Monday, March 30, 2015

Semana Santa



Wow. All you can eat buffets as a missionary are fantastic. Especially when you are almost out of food in your flat and you don´t have much money left for the month to buy some more. Our branch mission leader is fantastic. He took Elder Holman and I up to a castle and then afterwards to an all you can eat buffet. Oh my. It´s been a good pday. 

So I don´t even know where to begin. This last week has been awesome, awesome, awesome. Also, I don´t know if I have ever been so tired in my life. We get home some nights and I feel like I am just about to collapse. But it´s fantastic. I can´t believe I have been in La Linea for over two months. We were eating at a member´s house yesterday, and they asked us how long we have been serving our missions. Elder Holman said a couple of weeks, and I said about six months. One of the members eating with us turned to me and said, ¨No, Elder Weenig, you had six months when you GOT here. You´ve been here a while.¨ Geez. Time goes by way, way too fast. I really don´t like the fact that my second transfer in La Línea is almost over. It makes me feel sick.

So, miracle! We recovered Pepe!! We decided to not visit him for a little bit and then to return back and see if he had noticed the difference. He had. He was really welcoming, and when we read through a part of the Book of Mormon with him, he thought for a second, and started to explain how he felt about baptism, that he didn´t feel right, but we challenged him again to be baptized in a month, and he accepted. We are praying so, so hard that it works this time. We were worried that it might have been the last time we were going to meet with him for a while, and he accepted and God really has blessed us so much.

Here in La Línea is very different from all other areas. It´s different. We find all of our investigators through contacting and through door knocking. It´s not the best way to find, but we work with what we have. We have been meeting a lot of new people and having a lot of cool opportunities to talk with others and to share the gospel in literally every situation. It´s fun to go walk through Gibraltar and contact someone. When they start to walk away saying ¨Solo hablo español¨ (I only speak Spanish), we immediately switch tactics and watch the look of surprise on their face. 

Unfortunately, we haven´t been able to meet with Antonio, our investigator. We´re praying for him, and hoping that we can come back into contact with him. 

This last week we were really blessed to find some new investigators. Cool story. We contacted a guy on the street who told us we could pass by and he gave us his address. When we went by, it was a fake name to the address, but the house was real. There was a woman in the house, and because she was alone, we couldn´t teach her. She told us to come back later when her husband was home. We came back, and the woman wasn´t there anymore, but her husband was. He told us that he really wanted to talk with us, and that we should come back tomorrow. We left, came back the next day, and there he was, Miguel. He is a great guy. During our lesson with him, we were talking about the church. He told us he used to belong to a different church, but had later seen things in the church that he did not like, and that made him leave. He told us that he was searching for something. Something that would be a church for him. AH! Perfect!! We started talking to him about baptism but he didn´t seem sure, so that will be our long term goal.

Ana Florín. So I´ve already talked a little bit about her. She is one of the nicest ladies on the earth. We give her the sacrament every Sunday. Unfortunately, she lives alone, and as missionaries, we cannot teach single women in their houses. When we went by her house the other night, we stopped in the doorway, because we couldn´t enter. Usually, we would just bring a member to these appointments, but as La Línea is new, there are not many members available to accompany us to many of our appointments. So, instead of just us going away, she pulls out two chairs, and sets up a miniature table in her doorway, then pulls up a chair, and then we grab a couple of chairs that were just outside. she tells us, "If you can´t come in, there is a solution to everything. We eat in the doorway¨. We literally had dinner that night in her doorway. We apologized for the inconvenience but she just smiled. She told us that she was happy to help and that she was very happy to have elders visiting her. She is a saint. She really, really is. 

As far as culturally this week, Semana Santa (Holy Week - the week preceding Easter Sunday) is starting. If you have never seen pictures of it, go and look it up online. It is fascinating. It did give my companion and I a little bit of a scare while we were walking through the streets one evening. It was dark and as we turned around a corner, we saw a group of people walking through the streets carrying a big statue of the body of Christ. It was a little bit of a shock to say the least. But a cool cultural experience, we´re excited to see how it goes throughout the rest of the week.

I love you all so much! Thank you for all of the support that you give me, It means a lot. I love the Spanish language and I love the people, and the culture here is amazing. I´m so grateful for having the chance to be here. Especially, here in La Línea. It has it´s challenges. But it´s been a blessing to be able to work here.

After all, it´s a great day to be a missionary. 

Love, 
Elder Weenig

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