Restoration at their home. She is Lutheran, and not ready for baptism, but is willing to learn more and read from the BOM.

We sorta almost stole the Elder's investigator who came to church during RS meeting when she went out to smoke. We ran into her in the bathroom and then ended up teaching her the whole Restoration outside. (She had ?'s, what were we supposed to do?) But she sorta then spilled out all her emotions, which she couldn't really do with the Elders we testified that as she continued to meet with the Elders, she would feel the comfort and hope that she is so yearning for that only the Savior can provide.

We were FINALLY able to get in with Regus (who has been flaking on appointments) and teach him the Restoration, which he enjoyed and committed to baptism on November 15th. We hope that he will continue to read from the BOM and pray to know of the truth of this gospel.

I love you all and know that our Savior lives! Thank you for setting standards of obedience and faith to continue developing as you all too hasten the work!

-Sister Weaver-

Transfers Are Upon Us, Yet Again!!

October 7, 2014

Dear Family & Friends,

The Cheese House in De Forest. 

Yeah that's the name of the town.

Yeah, chocolate cheese (once you forget that it is actually CHEESE) tastes like fudge :) It's a miracle!

Transfers are upon us, yet again!! How rich is this: my last two companions are BOTH Sister Training Leaders bah!!! They are probably freaking out right now, but they will do so great. I am Senior Comp again with Sister Roussau. She is just coming out again after having some struggles with anxiety, President informed me. I reassured him that I can definitely relate so all will be well in Sun Prairie :)

Yes!!! Bring the Remington's! Have you seen David Archeletta sings in Meet the Mormons?? It's an epic song that has been going around our mission for a while and when we heard him sing it, we were like...oh yeah he heard that on his mish :) SO awesome, missionary work! Watch the music video. It is tear jerking of the most spiritual of natures.

We were able to have breakfast and watch conference at the Schroeders in our ward. Sister Schroeder is like Chelsey...knows lots of stuff and is hysterical. She served in Italy and her husband is like three times taller than me and is in the military. They are both like little kids, so hilariously in love. We also watched it at Harriet Shroud's, a less active who always feeds us, and I was able to have a good talk with her daughter this week about anxiety, since she struggles with it too. But we carved pumpkins and had breakfast there on Sunday! (They are so sweet!)

Elder Bednar was so epic I was SO glad that he directed his talk to nonmembers. I was so happy he used Enos, because that's the book we've been sharing with people ALOT this week. When Elder Scott started talking about FHE, I had a flashback of when he put me on the spot all those years ago. Good times.

This week we found 4 new investigators! They are all promising individuals who are interested in the Book of Mormon and the message it contains. General Conference was such a miraculous time to spend with investigators and less actives. We watched a session with Harriet Shroud and her husband Jim (non-member) came in and out, but she stayed and listened with us. We had planned for the Stucki's to watch General Conference with the Stoll's, but Luella has been very ill these past few days, so we set it up where they could watch it later. They did watch the final session together, however, and Bill liked it, but wanted us to listen to his prophet speak :( We hope to be able to set ground again with them this week about having a desire to know, just like Elder Bednar talked about.

We met with Marge, a service referral from Sally Black, who accepted a Book of Mormon and we were able to go over the first half of the Plan of Salvation with her, since she expressed desire to know more about why God let her son die.

We invited Marie, a service referral who we haven't been able to break much ground with lately, to baptism as she continues to study and learn from us. She said not yet, but she recognizes how important it is and we were able to definitely establish expectations with her that we are here to teach the gospel.

General Conference at the Davis' with Alex fell through this week :( But we are setting the goal to meet with Alex again this week with Ellie Davis (show her a talk) before mutual so that we can have her mingle with more girls her age in the ward. We are also hoping to establish baptismal goals and ask her to discuss it with her parents. Her testimony is strong and she has read so much of the Book of Mormon. It has been a year since first meeting with the missionaries, so we definitely think it's time to bring up baptism once more.

Thank you for the scripture, it is beautiful!

"For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named...that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God." (Eph. 3:14-19) (or just the whole chapter is awesome :)

Thank you for all that you do for the cause of Christ our Lord. The best way to strengthen a testimony is to live it! Hope on, journey on, and keep your foundation built on our Redeemer!

Love you all!

-Sister Weaver-

Me and Sister Doob (the pumpkin)
Did you know that putting
Vaseline on the cut edges makes it
last longer and putting pumpkin
spice inside makes it not smell pumpkinny?     

Us at Harriet's

Us playing with little Isabelle at Harriet's    

District 2

District 2 - cookoos