Christmas!

I think hands down, the best part of this last week was getting to talk to my family. You all look so good, and really, it was the BEST Christmas gift ever. I love you all a lot. Really, being in Spain for Christmas puts things into perspective as to why Christmas is so important. Really, being with family on Christmas is the best, so, treasure it while you have the opportunity.

Alicante is good. Things have gotten COLD! Really, really cold. It´s crazy to think that only a month and a half ago, we couldn´t sleep without cranking up the air conditioning to full blast. But it is very, very humidly cold here. 

Christmas here in Spain is pretty similar to the United States. Generally, people celebrate Christmas Eve as a large event, and then they have their large Christmas meal on Christmas day during mediodia. We were invited to eat at a Brazilian family´s home. They are really cool to talk to, because both the mother and the daughter have both served missions. The daughter actually just got back from serving her mission in Madrid, and they give us lots of advice and tell us a lot of very cool stories. We loved spending Christmas Eve with them. We had four other elders come and stay in our piso during Christmas, which was great, because it felt a lot more like having family over for Christmas. 

The rest of this week has been very calm. A lot of people here in Spain take vacations this week, so we have been able to find more people at home, and have been able to teach using the message of Christmas. We use the He is the Gift video a LOT here, because Christmas time doesn´t end for Spain until January 6th, which is the day of the Three Kings. We get to keep sharing the message of Christ's birth up until the first week in January. It´s awesome.

We had a very cool experience yesterday with a man named Antonio. Antonio is investigating the church, and he really, really loves the feeling that he gets when he comes to church, but he wasn´t sure about how he felt joining our church. We read through part of Alma 32, and talked a lot about faith. Alma compares the faith that we need to a seed. We really only need to exercise a tiny particle of faith so that God can bless us. There really isn´t much more to it. Even if we have a difficult time believing that we can believe something, or that our testimony is struggling, we just need to exercise a particle of faith. God doesn´t ask us to do something huge just to get a response. He just asks for us to exercise our faith, no matter how small it is. Our question for Antonio yesterday was how could he show faith in God, how could he exercise his faith. He thought about it for a little while then said, "Praying and reading the book of Mormon, I guess". Which is so true. It may seem small and a Sunday school answer, but what we know is that God works by small and simple means. In a recent conference talk, Elder Bednar describes revelation in two ways: as the sunrise and as a light switch coming on. He says that more often that not, it is the former form of revelation that we receive most often. We learn precept on precept, rather than all at once. Our trials of faith are the small actions that we do to receive revelation. We exercise faith, regardless of how small it may be, and we will see the results. I know in my mission, I´ve had to put my trust in God in a lot of things, from learning the language to going forward even though it is very, very difficult. But, the small actions we do, regardless of how small they may seem, truly do make a difference. They are what make up our ´sunrise´. And if we can learn to trust in him, and if we can learn that God really does respond to our prayers, we can get the responses that we are looking for. If we ask in faith, God will respond. It's a principle that has guided our church since its beginning. The restoration started with someone asking in faith. 

Anyway, I just wanted to let you know how much I love you all.Thanks for all that you do for me, I love you all more than I can say. I really, really do. It´s really true that there´s no place like home for the holidays, but I am so glad I am out here. It is amazing, being a missionary.

And really, it´s a great day to be a missionary!

Elder Weenig