8.25.2010
Granite 8th Ward Spotlight
Elder Eric Weiss is serving in the Cape Verde, Praia mission. He has been out for 5 months. He is currently serving in the area of Sao Filipe in the capital city of Praia.
Greetings Granite 8th Ward from Cape Verde!
Cape Verde is a group of 10 islands off the coast of west Africa. The people here are very humble and everybody just likes to have a good time. The people also live in very humbling circumstances. Many of them just live in small little concrete houses. Most have electricity but not everyone has running water and they have to get it from wells usually. Oh and everyone here loves soccer.
The Church has been in Cape Verde only 20 years. The mission used to be part of the Portugal, Lisbon mission. The CV mission was opened in 2002. There are only about 60 missionaries in CV and they are on four islands. About 30 percent are Americans, 30 percent are Brazilians, 20 percent are Portuguese and the rest are Cape Verdians.
This place is very different from America but there are a few things that are the same. One of those things is the gospel. The few members here have to rely on a lot of prayer and faith. Tithing is sometimes a big thing to ask from the members but the spirit and the blessings are the same. The people love the Lord and rely on him for everything and they are such great examples. This gospel is true and the members know it.
This is an excerpt from Eric's email from July 12th.
We have a baptism this Saturday so that's sweet. I don't remember if I wrote about him but here is what I have deciphered out of the Portuguese about how e. moreira and his previous companion found their family. So i´m pretty sure they were knocking doors in the area and the area they were in is like a gigantic apartment complex delio. There's like a little area in the middle that is kinda like a little park and it´s enclosed in by all the apartment buildings around it. They were knocking doors and it´s an apartment complex so when they knock a door its not like a persons house door. It's to get in to the place where there doors are. Anyways. They were in one of the areas and they knocked on the door of this kid (Jwilson) and his family. His mom answered the door and i´m paraphrasing here because I don't know Portuguese but she said something along the lines of "oh you have the word of God don´t you? Enter enter." And they did and started teaching this family and they are really sweet. Jwilson is the one being baptized this Saturday and he´s 15ish I think. But Jwilson is the man. He comes to church every week without us needing to remind him. He´s already living the law of fasting and last Sunday he brought 2 of his brothers to church and the other week he gave us 3 references of people to contact. And he´s already working on the goals in the aaronic priesthood pamphlet and on Saturday he taught a lesson about repentance to his family and we gave them the For the Strength of the Youth pamphlet and his dad (who hasn´t been in any of our lessons) really liked it and almost read the whole thing while we were there lol. Yeah, so this week is his baptism and in 2 weeks his 2 brothers that he brought to church have a date scheduled along with another 1 of our investigators. So yeah we´re gonna be busy this week.
We decided in district meeting that the members need more activities so we're hosting 4 activities every week for them. One is like a family night for the whole branch, 1 is essentially mission prep, 1 is how the members help us with missionary work and the last is just like a group social night. So hopefully we can get members and investigators to these as well.
Well this week we´ve been working on building our area back up since we lost a lot of investigators last week of the transfer. So we were knocking doors and some guy invited us in and we asked if we could start with a prayer and he said no. That´s like the first time that's ever happened. And also we asked him if he would rather live with god in eternal happiness or with the devil in eternal misery and he said whichever.
Well I love you all and I miss you but as someone in my zone in the MTC said "I get to spend eternity with my family and if I go home from my mission I could be taking that chance away from someone else"
Love always
E. Weiss
Greetings Granite 8th Ward from Cape Verde!
Cape Verde is a group of 10 islands off the coast of west Africa. The people here are very humble and everybody just likes to have a good time. The people also live in very humbling circumstances. Many of them just live in small little concrete houses. Most have electricity but not everyone has running water and they have to get it from wells usually. Oh and everyone here loves soccer.
The Church has been in Cape Verde only 20 years. The mission used to be part of the Portugal, Lisbon mission. The CV mission was opened in 2002. There are only about 60 missionaries in CV and they are on four islands. About 30 percent are Americans, 30 percent are Brazilians, 20 percent are Portuguese and the rest are Cape Verdians.
This place is very different from America but there are a few things that are the same. One of those things is the gospel. The few members here have to rely on a lot of prayer and faith. Tithing is sometimes a big thing to ask from the members but the spirit and the blessings are the same. The people love the Lord and rely on him for everything and they are such great examples. This gospel is true and the members know it.
This is an excerpt from Eric's email from July 12th.
We have a baptism this Saturday so that's sweet. I don't remember if I wrote about him but here is what I have deciphered out of the Portuguese about how e. moreira and his previous companion found their family. So i´m pretty sure they were knocking doors in the area and the area they were in is like a gigantic apartment complex delio. There's like a little area in the middle that is kinda like a little park and it´s enclosed in by all the apartment buildings around it. They were knocking doors and it´s an apartment complex so when they knock a door its not like a persons house door. It's to get in to the place where there doors are. Anyways. They were in one of the areas and they knocked on the door of this kid (Jwilson) and his family. His mom answered the door and i´m paraphrasing here because I don't know Portuguese but she said something along the lines of "oh you have the word of God don´t you? Enter enter." And they did and started teaching this family and they are really sweet. Jwilson is the one being baptized this Saturday and he´s 15ish I think. But Jwilson is the man. He comes to church every week without us needing to remind him. He´s already living the law of fasting and last Sunday he brought 2 of his brothers to church and the other week he gave us 3 references of people to contact. And he´s already working on the goals in the aaronic priesthood pamphlet and on Saturday he taught a lesson about repentance to his family and we gave them the For the Strength of the Youth pamphlet and his dad (who hasn´t been in any of our lessons) really liked it and almost read the whole thing while we were there lol. Yeah, so this week is his baptism and in 2 weeks his 2 brothers that he brought to church have a date scheduled along with another 1 of our investigators. So yeah we´re gonna be busy this week.
We decided in district meeting that the members need more activities so we're hosting 4 activities every week for them. One is like a family night for the whole branch, 1 is essentially mission prep, 1 is how the members help us with missionary work and the last is just like a group social night. So hopefully we can get members and investigators to these as well.
Well this week we´ve been working on building our area back up since we lost a lot of investigators last week of the transfer. So we were knocking doors and some guy invited us in and we asked if we could start with a prayer and he said no. That´s like the first time that's ever happened. And also we asked him if he would rather live with god in eternal happiness or with the devil in eternal misery and he said whichever.
Well I love you all and I miss you but as someone in my zone in the MTC said "I get to spend eternity with my family and if I go home from my mission I could be taking that chance away from someone else"
Love always
E. Weiss
8.24.2010
Email from 8/23/10
It´s rainy season here as well and we now have a pond by our house. A dirty dirty pond but a pond none the less. And we might be changing houses soon because of our water situation. So Foerester and I have been house hunting. I feel like a gay couple doing that. It´s weird and needs to end. But Foerester is a pretty cool guy. He served in the national guard for a while and was in firefights in iraq. Well this week we´ve been working on building our area back up since we lost a lot of investigators last week of the transfer. So we were knocking doors and some guy invited us in and we asked if we could start with a prayer and he said no. That´s like the first time that's ever happened. And also we asked him if he would rather live with god in eternal happiness or with the devil in eternal misery and he said whichever. Another first. anyways that's what´s been going on this week. We´ve been getting a lot of new investigators and its hard to keep track of them all. OH! also I have an idea for you since you teach primary that helps us when we teach about prophets. Elder foerester made this up. We talk about how prophets are messengers from god and when we follow them we can receive god´s message. So for his example he says "I´m god and I have a message for you" and then he holds up a certain amount of fingers and everyone who wants to receive his message holds up the same amount of fingers. And we do that a few times and then he asks "but how many of you have seen god?" and since no one has he either says close your eyes or he holds something in front of his hands and holds up a certain amount of fingers and says follow my message and they cant cause they cant see him or his fingers. Then he calls someone to be his prophet and they get to see his hands and show everyone else the message. Pretty niffty eh? Well that´s my long email for this week.Well love you all and think about you lots. Vive a vida tcheio sem duvidas e temors e Deus vai ajuda-lostchou!e.weiss
Email from 8/16/10
HELLOLA!
your 8-8 is great is ok but today is 8-9-10 which is more exciting so you should have used that. And I don´t know how much I trust other people with my camera. Our zone leader let a member hold his camera and they dropped it and it broke and another elder let a member look though there pictures and he ended up deleting all of them somehow. So if you want that too happen... Anyways now that I don´t have any questions I don't know what to write about. Oh I can give you the example I gave mal in her email. I type faster than these keyboards think so ill show you what it looks like when I don't fix anything. Ready er . Hello wessmserasionaries of the church of jesus christ of latter day saints and we have a message about families and gods plaionn for us and all that lovssyletuff that your probalby missing in your life and we have your eternal salvatio in our bagsere right here but you p ylwbaborill just say your intersested and then not be in yohhruouse when we pass by. There now isn't that fun. you see how much i have to fix when i type. Well transfers will be next week and everything is changing. Quiet literally. In every companionship one person will be transferred this transfer, we will now have 2 more assistants to the president and they will be sisters so we´ll have 2 elders and 2 sisters and instead of having 4 secretaries we will only have 2. Oh and there´s a possibility that I could train a cape verdian next transfer but THAT is just transfer rumors. I don't think I could train yet because I still don't know everything that's going on around here. What will probably happen is I will stay here and elder moreira will leave and I´ll get an American that has more time than me. But who knows maybe ill have the holy ghost as my next companion and ill be on my own or something. So i don´t really know what else to write about or what to write for the newsletter. Oh we had another baptism this week. He was an hour or more late but we baptized him. Well I i think it might be blaspheme to have 2 people baptize but I´m not sure. I´ll be posting pictures in a min so you´ll be able to see. Tchou!
love you all
e. weiss
your 8-8 is great is ok but today is 8-9-10 which is more exciting so you should have used that. And I don´t know how much I trust other people with my camera. Our zone leader let a member hold his camera and they dropped it and it broke and another elder let a member look though there pictures and he ended up deleting all of them somehow. So if you want that too happen... Anyways now that I don´t have any questions I don't know what to write about. Oh I can give you the example I gave mal in her email. I type faster than these keyboards think so ill show you what it looks like when I don't fix anything. Ready er . Hello wessmserasionaries of the church of jesus christ of latter day saints and we have a message about families and gods plaionn for us and all that lovssyletuff that your probalby missing in your life and we have your eternal salvatio in our bagsere right here but you p ylwbaborill just say your intersested and then not be in yohhruouse when we pass by. There now isn't that fun. you see how much i have to fix when i type. Well transfers will be next week and everything is changing. Quiet literally. In every companionship one person will be transferred this transfer, we will now have 2 more assistants to the president and they will be sisters so we´ll have 2 elders and 2 sisters and instead of having 4 secretaries we will only have 2. Oh and there´s a possibility that I could train a cape verdian next transfer but THAT is just transfer rumors. I don't think I could train yet because I still don't know everything that's going on around here. What will probably happen is I will stay here and elder moreira will leave and I´ll get an American that has more time than me. But who knows maybe ill have the holy ghost as my next companion and ill be on my own or something. So i don´t really know what else to write about or what to write for the newsletter. Oh we had another baptism this week. He was an hour or more late but we baptized him. Well I i think it might be blaspheme to have 2 people baptize but I´m not sure. I´ll be posting pictures in a min so you´ll be able to see. Tchou!
love you all
e. weiss
8.02.2010
8/2/2010
Hi! so I´m not sure about hump day bump day and 1/6th of your mission gone day but I´ll have to ask. I´ve used a little bit of the gold bond but not much, My packages and letters should be here this wed and if not I will beat the secrataries for you, yes people have phones. I think everyone in this country has a phone. Well almost everyone. and I´ve seen one land line since ive been here, everyone has beds of some sort if not they have matresses everyone has a table it seems and a few chairs. Some people have sofas and stuff and I think everyone has a refridgerator. And I don´t know the average income of people thats not exactly the first question we ask when we enter there house. Some people own cars but most people takes yasses or bus´ because it´s cheap. 30 escudos for a yasse 35 for a bus and usually 200 for a taxi and the AP´s have a car and president and sister neves have cars but i think thats it. It´s also fun because neither of the APs have drivers licenceses (?) because there from brazil and portugal so its fun when we see them drive around. So how many are in the branches or how many active members in the branches. Our branch 270ish baptized and about 40 active and i think 8 melkezidic (wow) priethood holders. and yes there is primary and ym/yw. Well today we had a zone activity in terrahfal which is about 2 hours north of us so that was fun spending about 5 or more hours in a car today. But anyways we went to these tunnles that run under the roads that used to be used for water transportation and we walked through them until we got to a beach and played some games and stuff there. I´m going to try and put more photos up of that today. But i´m sooo tired now. The tunnles are really small and I had to crouch through them for the most part. And I´m going to murder this screaming child next to me. Anyways so yeah and then after that our district returened and we went to nice burger which was actually pretty good. and that was today. So i dont know what else to write so tchou!love you alle. weissp.s. When you read my signature at the end of the email is it Elder weiss or Eric weiss :D just a thought.
7/26/2010
Well we havent had running water in our house for almost a week now so thats fun. We´ll probably be buying another 5 liter bottle today. Also me and e. moreira decided on a project thats going to be fun... maybe. No were going to try and make a map of our area on the giant empty wall in our appt. So were gonna use google maps and then try and plot out houses and stuff like that. So that will be our fun activity for this week. Also we decided in district meeting that the members need more activities so were hosting 4 activities every week for them. One is like a family night for the whole branch 1 is essentially mission prep, 1 is how the members and help us with missionary work and the last is just like a group social night delio. So hopefully we can get members and investigators to these as well. Well I´m not sure what else to write so I´m going to try and upload some photos and videos now so tchou!
e. weiss
e. weiss
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