Week 35: He that has ears to hear, let him hear!!! 3/25/2019

Hello family and friends! What's up?? I can't believe a brand new week is soon upon us! Things have been moving along pretty fast! I would like to start off by describing why I chose the topic that I chose for the title of this weeks email. This weeks topic for come follow me is when Jesus Christ was giving a ton of parables and he described to his disciples why he teaches that way. He talks about those who have ears to hear, let him hear. Yesterday I had a huge pressure build up in my ear and wasn't able to hear anything out of it all day and it is still causing me some trouble today! So I guess I am screwed because I have no ears to hear as of now! :)

Well, I am super grateful for the chance I have to write to you guys and tell you about my week a little bit once again! This week has been super busy! Elder Neff has still been working in the office so I trio'd up a lot with missionaries again last week! His last day in this office was on Friday so now it is time to dedicate more of our efforts to serving here in this area! We are excited to get the work rolling a little faster! We had MLC, which stand for Mission Leadership Conference and that was pretty cool! It was a pretty long meeting about how we can become more effective leaders in the mission and that was all day on Tuesday! We also had exchanges with the Guthrie elders where I got to serve on an exchange with my MTC companion Elder Martineau, and we had a great time working together. It's cool to see how much the mission has changed us as we have both been out for 8 months as of now! I also spoke this week in church about what testimonies are, and how I can share it with other people! And now, we have a zone conference training to prepare for which is tomorrow! So life has been pretty wild and stressful as of now, but once tomorrow rolls around and is over, things will begin to settle down for a minute!

This weekend was pretty cool! We set up a church swap with this guy named Rick who we are trying to teach now! He agreed to come to our church if we went to his church, so Saturday Elder Neff and I went to St. John's catholic church which was WAY different. I learned a lot about Catholicism! I liked to compare it to exercise time because literally we were standing up, then sitting down, then kneeling, then doing some crazy things with our hands! I learned how to do the cross sign and was almost made to drink wine when the Lord's supper came out! I was able to get out of it by saying I was sick because they encouraged those who were sick not to drink from the chalice!! Haha! I was so lost there! It has made me grown a greater appreciation for those who are willing to give our church a try because I can see how scary it is to go through that! Rick came to our church the next day and he said that he loved it! He told how he used to read from the "Mormon bible" and he felt bad that he did not bring it! He told us he had people like us give him the book and he said he read the entire thing once! Hopefully we can get the chance to meet with him again and teach him some more about the Gospel. The members of our ward were on the ball when they saw him come in and he recieved a heart warming welcome! Our Bishop even invited him for dinner at his house this coming week! I can't wait to be getting to know Rick a little better!

Well, since my talk in church this week was about testimonies, I thought I would share with you the building blocks of my testimony that I have diagrammed out! It all starts off with the simple yet powerful doctrine that God loves each and everyone of us! That is the pinpoint of my testimony. Because of that knowledge, we are able to make almost an infinite amount of connections that builds are testimonies up like because God loves us, he is our Father, that is the relationship he has with each and everyone of us! Because he is our Father, he wants us to become like him and to recieve the joy that he has, he made a plan for us to achieve that, to provide any means necessary to accomplish the plan, he provided the Savior who died for us so that we might live, the savior taught the Gospel and the way to eternal life and because he is not here anymore, he has called prophets to carry out that message and point to him, so we have living prophets and apostles on the earth today! I know that all these things are true! I know that families can be together forever, and that the Gospel of Jesus Christ has been restored to the earth in it's fulness, those who have ears to hear, let them hear about this wonderful news! I love yall and hope yall have a great week!!

Love,

Elder Weese 

1) Chillin!!

2) This guy wanted a bible study sesh!!

3) The dog approach!!

4) Exchanges!!

Week 34: First Week in Edmond 1st!!!!! 3/18/2019

Well guys, I have just had my first taste of my new area of Edmond Oklahoma and I can't tell you guys enough of how excited I am to be serving here as my third area!! This will be quite the experience and definitely one to be looking forward to! To start off, I will definitely be missing the people that I have grown so close with in the 4 and a half months I have had serving here in Tulsa! I attached some pics down below of the few of the many people that have been so awesome to me in my time being here. I can't wait for the new relationships I get to build as I get more into my service here in Edmond.

Here's some key information for y'all! My new address is 1920  E. 2nd St. #3807 Edmond, OK 73013, so feel free to send me any packages and letters at any time you guys want to. I appreciate all the things you guys do for me on my behalf and I wouldn't have made it this far without the constant support y'all have given me. My new companion and I are going to have a blast in this area. It has been less than a week and we already view ourselves as brothers! His name is Elder Neff, if I haven't told you already, and he has been recently serving as an office elder for the longest time, but after this week he will not be there anymore and he will be working as a proselyting missionary full-time. He is super determined to get out and sharpen his skills as a missionary because it has been quite a while, 8 months to be exact, since the last time he was serving at that capacity. Since this area was ran by office elders for the longest time, there is only one person in our teaching pool named Mia J. who is a little girl who wants to be baptized. Her mom is a non-member as well so we are trying to work with that whole family! But that is all we got, so we need to be working really hard in the finding aspect of the work. A lot different than my last area where we had a ton of things going on 24/7!!! It has been a great experience so far and has helped me continue to grow out of my comfort zone and to help me think outside the box when it comes to new ideas and methods! We met some pretty good potentials who we will have the chance to meet with in this upcoming week!

It has been cool getting the taste of being a district leader as well. Definitely have more responsibility and need to be more reliable, but I am definitely all in for that and am super pumped. We have some great missionaries in our district and as well as our zone. Since Elder Neff is about to be leaving the office, he has been going back to help train the new secretary that will start a week from today. So I have gone on a ton of exchanges so far and will continue to go on a lot in the next week! It has been really fun, but I am excited for when we can put our full focus and attention on the area we are currently assigned.

Well yall, it has been a great week!! I am super excited for the weeks to come in this transfer and am looking forward to the learning experience! I learn every single day and it has helped mold me into a better person!!! I appreciate everything you guys do. Couldn't tell ya'll enough!! I love you guys and I hope you all have another excellent week!!!

Love,

Elder Weese  

Goodbyes in Tulsa!!!

1) The Stephani's

2) Mateo and his family, the Claysons!!

3) Maurice Foster!!

4) The Bass Family!!

5) Brother Andre Santos (favorite Portuguese human!!!)

6) Ron Dyer!!

7) Brian and Angela Wood! #goodluckatyourbaptismbrian!!

8,9) National Apartment Cleaning Day!!

Welcome to Edmond!!

10) Heartwarming Welcome!!

11) New Companion, Elder Neff!! #thegoat!!

12) Looking like pros!!

13) St. Patty's day!!

Week 33: On to greener pastures!! 3/11/2019

Ah man!! What’s up everybody?? Where do I even start? This week has been quite the rollercoaster, full of events!! I’ll start off with the big news. I am excited to say that I will be heading over to my 3rd area of the mission so far. I will be leaving Tulsa and heading down to Edmond where I will be serving for my next go around! My new companions name is Elder Neff and I hear that he is the bomb! We will be serving as co-district leaders together. I am super excited about this new opportunity that lies ahead and for the new people I am yet to meet as I begin serving in Edmond. However, it is gonna be super bittersweet leaving Tulsa. That process has already begun where I start packing and saying goodbye to all the wonderful people I have met along the way up here. 4 months serving here flew by way to fast and I am going to miss everybody here, the ward, the missionaries, and the people we have been teaching. I am also kinda sad that I will be missing Brian’s baptism. Dang, I wish I could be there for that, but I have been so grateful as of late for the opportunity I had to teach him. To see the way he has changed, and how there is a greater love in his family, has been awesome to witness and I am so happy that he is continuing down that path. I will be hoping and praying for everything to go well with his baptism. I’m also going to miss Elder Gibb as well! I feel like our time together was short but sweet with an emphasis on SHORT! It flew by! Just another lifelong friend who I made out here!

This week I had the chance to serve on a college campus again. I was with my zone leader, Elder Vogt, who is an awesome missionary who actually just barely got assigned to be the next assistant to the president! It’s always a fun opportunity to serve on campus. It makes me feel like I am back in school again and there are so many people out here around my same age. I think it would be cool to serve on a campus in the future because everyone here is so open minded and seeking the truth for themselves. It’s true that we find a lot of truth seekers out here and it was good to open a new door for some of these kids. It definitely puts you out of your comfort zone because your expected to talk to tons of people because they are all around you, but the most important thing I learned was to simply just be their friend. I had some great conversations started with some people by just complimenting their shoes, or watch, or chain… Haha!!

I need yall to pray for Elder Gibb because as the days of the transfer have been winding down, we saw a mouse in our apartment! It scared the tar out of the both of us when we saw it run accross the floor of the kitchen during lunch time, and ever since then, we haven’t seen it. Thank goodness, since I’m moving, it’s not my problem anymore!! On that note… we had a super spiritual lesson with Ron where we read the Family: a Proclamation to the world. His family is super important to him and he had just recently lost his sister. He also asked us about baptisms for the dead and was interested in learning about that and how it’s possible for his sister to get her work done at the temple! I am gonna miss Ron very much as well!! What a super great, loving, compassionate guy who I have grown to love. I can’t wait to hear about his growth as well!

Well yall, life’s been great. It has been going by to fast! Next week I will be writing you all in a brand new location! Once again I am looking forward to a bright new opportunity to serve! I know that the Lord wants me to be in Edmond now and I am fully indebted in accomplishing his will on my mission! This work is true, and is the utmost important thing anyone could be doing! It has blessed my life and taught me sooooo much! I love you guys and I can’t wait to write yall again soon! Peace!

Love,

Elder Weese

1,2) Last District counsel with district and zone

3) Matching on an exchange with Elder Vogt

4,5) Hit the bike slopes for a minute!

6) Book of Mormon class with Recent Converts and Investigators!

7,8) Tulsa finest tourist spot!:)

Week 32: What a busy, quick week!! 3/4/2019

Hello family and friends!!! You got Elder Weese back on!! How is everybody?? Well, Winter is finally here... in March! Haha! It was the biggest snowfall of the season so far! I feel like every place else is wrapping up their Winter and it feels like we are just starting. The closer we get to spring, the colder it is getting and now to the point where we are finally receiving some snow. Yesterday was extremely cold and icy and we had our cars grounded because of it. So we had to get a ride to everywhere we wanted to go unless we walked. We had a lot of appointments yesterday and since our area is really spread out, we had to find rides for everywhere we went to! We even had to find one to and from church as well! But we were all over the place yesterday cruising with some pretty awesome members! The last appointment we had for the evening fell through, and he was our planned ride for home. So we were stuck outside in the freezing cold trying to find a ride. Thankfully, our ward mission leader came to the rescue!!

Well, this week was pretty awesome!! We had a lot going on and we stayed super busy. It really rolled by way too fast and I am having a hard time remembering what even happened even though we had a lot going on through out the week! The busier you are, the quicker the week I guess... Brian is still set for baptism on March 31st and we are continuing to work with him and making sure he is prepared for that upcoming day. This last week we taught him about the commandments and also about the law of chastity (which is kinda awkward trying to teach to a married couple). I guess the main concern for Brian at this point is making sure he is fully obeying the word of wisdom! He received a prescription that will help him be able to get over it and he and his wife plan for his quitting day Tuesday... which is tomorrow! We are hoping and praying that things go pretty well with that! It is helping me understand how hard it is to overcome an addiction like that but I know his life will be blessed and he will be able to go through this with ease as he relies fully on his Savior to help guide him through! Things are great with them!!!

We have a few other people who we are teaching who are doing pretty well! We had Ron, who is super awesome, come to church again yesterday and he loves our church because he tells us it always brings something different other than hearing from the same pastor or preacher every single week! He loves watching people get up and bare their testimonies and also the reverence that is contained in our church! We had a lesson with him as well this past week where we taught him about the plan of salvation again. We originally had a set lesson with him to discuss over one of Elder Bednar's talk called "Always retain a remission of your sins" which is an excellent talk and I thought it would help him with his concern of being baptized again, but when we got in with him, he didn't seem like the same person so we asked what was going on and he sadly told us that his sister passed away a few days ago. We thought it would be most appropriate to teach him about the plan of salvation again because it is such and awesome plan that our Father in Heaven has for us and it gives us so much comfort in knowing that this life is not the end! We told him how his sister, and all of his loved ones whom he had lost is resting from all earthly care in the spirit world! He seemed to love that quite a bit and even though it didn't go along with what his concern was, it was something he definitely needed to hear again. We also have this new girl named Lakassia who we recently picked up and started teaching! She had also been through a lot! She has had 6 kids, and only ONE of them survived through birth! So she has lost 5 children! The only son she has living is 7 years old and she is a single mother and is holding on to him real tightly! It's weird to think how even though she has had a rough go in her life, she still looks at all the great things in her life and considers herself blessed. We didn't get to teach her a whole lot because we were just getting to know her and her background, but I can't wait for her to find out what the Lord has in store for her!

Well, that's pretty much the rundown of some great events that transpired this week! This will be the last full week of the transfer, which is nuts!!!! We recieve the calls this weekend to find out who will be stayin, going, or if we will be staying together for another go around! I can't wait to tell you all about this week in next weeks email!! It's gonna be a blessed week!! Please consider the blessings you have in your life, there is  a lot of people that don't have very much that still look at all the positive in their lives and that is really what helps them tick!! I love and miss yall!!! Hope yall have another great week!!!

Love,

Elder Weese

1,2) The Gathering Place!

3,4) Spike ball pros!!!