Elder Weiss is Home!

Ola mi familia! OK Hi family. Eric's Portuguese is making me want to brush up on my Spanish. In case you didn't see his post at his page, he is home and is speaking in our sacrament meeting on April 15th at 11:00 a.m. at our ward located at 9545 Quail Run Drive (2360 East) in Sandy. We will be having the usual chow fest at our home after sacrament meeting. We invite you to join us. However, we will be ditching you for a short time at 1:00 p.m. to attend our friends' son's non-homecoming talk at the stake center just up the street from our house. Because of General Conference, Easter and Fast Sunday (for our ward being on the same day, today) and our Stake Conference on the 22nd they have crammed missionary talks into the few available Sundays left, and Eric's and his friends ended up on the same day. You are all welcome to stay and visit and eat (and wash dishes, clean, etc.) while you await our return! We will only stay long enough to hear him speak and then leave.We are asking our ward friends not to come until after 2:00 so you won't have to worry about entertaining strangers until we get back.We hope to see as many of you that can come. We know one week isn't much notice. My brain has been on overload.Love to you all and we hope you are all doing well.And congrats Terry on your job!!!!And will those of you without facebook family members (i.e. ElK Ridge Steins offspring) let them know. I will also call and email to get the word out. Thanks!

Email 3/12/12

Yeah the irish are not exactly a big influence here in cape verde so I´m thinking nobodies even heard of st.P day. except for the missionaries. (get it?) Well I´m glad you already made a dentist appointment for me. And it´s conveniently at the exact same time as one of yours so you can spend even more time with me. That was just a coincidence right? And sure go with that doctor guy. And it is also convenient that you will be getting your hair cut as the same time I get a massage isn´t it? Double dare can be explained later. And no I have not used the water bottle and see you did have something you wanted me to bring home that I was going to leave behind. This is why I asked. And I suppose we could link it to dads computers. Or I suppose that somebody who´s coming home from a mission could get a computer from some people that love him. Probably not this somebody though. HA did you really just ask if you should stock up on mnt dew. If you don´t I think I might empty the store. And the natural man. What a fun subject. Well if you want to learn more about putting it off you should read or reread that talk by brad wilcox that you sent me. "His grace is sufficient." His piano example rocks. I´ve actually had to teach a few people about that. Anywho here´s a random thought, rather than stocking up on stuff you should just send me shopping :D. Well anywho you asked about double dare. It was a lot of work and I was more exhausted after than I ever have been in my whole mission I think but it was good. We had games like a 4 legged race (no not 3, 4) We tied balloons around their ankles and they had to stomp them. We also played blind musical chairs and a game where they had to push an escudo on the ground from one side of the gym to the other and then go through a maze made out of tape. Oh and they had to push it with their nose. good stuff. Don´t worry there are pictures. And yes I was the host. There were a lot of children there which made it difficult. but it worked out and all. Um what else. Were doing good here. We are supposed to be having 3 baptisms this week so that will be good. And next saturday and sunday are district conference here. So my last sunday is district conference. I´m thinking president is going to have me e. Ryan and e. Liddle all do something or stand up or something because it will be our last day and we are the oldest missionaries in the mission and all on this island. But yeah looks like lifes going good and Elder Vance is doing divisions with me and e. palmer until thursday so it´s going to be a party!
love
e.weiss

Email 3/5/12

Wow this is a long email. I haven´t even read it yet but it looked long as I scrolled to the bottom of the page. So I took about 120$ give or take out of my account so it should be good. And I will never be able to reimburse my personal money. I fell to far behind and now I´m living on even less money because I won´t be spending the whole month of march here so they took out 3000 escudos out of my monthly money. even though it´s only 5 days of the month I wont be here. stupid. And no it´s not that weird not being incharge of that because now I´m incharge of an activity we are having this saturday with the branch. Basicly we recreated double dare but our games are going to be a lot funnier. And teaching is going quiet well this week actually. We ended up finding 11 new investigators and had 8 investigators at church so that was cool. And of course I´m bringing my first pair of shoes home. They are going to be legends. And weasles could be litte creatures inside your body. It would probably be quiet uncomfortable to have one inside you but it´s not impossible. And personally if I were you I wouldn´t have used somebody elses eye drops because that could have made it worse. and YAY for massage. You know what you can also book for me. A dentist appointment! So I don´t end up going 2 years without an appointment again. oh wait. that already happened once because SOMEBODY *coughmomcough* kept telling me oh you just went like a month ago. And you could probably make a doctors appointment as well. Oh and by the way just a little side fact. Cologate Advanced whitening toothpaste is a lie. It does not make your teeth white in 14 days nor 54 days. 3 times a day for 54 days. Nothing. Lies. And for going to the temple members here eithe go to spain or brazil. Where ever will give them a visa first. The next group that will be going out is going to racife brazil. The church has a program that helps people get there. The only thing the people have to pay for is food and clothing and stuff like that. That story wasn´t very embarrassing. What would be bad if you knocked down a painting in the temple or tripped and fell or you were wearing a rosery and made a cross on your chest when you walked in. That would have been embarrassing.
So yeah we had a good week. we did some teaching, had some meetings, I have to go out and buy a lot of stuff for our activity on saturday because nobody else wants to do it. You think people would learn to be a little more proactive but I guess not. Well we actually have a lot of things we need to do today so I will have to cut my email short but I love you and hope you all have a good week.

Love

E.weiss

Email 2/27/12

the bomb is a pill that all missionaries get to take before they leave
and it kills... well everything. And now that you do mention live
creatures we do have a weasel as a pet on our balcony. His name is
Beethoven. And how do you know I haven´t gained weight? I don´t even
know if I´ve gained weight because there are hardly any scales in this
country. I suppose I could go to the airport and stand on the luggage
weighing system. And I still have your wheeled backpack and no It
doesn´t have mold and Yes it is too big to fit in an overhead
compartment. Speaking of leaving things behind. Is there anything in
particular that you would like me to keep that you know I brought with
me or is it just whatever I want to leave? And why would I write
handwritten letters that wouldn´t make it home before I would? Duh. So
our week was fine. Not finding new investigators because monday we
didn´t work nor tuesday friday we had zone conference and sunday we
had 2 firesides to go to. So not much teaching this week in general.
We did an activity on saturday with the young men in the district and
we did splits with them all from 3 until 9 and they had little
"plaques" that said Brother so and so. So me and e. palmer each had 2
and we split up and taught. Then we had 2 firesides about it on
sunday. One just for the young men and missionaries and then the other
for everyone. Pres. Oliveira came and spoke and me and 3 other
missionaries sang 2 special hymns and stuff like that. Just standard
church/missionary stuff. So yes I´m still alive, no I´m not dead, yes
I´m wearing clean underwear and I´ll be taking out probably 110ish
dollars from my personal account since my debit card is going to
expire in a few days. Other than that not much else is going on. Have
a good week and Have fun stormin´ the castle!
love
e.weiss

2/20/12

You showed your first almost imperceptible sign of trunkiness. You signed last weeks email, son instead of e. weiss which you always do." You also realize that e doesn´t only stand for elder right? so as you have probably already seen from the other email sent to you that my flight plans have been finalized and they are staying the same. And no we still haven´t gotten permission for the other 13 year old. He may be intelligent but inteligence is no match for hardheaded. So yeah today we have a shortened p-day because of carnival so I probably wont be writing as much. but yes we are seeing the effects of carnival already and the... lovely... dressed people walking around. And neither assassin die nor kill is a 5 letter word. Death would have been the only acceptable one but you didn´t use it so no trip to hawaii for you. And no you don´t have to put me on antibods when I get home. That is what "the bomb" is for when we leave the mission. And no Elder Palmer did not get pink eye nor did anyone else. Just me. Cause I´m special. And it sounds like we wont be able to afford any antibiotics when I get home. It sounds like your having a lovely week. And everyone else. Well I also don´t have much more time to write and I still need to write president so I´ll just say I love you all and hope you feel better and that you don´t get pink eye.
love
ELDER.Weiss

2/13/12

Herrow! I´m trying a new tactic this week and responding to your email as I read it so we´ll see how that goes.
Yes they do celebrate Valentines day here and yes you did ask me that last year and yes I do know you have no memory. And we will probably be playing bang for carnival yes. And Elder Palmer already knew about bang before we played. And were trapped on tini little islands so yes there are other missionaries close by to play. YAY for an iPhone! I´ll have to name him when I get home. Ha the phones we have in the mission field. You remeber Jakes old Nokia phone that would play that song "beach" and we would stand it up and it would dance? Well thats the phone a few missionaries have. Ours is a little bit newer than that but it still has the same ringtone (which I am currently using as of last week). And no they do not have carriers that you have heard of because they are both hosted here in CV and they both are terrible. We have CVMovile and T+. So yes I played with the toys and the tree lights worked after I rigged it to work and yes there was 2 packages of cereal (you do have some memory!) and they are both gone and the teddy grahms. And Elder Cuestas is still in Fogo and already has the SD cards. He actually had them before I had the box. And the rule on transfers is.... revelation. And Mandingas are those guys with spears that have motor oil/paint all over them that run around during carnival. I sent pictures of them home from last years. And yes you think peoples parents would be thrilled with the fact that we are trying to change the life of there children and help them do what is right and most of them are fine with you teaching them, but because of that terrible abomination know as the catholic church whenever you bring up baptism they say no. So yes you would think that and I´ve thought that for the past 2 years but people here don´t exactly get that concept. And yep I did get pink eye again. And yes I have been sick actually for the past 5 weeks and that is probably why I have it. Change in weather and all this wind has made me sick for the last forever. But my pink eye is almost gone. I also may have gotten pink eye because a week ago (after I already had it) I found out there was mold growing on the wall next to my bed. So I decided it would probably be a good idea to kill it. And yes my insoles are still alive and hopefully will make it the last 6 weeks. And actually Jake didn´t mention that they were moving but a while ago he already said I could move into his house and we wouldn´t tell Jenna until all of my stuff was there. So keep that a little secret. And so it sounds like Heather had a um.. rough week (ha pun intended). Oh and I guess I didn´t tell you last week but the grandma did let him get baptized after the kid talked to his mother in Italy and made his mother tell the grandmother to sign the paper (the mother is also a member of the church). But now we have another 13 year old who´s mother doesn´t want him to get baptized. This child is a genious. He´s going to praia today to represent his school in an academic competition. His mother did let him go to church this sunday so thats progress. He has the weirdest accent though because is from Santo antao. So strange. And I´m pretty sure his mother is like duel personality because she keeps changing her mind on everything. Anywho so transfers came and passed and it looks like Elder Palmer will be my assassin. Sweet. Um what else. Carnival is next week so I don´t know if we will be emailing on monday or tuesday because pres. Oliveira has asked that everyone in sao vicent stay inside for both of those days. yehaw... 48 hours trapped in a box with neighbors that play really loud music and nothing to do. Oh well I´m sure we´ll have plenty of things to invent to pass the time. Well not much more I can say about this week. Hope you all have a good week and maybe we´ll be able to email monday if not later in the week.

love
son

2/6/12

Anywho good to know you have paid custody charges for me again and that there is money in my bank account. And yes we have debit cards that we take our money out of every month. I really don't think president would like giving out 18,000 escudos to every missionary in cash every month. And yes we do have money. We almost don't though. One of the secretaries for our mission forgot to ask the church to refill some account or something so our mission is/was low low low on money. And yes I do believe I have somethings from the mtc. And yes I am also in mindelo. If your on sao vicente your in mindelo. No one serves out of it. And yes saddly carnival is in 2 weeks. Yay for iniquity... So this week was exciting. I suppose. I got my christmas package finally and the package that had the SD card in it and pink eye again and it was my birthday and all that fun stuff. Were still looking for new people to teach and we are running very low on investigators. We found this really cool 13 year old that wants to get baptized but his mother isn't a fan of that idea so we still have to talk to her. She said he was already baptized even though we all know that she is not active in whatever religion of which is a part. Anywho, not to be jumping the gun or anything but someone is going to need a job when they get home so if anyone in the ward has leads or something like that perk up your ears to those things. And am I correct in assuming that I will get a discount on a phone with verizon because I haven't upgraded in like 5 years? That would be loverly. Well I'm not exactly sure what else to write. Mandingas are out and about again on sundays and they make teaching difficult. I saw Toni and Tina a few weeks back. Toni is the 1st counselor in the branch presidency and Tina is the relief society president so that was cool to hear. They fed us katchupa. Good stuff. Yeah that's about it. Have a good week and keep on truckin'
love
e.weiss

1/30/12

So why should I be proud of me? For surviving 21 years? Or because I
can vote (even though I could vote since I was 18 but whatever)? Well
I´m glad you all had a fun birthday party for me since I´ll be
spending this birthday without any money because our next months money
hasn´t come in yet. So I´ll probably be taking out more personal money
today so we can buy well. food. It was also the big package that was
sent to Fogo and I know because the elders there told me. We may live
in africa but we do still have cell phones. Also the Heinz letter was
with that box and I got grandma´s letter a while ago. and supposedly
my other package is in the office but that is not confirmed yet. The
one that dad sent. So hopefully those will be here on wed when our
zone leaders get back. but yeah we really don´t have any plans today.
We had 3 baptisms this week so that was cool but now we have nobody to
teach. And I was thinking maybe I need to take out money because my
debit card will end at the end of this month but I looked at your past
email and you said it´s good until the end of February so I´m hoping
so. If not I´m going to take out a little bit of money anyways today.
Um what else. Not much. Things have been really slow here. After
fighting for like 2 weeks with this grandma to get her permission for
her son to get baptized we finally got it from her. He had to call his
mother in italy to have her talk to the grandma but it worked and even
more miraculous she came to his baptism. Weird. Well not much else to
report. i´m 21 can legally drink but still not rent a car yet. go
team!
love
e.weiss

1/23/12

Watch the Best two years that is my rebuttle. They baptize in the ocean at the end of that movie. I win. And when I was talking about eternal companion ship with e. palmer we would have to spend at least 4 transfers together for that meaning I would go home in july. Remember death doesn't end sealings and the end of your mission is your death. Mom -1 Eric +2. Also that class is called gospel doctrine in portuguese so take that. So if you still have my old phone does that mean I have 5 years or credit chalked up with verizon? Say hello to 500$ off any phone (if their policy is still the same). And shouldn't the guy at the violin store give you like a discount for buying your violin from there many many many many many many years ago? (ok maybe not that many but many). This week seemed to go by quiet quickly. Lot of fighting with an old woman to try and get permission for her grandson to get baptized (which she finally did last night) And all last week everyone who was in my original mtc district was on this island so that was wiggy I guess. And that's about it. Sorry not a very eventful week. Also the first week in 23 weeks without a baptism. Azar. But we should have 3 this saturday so thats good. Well I still need to write the mission pres so love you all and have a good week. If you see a crocidile don't forget to scream AHHHHH!

love

e.weiss

1/16/12

16 January 2012
So since you want my new companionship to be an eternal one I guess
you don´t want me to come home until the begining of July. I suppose
if that´s what you really want I´ll ask for an extention. And that was
the most Anti-climatic story ever. The police came over and then they
said oh were leaving bye. BORING. 2nd off. No. It is not the other
side of heaven that I was talking about. Watch your mormon movies the
baptize in the ocean at the end. And one of the sisters here took the
pictures. I have pictures on my camera and also better pictures from
someone else´s camera on my flash drive. And yes I did make it to sao
vicent and I´m really wondering about this statement. "How did you
email us last week if you were at the airport waiting for your
flight?" Did you really think I was going to stay at the airport from
9 am until 5 pm. No thank you. So my companion is new but certainly
not little. He´s from Idaho. Firth Idaho. We getting along fine and
I´m tucking him in every night. And Yes I will be keeping up my
baptism goal. That is kinda the point of making goals. To complete
them. We had a baptism this week in fact. His name is Fabio and he´s
13. And no I´m not in the same branch nor in the same area nor are
there the same members. And you ask how the weather is... IT`S SO
COLD. And yes we do stop in praia when were transfered but the assistents didn´t
even know we were flying in that day because of the canceled flight so
nobody was there at the airport (which also didn´t matter because my
next flight left right as we landed.) And I wouldn´t have had the
weight room to bring it. Also we had some people fly up to here but
they didn´t have a package for me. So I don´t know if they didn´t have
space or if somebody thought I was still in Fogo (and no they wont
send the package to Fogo) or what so no package. Here´s another
question. Why are you going to the gospel doctrine class. That is the
class for investigators and recent converts. Shouldn´t you be going to
the grown ups class? Well I don´t know of anything exciting to right
about that happened this week. We played soccer for a while this
morning so I´m really tired. Just got to go home and clean our house
now and that will be it for p-day. Love you all

1/9/12

Well another week already went by again and my sealing to elder cuestas will be canceled because I´m going back to Sao Vicent to die. Fernando Po is the name of my area and I´ll be serving with E. d. Palmer. He only has six weeks in the field so I´ll be his step father. But I´m not there yet because TACV (the airline company) fails at life because they are a monopoly and can do whatever they want. They canceled my flight this morning so I´ll hopefully be leaving later today to get there. The weather is back to hot here in Fogo but Mindelo is a lot cooler so that will be good. And as for jobs most people just try and sell stuff it seems like. Theres car drivers, a lot of people fish, people will just sell stuff on the side of the road. Anything they can do for money. School is like normal. The kids have grades but it´s not by age how they divide you its by if you passed last year or not. And yes there is CVU cape verde universtity and I think there is another one in Mindelo but I don´t remember. And I honestly have no idea how people afford to leave this country. I think a lot of people get help from relatives in america to get out. And of course there are sister missionaries still in this mission. But non of them are older than me. So this week was pretty good. At the begining of the week we didn´t have anyone marked for baptism. On monday we passed by one of our older investigators that we hadn´t taught for a while and he said that he´d been wanting to talk to us for a long time. He said he´s been going through a difficult time in his life (I think he broke up with his girlfriend so not really that difficult just drama) but he had found solice in the book of mormon. He was kind of a flaky investigator but when we talked to him that day we found out he had almost finished 2nd Nephi and it had only been like 2 weeks since we talked to him. So we marked with him and talked to him about baptism and marked him for the 7th and then we left. The next day we went back and he was kinda feeling iffy about the 7th so we asked him if he wanted to get baptized the 14th and he said that would be a lot better. We went back the next day and he´s like Elders. I´ve been wanting to talk to you since this morning. I think I want to get baptized this week. So we prepaired him and he had is interview and everything on Friday and we find out afterwords the chapel doesn´t have water but we were like ok whatever we will just go to the other chapel that is up top like 10 min away. Saturday morning (baptism day) we find out the chapel uptop doesn´t have water. Guess where we did the baptism. The OCEAN! It was wierd. I already knew (since tuesday actually) that I would be leaving this area and the guy asked for me to baptize him so I felt like I was in the best two years doing a baptism in the ocean my last day in the area. It was neat though. My first ocean baptism. Oh also this investigator on thursday afternoon (day before the interview) got really sick and we still had to teach him a lot so we gave him a blessing. I really think satan didn´t want him to be baptized. But he did (take that satan) and confirmed so that was really cool and the story of my week. We also had to get a car to get everyone to the beach and of course on saturday we couldn´t find a car. We finally found a small one and when we were like this is not going to be big enough because it will only fit like 11 people max and none of the cars we know were answering their phones or here in sao filipe so we were sitting outside the church with 31 people that want to see this baptism including the investigator us and other missionaries and we were like what are we gonna do. And we see parked like 20 feet down from the church a huge empty bus. I said to elder cuestas. Lets go ask this guy and we rented the bus to take us all down and the bus had exactly the amount of seats we needed. So Satan really didn´t want this guy to be baptized but God really wanted him to and gave us a bus we needed to take everyone. It was really cool. But yeah that was our week and hopefully I´ll be able to make it to my next area today but we shall see. It will probably be like 10 at night when I get in finally. Wel love you all and hope you have a good week.

love
e.weiss

Pictures

Elder Weiss' baptism in the Ocean!

1/2/12

I have not laughed that hard in a long time. I wish I could have been there to see the whole deer incident. I think I might print that part off and read it again and again. Well I'm glad sean gave a good home coming talk. Does that mean andrew is the last to come home before me? Not to make you trunky or think about things like that though. Just a thought. Don't remeber who is still on there missions and who isn't. And so transfers haven't happened yet. This transfer was extended by a week because of new years and it would have been impossible to get flights for everyone today because of holidays and everything. So we had an ok week. New years isn't exactly the best time for missionary work because everyone wants to go out and get drunk and stuff like that. But we still had 3 baptisms on friday and the mission in total had 130 baptisms this month so thats good. But yeah I forgot to tell you that for christmas we bought a gift for a family in our area because they invited us to dinner. We bought them monopoly and they love it. Board games aren't exactly common here so it was nice to give them something they'd probably never be able to have themselves. And they've already played it a lot. We had to translate the instructions into portuguese and play the first game with them to teach them how (and they didn't even end up reading the instructions) and now they're playing it almost every night as a family. Board games are awesome for the gospel. Then on new years we came hom early for obviouse reasons and I made ice cream and cookies and we made pizza and our neighbor gave us a cake and all that stuff. Over all it was a good haven from the madness outside. And the location of our house is just outside of the madness as well so it was nice. And our landlord catholic neighbor isn't exactly the party type so she didn't make any noise. Although we do imagine her playing rock band upstairs sometimes though. So Dad said that he sent out the cards and I'm thinking that should probably be the last package you send out just incase it take forever and a day to get here. like normal. I still haven't got my christmas package because nobody has island jumped in a while. So you want to hear something crazy. There's only one Elder here in the mission that goes home before me haha. I'm old. And moldy. And I can almost legally break the word of wisdom and Gamble! Well that's about it for this week. Just full of partying and us trying to avoid said parties. Well love you all and have a good start to the year and make it a good year because this is the year the world ends!
e.weiss