Hello everyone! Everything at home sounds like it is going great! :)
Well this week was yet another great week in the service of the Lord! The first thing that happened this past week was going to the Muslim Mosque! It was so pretty and cool! I will try to send pictures if I can find them.... But just to explain a little about the Muslim beliefs, they believe in Allah, aka God, and they believe that Mohammad was his last prophet on the Earth. Mohammad claimed to have been given Holy messages from the angel Gabriel and Mohammad memorized and taught these messages to the people. They believe in a book called to Koran and they only read it in Arabic. They believe that you pray at certain times of the day and that you can only pray in the Mosque.... This was such a cool experience to be able to go here! Before we went inside the Mosque we went into this separate building where we took off our shoes and then bent down and washed our feet and washed our hands and face. You don't have to do this but hey I wanted to cultural experience! After washing off we went into the Mosque, before entering you have to take off your shoes. I think that the entire building is marble or something like that. But, inside was gorgeous! Right when you walk in is a huge empty hall where they pray. Muslims always pray facing Mecca. But, on the ground were little separate rugs where people can come and do their own prayers. When Muslims pray they go through certain kneeling motions and certain chanting motions. In the middle of the Room was a HUGE and very beautiful chandelier. It was very beautiful. There was also a ton of Arabic writing on walls and Mohammad and Allah's name written in Arabic were there too.
The most interesting part was what the Muslims call prayer I guess. When it is that certain time of the day to pray the leader of the Mosque gets on the intercom and starts chanting. You can hear it not only inside the Mosque but also outside all around the area. So he calls for everyone to come and then they all come in, line up, and he leads them in prayer. It was really interesting because I actually felt the Spirit. I was a little confused and so I asked my companion about it later. He told me the same thing happened to him the first time he went to the Mosque so he gave me an article about the Church's viewpoint on Mohammad. The article said that our Church believes that Mohammad was an inspired man of God who helped lead people of that time away from a life of worshipping idols. But, he was not a prophet! Interestingly enough it also said that if there is any link between the Muslim society and the Christian World it is through the LDS Church because our beliefs are so similar. So that answered my question. The Mosque was an amazing place and very beautiful! I took pictures and will see if I have time to send some but probably not till next week.
Anyways other than that my week has been about the same. The zone here in Kazakhstan is really working hard at trying to meet our goals of baptisms and investigators. I feel very blessed to be apart of the work here. I am finally getting organized and used to how things are run here in the field, it is much different than in the MTC!!
Well I don't have much to say except for the weird food I have eaten.... this week I finally ate horse! It is delish.. the dish it comes in translates to five finger dish or something like that. It has noodles, horse, onions, and a bunch of weird different meat. I think mine had lamb and some arteries from some animal.. haha it was pretty good. So the homemade juice here look crazy! They bring out this picture of juice but whole fruits are still inside it.. it looks nasty but tastes quite delish. I think my next goal is to eat tongue.. or maybe try the jello that they make from fat and meat. They love fat here and prize it above all.
Our investigators are still the same as before and have not changed at all because they have not been able to meet with us which sucks. But we are going to work hard on finding new investigators this week. We still have the same baptismal dates with two investigators. I am still doing a lot of piano lessons and it is helping me learn but some of my students are better than me!!
I love it here! I love the work that I am apart of and the opportunity I have to bring souls back to our father in heaven in these the last days. I am so grateful for all of the love and support! Thank you!
Well thank you all for the love and support and I hope that you are doing great and having fun!! Remember who you are!!
ELDER WEIHING
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