Dear Beloved Family and Friends
Another week has flown by full of tests, trials, and happiness. First I guess I better start out by saying that we set a date of Baptism with Arstan, the beer selling guy! He finally showed up to a lesson! But, our real test is ahead of us with him because we are going to have to help him a lot before baptism to quite drinking and smoking and to find a new job that is much more flexible (and doesn't require selling beer :)). He is such a great guy and has even referred his 18 year old brother to us. We started meeting with the Brother and he is already starting to get interested, it is so interesting how you start to be able to tell what a person feels when they visit with you. For example, with him the beginning of the lesson seemed a little uncomfortable for him but as we started talking and getting into good discussions all of his nerves went away and by the end of the lesson he was asking right away when he could come back. These two brothers are really close and if we can affect one we will affect the other and in the end the entire family.
Ulan is doing good. This week we had two really good lessons about faith and prayer and repentance. Right now we are just focusing on trying to get him to experiment on these things so that he can gain greater faith in Jesus Christ and a testimony of the Book of Mormon. He is such a funny guy and has great desire... he is just lazy sometimes and doesn't get completely through the commitments that we give him. Nona is doing good, she didn't come to church again last Sunday, haha but she said this time she is definitely coming. I got her a ride again and this time they are coming to pick her up at her church, so they will be waiting outside for her. She better come this week!
I don't think I have ever explained our lessons with Nona but really they are quite funny. Nona used to be a teacher of English when she was younger and because of that she knows exactly what it is like to be a teacher. She always calls us "her boys" or "her teachers" and she is always "the student". Anyways, basically we sit down, talk about life and what happened this week, we pray, and then we answer questions that she has about the Book of Mormon. We plan a lesson for her, but usually we just end up answering her questions. She reads about 8 chapters every week so she always has plenty of questions. She is on her second time through the Book of Mormon and already in Jacob. But, her questions are basically what she dislikes about the Book of Mormon. Our lessons are always based on answering questions about things that she doesn't like. For example, "what is the exact route that the Jaradites took to get to the America's? Why don't the exact route they took and the exact ocean? It really is not convenient." " Why does Jesus Christ have so many names? Why can't they just say Jesus Christ... it would make things a lot easier." "What do you mean church leaders don't get paid? That is not true, my church pastor gets paid. You may not get paid in exact money but the church pays you in other ways like in food or paying for your house so that means that you get paid." Haha a lot of the time she is just complaining about a lot of things instead of focusing on the things that she likes or the verses which she liked. Last lesson I got really tired of all of the complaining and just talking about how much she doesn't like something so I gave her a blank piece of paper and told her to stop thinking about what she doesn't like about the Book of Mormon and start writing down things that she does like, for example certain verses and why. Haha she is such a funny lady! She has to start looking at what she does like if she is ever going to really gain a deep testimony about the Book of Mormon!
My companion received his kill papers yesterday. (that means his papers to go home, he leaves to go home in about one month) I really hope his thoughts of going home don't affect the work because we have a lot of stuff we have to do and finish up here before he leaves! My companion is such a strange guy. Russians are great! but, they are strange! But, at least I can say because of him my Russian is a lot better and getting better everyday! This week I have felt more confident than ever with the language! But, more than anything I am trying to not focus so much on the language as trying to get organized in the work, change myself, and build a stronger foundation that will last the rest of my life. Don't get me wrong I love the opportunity to learn a new language, but I want to gain more than just a new language here on my mission. I want to be the missionary that "my mom thinks I am" and the Lord knows I can be. Because of that, I am trying to focus more on studying, organizing, goal setting, and testing new things out. :) So far it working out well!
We are having a burst of success here in Kazakhstan! All of the four companionships here have a baptismal date with someone and all have close potential baptisms as well. The Lord is blessing us and the work is going on! We are finding and teaching and strengthening members! The work is great and I can't believe how fast it is going by! I love you all! Thank you for the many prayers, the love, and the support! Remember who you are!
Elder Weihing
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Friday, June 18, 2010
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Hey Everyone!
Everything is going great in Kazakhstan! Today is Elder Malanin's birthday and we are going to just go relax and play games at the park with our district. It should be a nice relaxing day. Sounds like something you guys could definitely use right now with all of the moving and craziness going on! Busy Busy Busy! I guess the process never ends.
Our investigators are doing great. Sadly, Nona did not come to church last week. But, during our lesson with her this week she recommitted to come and even found her a ride from the Moore's so now she can't have any excuses! Ulan is doing good. We committed him to baptism this week but he said that he still just isn't ready. He wants to find truth but needs more time to study it. It sucks because I had this strong feeling that we shouldn't commit him to baptism during the lesson because the feeling just wasn't right and I could tell something just wasn't ready with him, lol but we still continued and committed haha I should have just listened to my prompting because I already knew what the answer was before he said it! We also had a lot of really strange lessons this week... not strange in the sense of bad, just... strange. We met this guy on the street from the Philippines last week who speaks really good english and he wanted to meet with us. Well, when we called him to meet with us this week he asked if he could bring a friend... well of course we said he could, but then he said can I bring my boyfriend? lol a little bit of an awkward situation, but hey you need to give everyone the opportunity to hear the gospel! So, he came, but didn't bring his boyfriend, and the strangest part about it was that it was a really good lesson with him lol. He has study religion a lot of his life searching for truth and he just doesn't understand how there can be so many churches. He thinks that there should be one true church but he doesn't know how he can find out. So. basically we ended up having a really interesting and spiritual discussion, gave him a Book of Mormon, and now we will just see where things go. His name is Noel. We were also able to teach another man only in english because he is studying in college in Canada, as you can tell we meet a lot of people and teach a lot of people who speak english, and we had a very strong and powerful lesson about trials and about finding truth. It was a very deep and sincere discussion and he had really good questions from the soul. His name is Rustem.
This morning we had breakfast at the Moore's, first time that I have had bacon since I was in America, and we had a really good discussion about finding people. They really, along with all of the Elders here have a strong feeling that the work here is just about to take off! As a missionary it can be hard because you have so many things along with lessons and contacting and tracting and study and stuff like that that it is easy to just get into a routine and just keep going everyday doing the same thing. It makes you forget about other things that you should be trying and testing, it is easy to forget about the simplest way to find people, through the members. So, with that we are going to be working hard on focusing on strengthening the members, getting them more involved, and getting referrals from them. I really think that this will bring a lot of success to our work as we begin to search where missionaries have never looked before in this area, we now have access to a car which the Missionary Couple here can drive so we can start searching in parts of the city where we have never been. The work is going along!
Well thank you for the love and the support and the prayers! Keep it up and remember who you are!
Elder Weihing :)
Everything is going great in Kazakhstan! Today is Elder Malanin's birthday and we are going to just go relax and play games at the park with our district. It should be a nice relaxing day. Sounds like something you guys could definitely use right now with all of the moving and craziness going on! Busy Busy Busy! I guess the process never ends.
Our investigators are doing great. Sadly, Nona did not come to church last week. But, during our lesson with her this week she recommitted to come and even found her a ride from the Moore's so now she can't have any excuses! Ulan is doing good. We committed him to baptism this week but he said that he still just isn't ready. He wants to find truth but needs more time to study it. It sucks because I had this strong feeling that we shouldn't commit him to baptism during the lesson because the feeling just wasn't right and I could tell something just wasn't ready with him, lol but we still continued and committed haha I should have just listened to my prompting because I already knew what the answer was before he said it! We also had a lot of really strange lessons this week... not strange in the sense of bad, just... strange. We met this guy on the street from the Philippines last week who speaks really good english and he wanted to meet with us. Well, when we called him to meet with us this week he asked if he could bring a friend... well of course we said he could, but then he said can I bring my boyfriend? lol a little bit of an awkward situation, but hey you need to give everyone the opportunity to hear the gospel! So, he came, but didn't bring his boyfriend, and the strangest part about it was that it was a really good lesson with him lol. He has study religion a lot of his life searching for truth and he just doesn't understand how there can be so many churches. He thinks that there should be one true church but he doesn't know how he can find out. So. basically we ended up having a really interesting and spiritual discussion, gave him a Book of Mormon, and now we will just see where things go. His name is Noel. We were also able to teach another man only in english because he is studying in college in Canada, as you can tell we meet a lot of people and teach a lot of people who speak english, and we had a very strong and powerful lesson about trials and about finding truth. It was a very deep and sincere discussion and he had really good questions from the soul. His name is Rustem.
This morning we had breakfast at the Moore's, first time that I have had bacon since I was in America, and we had a really good discussion about finding people. They really, along with all of the Elders here have a strong feeling that the work here is just about to take off! As a missionary it can be hard because you have so many things along with lessons and contacting and tracting and study and stuff like that that it is easy to just get into a routine and just keep going everyday doing the same thing. It makes you forget about other things that you should be trying and testing, it is easy to forget about the simplest way to find people, through the members. So, with that we are going to be working hard on focusing on strengthening the members, getting them more involved, and getting referrals from them. I really think that this will bring a lot of success to our work as we begin to search where missionaries have never looked before in this area, we now have access to a car which the Missionary Couple here can drive so we can start searching in parts of the city where we have never been. The work is going along!
Well thank you for the love and the support and the prayers! Keep it up and remember who you are!
Elder Weihing :)
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Wow! What a week! Well the greatest news of the week is that I found out that I am not leaving Kazakhstan yet! Yes! Elder Malanin and I have some good potential coming up and I really want to be here to see it develop!
Next, we had Elder Perry visit our mission last Sunday.. the part that stinks is that he visited Moscow and we are in Kazakhstan... so everyone in our mission got to go see and hear him except for the missionaries in Kazakhstan. Haha we really are kind of just our own little mission out in the middle of no where. Though I wanted to see Elder Perry it is ok because we had some good progress this past weekend.
Let's see.. our main three investigators are Nona, Ulan, and Arstan. Ulan and Arstan came to church for the first time last week. That is really good success for them and I think they are going to come again this week along with Nona. Ulan is doing great. He is still searching for truth and is really interested in the way we teach him. He has also started reading the Book of Mormon. Arstan is going through some problems because he really wants and needs to find a new job. He works from 10 am until midnight everyday and because of that never has time to really meet with us. He still has real sincere desire and even wanted us to come teach him at his work.. imagine how that would look.. two missionaries teaching the gospel in a beer selling shop... haha basically I am not thinking that one will be happening. But, we are working hard to help him find a new job.
Nona is the story of the week! Haha she is going to be the death of me I think... basically most of my efforts are going towards working with her. She is so close to baptism! I have really seen how she has a testimony about the Book of Mormon I just need to get her to realize it! She said in our lesson that she has different feeling while reading the Book of Mormon and Bible than she ever has with reading any other book. She said that she just can't explain it. Of course we knew what it was and we could tell her what it was, but Nona is the type of person where if it wasn't her idea then it is not a good idea. But, thankfully SHE came up with the idea to finally come to church this next Sunday. She finally realized that she has never been and if she really is decided whether or not to be baptized then she should probably attend our service on Sunday. Haha she is so funny... I will probably send pictures of her today if I have time.
Well the work is going along. My Russian is coming along. The mission is flying by. I hope life is as great for everyone else as it is for me right now! :) Sometimes it takes time to stop and really take a look at how the Lord is leading you in life and what influence he has had... but I know that He is always there looking over all of us, He is our Father and He loves us. We are his goal.. He wants to see us all again. Just take time to realize what he has given you and during the times when you feel like he has forgotten about you remember the last time you really felt His love... Rely on those moments when you have felt his unmistakable influence and care. I love you all! Thank you for the support and the many prayers! The Church is true! Remember who you are!
Elder Weihing :)
Next, we had Elder Perry visit our mission last Sunday.. the part that stinks is that he visited Moscow and we are in Kazakhstan... so everyone in our mission got to go see and hear him except for the missionaries in Kazakhstan. Haha we really are kind of just our own little mission out in the middle of no where. Though I wanted to see Elder Perry it is ok because we had some good progress this past weekend.
Let's see.. our main three investigators are Nona, Ulan, and Arstan. Ulan and Arstan came to church for the first time last week. That is really good success for them and I think they are going to come again this week along with Nona. Ulan is doing great. He is still searching for truth and is really interested in the way we teach him. He has also started reading the Book of Mormon. Arstan is going through some problems because he really wants and needs to find a new job. He works from 10 am until midnight everyday and because of that never has time to really meet with us. He still has real sincere desire and even wanted us to come teach him at his work.. imagine how that would look.. two missionaries teaching the gospel in a beer selling shop... haha basically I am not thinking that one will be happening. But, we are working hard to help him find a new job.
Nona is the story of the week! Haha she is going to be the death of me I think... basically most of my efforts are going towards working with her. She is so close to baptism! I have really seen how she has a testimony about the Book of Mormon I just need to get her to realize it! She said in our lesson that she has different feeling while reading the Book of Mormon and Bible than she ever has with reading any other book. She said that she just can't explain it. Of course we knew what it was and we could tell her what it was, but Nona is the type of person where if it wasn't her idea then it is not a good idea. But, thankfully SHE came up with the idea to finally come to church this next Sunday. She finally realized that she has never been and if she really is decided whether or not to be baptized then she should probably attend our service on Sunday. Haha she is so funny... I will probably send pictures of her today if I have time.
Well the work is going along. My Russian is coming along. The mission is flying by. I hope life is as great for everyone else as it is for me right now! :) Sometimes it takes time to stop and really take a look at how the Lord is leading you in life and what influence he has had... but I know that He is always there looking over all of us, He is our Father and He loves us. We are his goal.. He wants to see us all again. Just take time to realize what he has given you and during the times when you feel like he has forgotten about you remember the last time you really felt His love... Rely on those moments when you have felt his unmistakable influence and care. I love you all! Thank you for the support and the many prayers! The Church is true! Remember who you are!
Elder Weihing :)
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Wow another crazy week! I really don't even know where to start..
Well a lot of crazy things happened to the members of the ward this week. A lady in our ward came home from church last week and her house was burnt down.. they have no idea what happened. They honestly think that is was arson or however you spell that. But, as missionaries we had the opportunity to go over and help her clean out all of her things and get prepared to rebuild her house. It was an amazing experience! This lady, Sister Areena, is so humble. She just accepts everything that happened and is still happy about life! I couldn't believe how positive she was, she was joking around with all of us and everything. It was honestly inspirational. She even found some candy, one of the only things that was preserved in the fire, and she was just laughing saying that God had saved this candy for the missionaries to eat when they came to help. So, she gave us all of the candy haha. She is an amazing member and right now we are working on finding construction for her house. She has a small daughter and though the church offered to help pay for a temporary apt. she has decided to stay with her father.
Also Brother Andre's baby got flown to moscow this past week and we just barely found out that the baby is probably going to die. I guess the baby has heart and internal organ problems and they don't know what to do. They said that if the baby does live then she will have to be fed through a feeding tube the rest of her life.
Amidst all of this craziness the work goes on! We have had a lot of adversity thrown at us lately and we know that means that Satan is working hard to slow the work. It means that we have to work that much harder because the work here in Kazakhstan is about to explode! All of us here can just feel how close we are to finding so much success.. Right now Elder Malanin and I are doing good. We still have a lot of potential investigators. There is Arstan, the beer guy, who is doing great and is starting to read the Book of Mormon. There is Ratmeer and his friend Kostia who are wondering how they can become missionaries. There is also this man named Ulan. I don't know if I have already talked about him but he is a chinese-kazak who we can only communicate with through english. He doesn't know russian and actually we are teaching him russian right now. He is a great guy. The first time I talked to him I really didn't know how much success we were going to find with him because he always just went off on all these crazy random topics in english. He is just a really funny guy. but, as soon as we started talking about the gospel with him in our second lesson he buckled up and got serious. He told us that he loves learning russian from us and still wants to, because that was our purpose for meeting with him at first, but really what he wants is to hear about our gospel. he said that he is getting married soon and so now he knows that he needs to get things together and find out the truth. He is really searching for God and he said he has been praying to find out the truth but it is hard for him because he knows about so many churches, muslims (because he is kazak), buddhism (because he is chinese), russian orthodox (because he is kazak), and now he knows about Mormonism. We taught him the first lesson and gave him a book of mormon and he prayed about joseph smith being a true prophet all in one lesson. He seemed really excited and positive about the help that we are giving him to help him find the truth. He is a great guy! We see a lot of potential with these investigators!
Well now I have to talk about a really hard time that I had this week! So Nona finally finished the Book of Mormon and she committed to pray. so yesterday we came to our lesson and expected everything to go smooth... well it didn't.. first of all she didn't pray and second of all her and Elder Malanin basically argued during the lesson about the grammatical errors which are in the Russian version of the book of mormon. It was a rough time! It is never a good feeling when something you have been working for for six months completely falls through. Elder Nutt and I had been preparing her for prayer since I got her and that is what I have been focusing on so much while I have been here, and now after reading it she didn't pray. It was actually a really big let down for me.. her excuse was that we never explained to her how to pray which is not true. So, now I have come to the conclusion that she is just afraid of getting an answer because she knows that she will have to change.
Today for p day we went up to the mountains again where the Asian Olympics are going to be held next year and it was really cool up there. We took some really pretty photos and i will try and send them as soon as I can!
well Elder Malanin and I are doing great. We are pushing along the work and working hard toward some baptisms with a few people which is really exciting!
I love you all! Remember who you are! :)
Elder Weihing
Well a lot of crazy things happened to the members of the ward this week. A lady in our ward came home from church last week and her house was burnt down.. they have no idea what happened. They honestly think that is was arson or however you spell that. But, as missionaries we had the opportunity to go over and help her clean out all of her things and get prepared to rebuild her house. It was an amazing experience! This lady, Sister Areena, is so humble. She just accepts everything that happened and is still happy about life! I couldn't believe how positive she was, she was joking around with all of us and everything. It was honestly inspirational. She even found some candy, one of the only things that was preserved in the fire, and she was just laughing saying that God had saved this candy for the missionaries to eat when they came to help. So, she gave us all of the candy haha. She is an amazing member and right now we are working on finding construction for her house. She has a small daughter and though the church offered to help pay for a temporary apt. she has decided to stay with her father.
Also Brother Andre's baby got flown to moscow this past week and we just barely found out that the baby is probably going to die. I guess the baby has heart and internal organ problems and they don't know what to do. They said that if the baby does live then she will have to be fed through a feeding tube the rest of her life.
Amidst all of this craziness the work goes on! We have had a lot of adversity thrown at us lately and we know that means that Satan is working hard to slow the work. It means that we have to work that much harder because the work here in Kazakhstan is about to explode! All of us here can just feel how close we are to finding so much success.. Right now Elder Malanin and I are doing good. We still have a lot of potential investigators. There is Arstan, the beer guy, who is doing great and is starting to read the Book of Mormon. There is Ratmeer and his friend Kostia who are wondering how they can become missionaries. There is also this man named Ulan. I don't know if I have already talked about him but he is a chinese-kazak who we can only communicate with through english. He doesn't know russian and actually we are teaching him russian right now. He is a great guy. The first time I talked to him I really didn't know how much success we were going to find with him because he always just went off on all these crazy random topics in english. He is just a really funny guy. but, as soon as we started talking about the gospel with him in our second lesson he buckled up and got serious. He told us that he loves learning russian from us and still wants to, because that was our purpose for meeting with him at first, but really what he wants is to hear about our gospel. he said that he is getting married soon and so now he knows that he needs to get things together and find out the truth. He is really searching for God and he said he has been praying to find out the truth but it is hard for him because he knows about so many churches, muslims (because he is kazak), buddhism (because he is chinese), russian orthodox (because he is kazak), and now he knows about Mormonism. We taught him the first lesson and gave him a book of mormon and he prayed about joseph smith being a true prophet all in one lesson. He seemed really excited and positive about the help that we are giving him to help him find the truth. He is a great guy! We see a lot of potential with these investigators!
Well now I have to talk about a really hard time that I had this week! So Nona finally finished the Book of Mormon and she committed to pray. so yesterday we came to our lesson and expected everything to go smooth... well it didn't.. first of all she didn't pray and second of all her and Elder Malanin basically argued during the lesson about the grammatical errors which are in the Russian version of the book of mormon. It was a rough time! It is never a good feeling when something you have been working for for six months completely falls through. Elder Nutt and I had been preparing her for prayer since I got her and that is what I have been focusing on so much while I have been here, and now after reading it she didn't pray. It was actually a really big let down for me.. her excuse was that we never explained to her how to pray which is not true. So, now I have come to the conclusion that she is just afraid of getting an answer because she knows that she will have to change.
Today for p day we went up to the mountains again where the Asian Olympics are going to be held next year and it was really cool up there. We took some really pretty photos and i will try and send them as soon as I can!
well Elder Malanin and I are doing great. We are pushing along the work and working hard toward some baptisms with a few people which is really exciting!
I love you all! Remember who you are! :)
Elder Weihing
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