Hello All

So wow. We are emailing again. This week has been insane. 

I guess I can start off with this morning. I was getting dressed and put on my shoes. I walked into our front room, and felt what I thought was my socks bunched up at the tip of my shoe. I took it off to fix it, and when I did, a large cockroach jumped out of the shoe as well. Well, that will wake you up in the morning. 

Second experience that was slightly out of the normal that happened this week was walking down the rock of Gibraltar some monkeys were blocking the path. I did not have a way to get around and I was in the front of the line and so I decided to climb along the side of the wall and then get down on the other side of the monkeys. One of them was not happy at all with that decision and started to chase after me. I had a little bit of deja vu from the game temple run. It was actually pretty funny.

So La Linea. We´ve had a really good last week. Antonio came to church again. We gave him a tie. He´s fantastic. President Deere actually came down to La Línea to meet with him. We´re looking forward to his baptism which is planned for this coming Saturday, so stay tuned. We´re really praying for him and he´s doing really well. The day with President Deere was very fun as well. It´s quite hard to get around in La Línea in a car, because normally we don´t use a car to get around and there are a lot of one way streets. 

In terms of the work here, we have been working really hard and have been able to see some miracles. We have been working with a man who used to belong to the church in Gibraltar. He´s no longer a member, but he still has a very strong testimony. He asked us this last week to prepare a talk on the atonement. We´re excited. I really want to reactivate him. He has such an incredible knowledge of the gospel and such a strong testimony. It´s actually pretty interesting how we found him. We were trying to locate all of the old members of the Gibraltar branch, but couldn´t find this man´s house. We found his old address, but it was obvious that nobody had lived there for years. So we decided to go the old fashioned way and try and find him through the phone book. We did. Very cool miracle. He has some crazy stories about what used to happen when the missionaries were here in Gibraltar over a decade ago. Apparently, the missionaries accidentally left an iron on in their apartment which actually escalated into a large fire. Every time we talk with a person that knew the church from long ago, they remind us of the fire that happened there. 

Another cool miracle that happened on Thursday. We were walking through Gib and we heard a lady yell "Elders". Bear in mind that there is only one active member pair in all of Gibraltar, so we immediately thought ¨We don´t recognize that voice. Who is this?¨ This lady approached us and was very enthusiastic. apparently she used to belong to the Gibraltar branch way back when it existed. Very cool, right? She told us that she was just visiting from Great Britain and would only be here for a couple of days. She asked us where the chapel was and told us that she would be coming to church with her husband who is not a member. They came, which was a miracle. I don´t know if I´ve mentioned this before, but I translate our church meetings into English for our Gibraltarian members. So this time, we had a little bit more people to translate for, and so I had to speak a little bit louder. During this particular sacrament meeting, one of the speakers told me she would be sharing a story, and to save me the trouble of having to translate it, she had printed it off in English. So as she gave her talk, I read the story. Bear in mind, that with the increased number of people, I had to speak a little bit louder, and without knowing it, I got a little ahead of the speaker. One of the elders in my district came up to me when the meeting was done and told me ¨I was listening to your translation and you were saying things before she did. How´d you do that?¨ Now, I was very tempted to talk about the gift of prophecy in this situation, but I decided it was probably better to be honest. 

Anyway, La Línea is doing well. This week will be very packed because we will travel to San Fernando to have interviews with President Deere. We may see some changes pretty soon in La Línea. Stay tuned. We´ll find out more about it tomorrow. 

Anyway, this last week has taught me a LOT about how God knows so much better than we do. Although sometimes it´s very hard to accept, we have got to try and be doing our best to do what we can wherever we are. I´m learning a lot about that on my mission. Sometimes we can´t see the reason for why we are in a specific situation or why we are going to be placed in a difficult circumstance, but one thing that we can be sure of is that God knows us and wants us to be able to succeed and is going to give us the tools wherever we are. 

It's a great day to be a missionary.

Elder Weenig

Avoiding the monkeys

 La iglesia de la inmaculada (A Church)

Semana Santa

Under (water) Pressure

This last week has been amazing. The weather of La Línea decides that it does not want to stay at a steady temperature. We have had summer one day, and the next we have winter. It has been an interesting week. We have been able to see a lot of miracles. I´m very glad that we have the opportunity to work here.

Antonio came to church again! So great. He loved the experience. Incredible, really just incredible the amount of dedication he has. It´s the best feeling when you get to see those people that you have worked to find and to teach change. Ah man. It´s the best. Also, it´s not bad at all when he explains the book of Mormon to the rest of the class in Gospel Principles. He is amazing. Such a great guy. We are going to keep praying for him and watching him progress.

Today as pday was a very relaxed pday. Well, sort of. To begin, I have to start at the beginnings of our problems with our water. So because this apartment is new, no other missionaries have lived here. We have had to sort out some problems with the water and electricity bills. Fortunately, we´ve been able to fix everything with the electricity, but when we got something changed with the water, the water pressure in our apartment went away. Almost completely. This was two weeks ago. We have been calling to get things changed in our apartment, and today the man was able to come....but tomorrow he will be coming to fix the problem. So, result is that I have become very adept at being able to heat up water and use a cup for a shower. It´s been a growing experience.

So Maribel. Really cool story, we were walking down the street and I saw this woman walking her dog and I had a very sudden feeling that I needed to talk with her. When we asked her if we could share a message with her about the gospel, she accepted and the next day we were teaching her. She´s Gibraltarian, so we teach her in English. She has two dogs that are very loud and love to run around while we´re teaching. Pretty fun. We´re praying that she progresses. She has a car. Which is kinda the equivalent of gold in our area. She wants to come to church, but was not able to this last Sunday. But she was able to come to our family night in Gibraltar which went perfectly. We were able to see a lot of people come and a friend of one of our members came again. So good.

Funny story about our neighbors. We have these two older men who live down the hall from us in our apartment building. When we walk past their door and they are cooking, we get this heavenly smell of deliciousness. We have been able to talk with them a couple of times and they have been really friendly. So one morning, we get done with singing a hymn to start off companion study, and we hear a knock at our door. We open it to see our two neighbors with a tortilla de patatas in their hands. They told us that they heard us singing and wanted to come down and let us try some of their cooking. The tortilla was delicious, but we realized that they live DOWN the hall, not just right next door. We have resolved to be a little bit more quiet.

I´m sorry this email is pretty short. But I do want you all to know how much I love you all! I cannot believe it is almost May. That is crazy. I love La Línea. It´s a fantastic place, we are finding people here and there are so many people here that are prepared. We just have to find them. I am praying that we are going to be able to see even more miracles this coming week. We already have been able to see a lot. We were blessed to be able to teach a lot this last week, so we are hoping that we can see progress within our area.

It´s been a great week. God has really been good to us. We´re so lucky to be here. My companion and I were talking about how amazing it is that we get to see the rock of Gibraltar from our area....and on clear days, Africa. In fact, when people ask us what qualifies us to be full time representatives of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints we tell them ¨We can see Africa from our house!´ =)

Anyway, I love you all a lot! Have a fantastic week. Always remember that it is a great day to be a missionary!

Elder Weenig

Transfer Number Three in La Linea

I can´t believe we are emailing again. This week has flown by. Really, it just seems like we have been running from place to place. It has been very fun. I love La Línea and Gibraltar, the people here are amazing.

Transfer calls came this week. Drum roll please..... I will be.....staying in La Línea and Gibraltar! We were expecting it, because I will be finishing Elder Holman´s training, but the other two companionships in our district will be changing. I cannot believe it has been three months since I arrived in La Linea. it seems like just a couple of weeks ago. Ah, I love being a missionary. We had a senior couple come down from Rota, the American military base here in Spain. They gave us Mexican food. On the base, they get authentic American style food. Oh, sweet mercy it was good.

But really, time goes by too fast not to enjoy every moment in the mission. And speaking of time going fast, I don´t have much time.

So I want to start off talking about the biggest miracle that we have been able to see this week. As I have said in previous emails, getting people to church is our modern day parting of the Red Sea. Literally, it would be really nice just to part the bay of Algeciras so that our investigators could walk through on dry ground to the chapel. But, for now we are using the bus. This miracle may be lacking in Egyptians chasing after us on their chariots, but it really is no less powerful for us. Antonio, the man with whom we´d discussed baptism a couple of weeks ago somehow disappeared. We´d stopped by his house and had tried to put us back in contact with him, but we were consistently unsuccessful. We thought that he had moved or that something had happened to make him lose interest in the church. We really did not understand what had happened. we decided to put him as a backup plan to some of our other investigators that lived nearby. As we got to our appointment, the people told us to come back another day, so we looked into our backup plans. When we saw Antonio as our plan, I will be honest, I thought we were just going to walk by his house, and have nobody answer. Thankfully, God knows a LOT better than a 18 year old missionary, and is preparing His children. When we knocked on his door, Antonio answered. He welcomed us in, and had his Book of Mormon lying on the table. Such a miracle. He told us he had been very, very busy these past couple of weeks, and that he had been unable to meet, but that from here on out, he would be less busy. As it was Friday, we asked him if he would accompany us to church this Sunday. He told us that he would, but that he would probably have to buy some new shoes in order to look presentable. We told him that it did not matter and just to come in whatever he had. So Sunday morning, we get on the bus, and we get to Antonio´s stop. We watch a couple of people get on the bus, and lastly, ANTONIO!!! He came to church! I cannot tell you how happy I was to see him, Book of Mormon in hand wearing his nicely polished shoes walking down the aisle in the bus. BAH!! I´m pretty sure I was jumping up and down in my seat, so although it was not the most professional show of missionary work, it was definitely God showing his hand in the work. He loved church, and has told us that he will be coming back the next week. So amazing. 

Do you remember how I told you about the family night that we do in Gibraltar every week? Well, this last week, our two Gibraltarian members were in Sevilla taking a vacation. They told us, however, that they really wanted us to use their apartment to hold the family night in order to keep the momentum going. They gave us the keys, and told us that they would leave everything ready for us. When we were walking over to Gibraltar from La  Línea, a plane was taking off. To walk to Gibraltar, you have to cross a airplane ramp where planes take off periodically throughout the day. We had to wait there and as we did, we ended up being late for the Family night. When we got to the flat, only one person came, one of the members of the old Gibraltar branch that we meet with often. So... probably not needed to use the members apartment. They did leave us very handy sticky notes all over their apartment telling us what to use and where everything was. So good, so good. We decided as we left the apartment to leave handy sticky notes all around their apartment, so hopefully they appreciated that. =).

Also, big news! Our mission will be getting ipads in May. we will all travel to Sevilla to hear from a couple of seventies who will instruct us on what it means to have the ipads and what we are supposed to do with them. It´s going to change a lot of things about missionary work. It is going to make things a lot more efficient and we are really, really excited about it.

Anyhow, I love being a missionary here. It has been just a great week, and we are really excited to keep it up this next transfer. We´re praying to see even more miracles. We can´t wait. I´m really, really grateful for this opportunity to be here in La Línea. It´s a fantastic city and we are going to be seeing some amazing things in these next couple of weeks.

I love you all so much. Thank you for all of the emails and all that you do. I love you all so much. Be safe and have a fantastic week, and never forget that it is a great day to be a missionary!

Love,

Elder Weenig

The Semana Santa Week

Holy cow. This last week has been awesome. Really, honestly, we´ve been able to see a lot of miracles here in La línea. I´ve really come to enjoy being in this area. It was pretty difficult at first, but I´ve really come to love it here. The Catholic church has a really powerful influence in Spain, and even more so in La Línea, so this last week we´ve been able to get an up close and personal look at the Semana Santa (the Holy Week). Basically, Semana Santa corresponds to events that happened the last week of Jesus Christ´s life. It´s a lot of processions and a lot of people wearing costumes walking through the streets. The demonstrations are really just fascinating. The people paint, decorate, and basically adorn these massive statues of saints, Christ, and the virgin Mary and they are taken around the city. Some people have told us that this tradition started so that the church would be able to visibly show the people scenes from the Bible, which is cool. It does show how powerful the Catholic church is here in Spain. It also makes me really happy to see that people do have faith in Christ. Even if they just demonstrate it differently than we do.

This last week, we got blessed with the miracle to get back in contact with Reme. She is doing well, her family situation has gotten better, so we have been able to meet with her more often. She is such a great lady. She has a lot of faith in God. While we were in a lesson with her, her son came in and she was actually help us explain things. She really is getting a testimony of the Book of Mormon. The book´s powerful. I have never really given that much thought, but it is one of the most powerful books that we have on earth. It´s incredible. It changes lives. I have seen it in Alicante, and I have been able to see it here. It´s an incredible book. Really, really powerful. We´re hoping to get her to come to church this Sunday. It´s not an easy thing to do. It´s really actually quite difficult. We´re praying for miracles daily.

We had a really cool opportunity to teach an elderly French couple. They speak Spanish very well, but struggle with reading, so we´ve had to get them a French Book of Mormon. They have some different views about religion, but we´re really hoping that they advance. They both committed to reading and studying to Book of Mormon. Which I know that if anyone really does want to know if the book is true, they will get a testimony of its truth.

I don´t have much time, but I have to tell you about conference. Our Gibraltarian couple invited us over to eat in their flat for conference and watch a session there. While we were there, they made us traditional English breakfast. It was AMAZING. Sometimes I feel like I am serving my mission in the United Kingdom and Spain. This area is easily one of the coolest and most amazing areas in the mission. It´s such a blessing for both my companion and I to be able to teach in our native language to people who have so much faith. It´s so amazing. Conference was great. For me, it was like getting a refuel. It´s such a blessing. Especially for missionaries. I love being a missionary here. We´ve had a lot of opportunities to teach this last week, and we´re hoping to be able to find more and more people to progress in the gospel. We are praying daily to find miracles and to find more people who are ready and willing to accept the gospel. We will find them. They are here. In Alma 13:24, it talks about angels preparing the hearts of men to hear the word of God, and I know that that is what is happening here in La Línea. We just have to do our part to be able to find them, and God will do the rest.

I love you all so much. Thank you all for the support and love that you give me. Do not forget, it´s a great day to be a missionary!

Elder Weenig

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

La Linea

This past week has been quite the crazy week for weather in La Línea. At the beginning of the week, it was sunny, bright, and we all had this crazy notion that we were going to start having really, really nice weather. Our mistake. Wednesday the rains started, and a pair of just really unprepared missionaries had the misfortune of being caught in the far part of La Línea without umbrellas. We were soaked. The weather´s had it´s ups and downs. And so has the work this week.

Pepe. I love this guy. He is just fantastic. He´s travelled the world, and has a lot of stories. He loves to talk. LOVES to talk. If we can get a message in under 45 minutes, we consider it a miracle. We had set his baptism to be this coming Saturday. We had gotten permission and everything and it seemed like everything was going to go perfectly. We had even planned which beach we were going to do the baptism on  (there´s no fount here in La Línea). But our last lesson that we had with him, he told us that he did not want to get baptized. We talked with him about it, and asked him if he´d prayed and made sure that he knew the church was true. He told us that he had, but that he did not want to get baptized. It is hard. It´s very hard to have developed that love for someone, and then having it go away in just a few moments. You never can tell how much you love someone until they make the wrong choice. We left that lesson a little down, but as we were walking I had a thought that everything was going to be okay, and above all else, not to give up on Pepe. We won´t. Even if I have to toss him into the ocean myself, we won´t give up on him.

Reme. Is living evidence that the Lord has prepared people to receive his Gospel. At our last lesson with her, we explained the plan of salvation. When we finished she sat there and said, ´Wow. that makes sense. There isn´t just a heaven and hell, but three different places. Three different kingdoms.´ Then she looked at me and said ´But there´s another place isn´t there? A place outside of the three kingdoms?´ Well, she is inspired. Normally we don´t get into the doctrine of outer darkness with investigators, but we must respond to the needs of our investigators. Anyway, she loved the plan, and accepted it completely. We´re very excited for her. She found general conference on line on her own, and has been watching it. Such a miracle. Really, It is a pleasure to be able to teach her.

The last miracle that I will share is a man named Antonio. We contacted him on the street, and set up an appointment with him to go and teach a message about Christ. He accepted and we were in his home the next Saturday. During the lesson, the spirit got incredibly strong. Very strong, and we challenged him to be baptized. He accepted, and told us that he was willing to do whatever he needed to to be able to join our church. We are praying for him. Keep him in your prayers, he´s got a lot of faith, and has had a really hard time in life. The gospel is going to help him so much, and I know that we are going to be seeing miracles this coming week. 

I love you all so much. I love being a missionary. More than anything. It is one of the best decisions I have ever made, and I am so grateful for it. It´s amazing. I love, love, love being a missionary.

It´s a great day to be a missionary!

Elder Weenig

First Week of Training

Wow. What a crazy week, but it´s been really fun. I really enjoy training. La Linea is getting warmer. We´re on a peninsula here and so we always get these crazy cross winds and a lot of just crazy, crazy humid cold. I´m glad we can go outside in short sleeves now. But his week. Where to begin?

I love how international this area is. We were at an eating appointment, while on splits, and we realized that each of us where from a different nationality. There were five of us an American, a Scot, an Englishman, an Argentine, and a Phillipino. Super cool. We´ve gotten to meet a lot of different nationalities here, because of how international a destination Gibraltar is.

La Línea continues to be great. We´ve worked so hard this last week. I used to love to talk with my companions after we´d go to bed. But the second we lie down we are out. It´s a good feeling. Elder Holman is great. He motivates me to be better. We´ve been able to see some great miracles.

Reme, continues to progress. She is reading the Book of Mormon and doing just amazingly. She´s promised to come to church this coming Sunday which is HUGE. The commitment to come to church from our area is not something to be taken lightly. The church is in Algeciras which is on the other side of the bay. It takes about an hour to get there in bus (slightly shorter if you have a car) and then an hour to get back. What an amazing commitment. The sacrifices of the members here blow me away. Blow me away. We have two members that come from Gibraltar to come to church (we ride with them on the bus every week) and coming over the border from there takes about an extra twenty minutes.  Even farther for Stake Conferences. We had a stake conference yesterday in Chiclana. Chiclana is about two and a half hours away by bus. The members are amazing. Really, I´ve learned so much from them.

Pepe. Our seventy two year old investigator. Is doing well. He is getting excited about baptism. He dropped coffee, tea, and tobacco the second we asked him. It was pretty miraculous. He didn´t question it. He asked us if it was the will of God for him in his life, and when we told him that it was, he immediately did what we´d asked. What a champion. He loves to talk. Sometimes our lessons are pretty long with him because he loves talking, but it´s crazy how much love you develop for these people that you teach. You get so connected to them, and when they don´t do what you ask, it makes you sad. Which I´m pretty sure is exactly how Heavenly Father feels about each and every one of us. It´s such an amazing experience.

Ana Florín. My Spanish Grandmother. Ana is one of the only members here in La Línea that we´ve been able to find from the branch that existed about twenty years ago. She is the nicest lady. Every time that we pass by her house she gives us some nice, but always very healthy little Spanish treat so that we don´t ¨coger peso¨ (gain weight). We take her the Sacrament every week. It gives it a different meaning to be able to take it to someone who hasn´t been able to get the sacrament since the branch was here. It´s a very cool experience.

Denise. She is our Gibraltarian investigator. She take us out to eat every Friday morning. Last time we went out to eat, she took us to a pizza place. I´d never been there before, but I saw on the menu a calzone that sounded fantastic. I ordered it and when they brought it out. It was MASSIVE. I had never seen anything like it. I think it was supposed to be split between multiple people. Anyway, Denise looked at me and told me I could not eat it, which naturally meant there was no other choice but TO eat it. About a half hour later, I was left with an empty plate and a very nasty stomach ache.

But wow. The time goes by so fast. We have a zone conference in Sevilla this week, and it feels like we were just having one. The time really does fly. There are days where I feel like I just got here. Some days where I can´t believe I´ve been gone for so long. I love being a missionary. I really do. It is by far the best thing that I have ever done in my life. It´s hard sometimes, but we get to see a lot of miracles here. We have to be working hard, and being obedient enough to merit a miracle, but when they do come, they are amazing. 

I love you all so much. Thank you so much for all that you do for me.. I miss you all a lot and pray for you. 

It´s a great day to be a missionary!

Elder Weenig

Gibraltar with Elder England (companion from last transfer)

English Fish and Chips

On top of the Rock of Gibraltar.  My new companion, Elder Holman, is on the left.

More monkeys.

Looking down from the Rock of Gibraltar.