Week 38: This Week Was a Jiffy!! 4/15/2019

What's up?? Wow, another quick week just went by. Bare with me, I am gonna try my best to remember everything that happened this week to the best of my ability, it's hard to remember things on the weeks that were way fast. Anyways, Easter is in a week!! I hope ya'll are excited to celebrate the Resurrection of our Savior. Literally, Easter is a huge thing especially here in the Bible belt! There are signs from all churches everywhere saying “come celebrate Easter with us.” I'm way pumped for it! Literally I love the because of him videos where it lists all of the hardships that we encounter in life, like death, misery, contention, and how the Savior has overcome that so he could help us overcome that. John 16:33 says that the world will be filled with all sorts of tribulations, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world. I know that because of the Savior, we can dominate this world and all the Temporal things it has to offer.

Elder Neff and I were invited to life church this last Saturday by this person named Josh who agreed to go on a church swap. So he will be coming to our church one of these weeks. I don't know if any of you know what life church is but it is a huge, growing church in Oklahoma. Literally the first 30 minutes it felt like I was in a rock concert. They played a ton of music and it was the first church service I have ever attended where they offered to give us ear plugs before we went in. Not your typical church service. Then at the end, a man named pastor Craig came on video and gave us a sermon about, “things Jesus did not say.” Literally pastor Craig is one of the best public speakers I have ever listened to! He was very entertaining and knew how to get his congregation rolling! The whole time I was worried because I felt like Josh is gonna think our church is super boring! But the very next day, when it was time for our service, the thing that stood out to me that was missing in the life church was the Holy Ghost. Ya, loud music probably makes ya feel good and Pastor Craig can be very inspiring, but no ear splitting music or preaching pastor will ever be strong enough to overpower the influence of the Holy Ghost. There was an 11 year old deacon who was up there giving a talk, literally didn't look up at the congregation once, and I was way more touched by his talk then pastor Craig's uplifting and motivating talk! He had a special spirit he brought, and that all talks we had yesterday! If we come to church and we are truly searching for the Holy Spirit, we are gonna find it and notice the greatness of peace in our lives!

Well, another cool thing that happened was, we were at 50+ consecutive no's when it came to knocking on doors, and this last Thursday that streak was broken. We didn't just set one return appointment, but two! One, who's name is Victor, is a pastor for a 7th day Adventist. He was way enthused and excited that we were there talking with him. He embraced our invitation to have a Bible study with him in a few weeks, so that is something we have to look forward to. Really nice guy! Then the other was this lady named Lori! She is part of the catholic church, she was really interested in learning more about the book of Mormon and insisted that we come back the next day to drop it off to her. That was a success as well because we gave her a brief restoration lesson as well and asked her if she was willing to read the Book of Mormon to find out if it is true or not. She said yes, and we will be meeting with her on Wednesday! Hopefully we can see some good progress come with that. We also taught the Jeffery family this last week and Mia is super close to baptism. Right now, they are just trying to find when the most convenient day is that they could have that. But I am excited that we are really close to having another baptism!

Well, This week was super awesome! I'm so pleased with the effort that we have been putting in this transfer and now it has finally been paying off! This weekend we get the calls for the next transfer (I know… Already??) I am looking forward to what this week has to offer. Thank you all for your amazing love and support! I hope you guys have a great week!!

Love,

Elder Weese

1,2) Story time with the campus grandma!

3) Elder Badger!!

4) UCO campus

5) Greenies in the back!!!

6) True mugs!!

1,2) It's a Rat!!

3) Only in Arcadia, OK!

4) Cool Cat!!

5) Cool rain pic!!

Week 37: Ain't Nothing Like General Conference 4/8/2019

Howdy!! What's going on my friends? Man, wasn't conference weekend fantastic? I hope all of you guys enjoyed it just as much as I did. I wish we had conference every week. Well, the weekend went by quickly and fast with still no crazy rumor that came out to be true. It was crazy to hear all the anticipation and prediction that people thought were going to come, but unfortunately for them it did not happen. There were many things that inspired me about general conference. We had some great speakers come out and speak to us this weekend and I hope most of you took advantage of that time given where we received direct counsel from God's own servants to how we can live better and be better. It takes a lot out of us to be a true disciple of Jesus Christ, but we have the people to tell us how to do just those things. I was amazed to hear that most of the talks were centered on sharing the Gospel, fortifying families, and repenting and making it back to the Covenant path. I feels like these 3 things are of most importance in our day and age. I loved Elder Uchtdorf's talk about how we can courageously and nobly do missionary work. It gave that step by step process that I really want to dive into this week! And Elder Holland's Talk as he discussed the most important hour of the week, the sacrament hour! Those were the few of the many talks that stood out to me! It was just an all out fantastic weekend.

Well ya'll, things have been pretty much the same around here since the last email I wrote to you guys. Everything in high gear like always when it comes to being a missionary out here. We had interviews this week along with another exchange with the Elders from Shawnee once again! Elder Neff and I track the no's that we get in our tracing each day and I remember hitting 40 straight, consecutive, no's without setting up a single return appointment. So that was a little frustrating… We did however, met some awesome people who we had great conversations with that weren't quite ready yet to hear the message of the restored Gospel, so it wasn't a complete failure during that stretch of time, I feel like when we leave a situation like that, we only add to the good reputation that other people have about the church, even though they decided not to be apart of it yet. That has been something I have been working on, trying to notice success during times of failure. The Atonement also helps significantly with that as well!!

While we were on our exchange up in Shawnee, we had the opportunity to meet a monk who took us on a tour through a Catholic monastery. That was pretty cool, I'll send some pics in the attachment below! It was cool to meet a monk. He also introduced us to a lot of other monks so it felt kinda like I was in a sith Lord training, get it? Because thats what they look like especially with their hoods up! It was a pretty fun time and we invited him to the temple open house as a return invitation! If y'all ever have the chance to meet a monk, do it!!

Well, that's pretty much what my week consisted of! I'm so thankful for all of you guys, for your continuous love and support. I hope I do a good job with all of these emails. It's hard to put into words everything that is going on in my life right now, but I'm trying my best. I love you guys and hope ya'll have another awesome week!!

Love,

Elder Weese

1) Wassup everybody!!

2) Winner, winner, chicken dinner with the Moses family!

3) What was I thinkin?

4) Ma friends!!!

5) Raisin' Canes!!!!

6) Picture I got from Brians baptism!

7) Pink skies!!!

8) Conference Crepes!!

 Catholic Monastery tour!

1) Shrunken head (Yes its real)

2) Rock on my son!!

3) My church!! :)

4) I don't even know what to say!

5) Where the monks meet!

1) having a good time tourin!

2) Knight in shining armor!

3) This is the place... other than the temple!

4) Rosary from the tour!

5) Conference gang!  

Week 36: The Craziness of the Business!!!! 4/1/2019

Hey Wassup everybody? How are ya'll doing? I can't believe we have already hit a new month in this “new” year. 2019 is already a fourth of the way through! The next few months are crucial for keeping those new years goals up and alive so who ever is trying to make the year 2019 the best year they ever had, as I am, Keep it up!

Well this week was super busy! This has definitely been the busiest transfer of my mission so far. It takes more responsibility being a district leader than I thought it would. I went on 2 exchanges this week so that is 4 days where I am not working with my real companion, Elder Neff, out of the week. Exchanges are pretty fun, but they sure do take a lot out of you! Mostly because it is hard to get to sleep at a decent time because of all the people sharing a tiny apartment! We had zone conference on Tuesday as well which was 10 hours long. All companionships in the mission, including ourselves, were assigned to give a 15 minute training on any topic from previous zone conferences and MLC's. Why? Because almost half of the mission has been out 6 months or less so we decided to fill them in on what had happened in those trainings that they missed. It was great! “A fire hose of information” as president likes to call it was given out to us and it has increased my knowledge to better myself to become a more effective missionary, that's what these conferences are all about!

My friends, I'm sorry this one is shorter than usual, but I am running a little bit behind schedule, we have passes for some free bowling in a few minutes, and also there was nothing out of the extraordinary this week that happened to us. Just a lot of tracing and finding and stuff like that to go along with our exchanges and meetings! I am very pumped for general conference this weekend! I look back to the last general conference 6 months ago and saw how much of an impact it has made on the course of my mission and I am so excited that I will have the chance to see another one while I am out here. Consider how grateful we are that we have prophets and Apostles here on earth! It is so important that we have them as they are the watchmen for everything that takes place here on earth! I love you guys! I'll talk to you soon!!!

Love,

Elder Weese

P.S. Brian from my last area was baptized yesterday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

1) Stay cool yo!!

2) Squirrel distraction!

3) Sunday in Primary!!

4) Zone Conference!

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!!