Timon's Baptism

Hello!

This week went well.  Timon was baptized.  It was great.  So, he was baptized by one of the recent converts in the ward - Boree - who is also Timon's next door neighbor and friend.  What is cool is that Timon was not a refferal, we tracted him, but he just happened to have a great friend who had been talking to him about the gospel.  Great, right?   Anyway, Timon was baptized and is doing great.  It was a good baptism.  All of our people showed up early.  Even Iotebwa, one of our investigators who we had invited to the baptism!  It was great.  We made cake for the baptism.  It all went well.

Iotebwa.... What a fellow. He is great.  He came to church and then came to Elder Miller's goodbye party with the ward.  He is solid.  Very funny because he has no inhibitions, but he is great. :)  He has also stopped smoking!  Whoot!

Life is good.  The lesson I learned this week is to just live life and not worry what others think.  Really, the world is what we make it.  If we make it about others' opinions, then to us it is all about their opinions,  similarly, if we make it all about the Lord's opinion of us then it is all about that.  I believe choosing the latter is the happier way to go.

Love you all!  Keep on being amazing!

Hurrah for Israel!

Elder Weenig

Timon's Baptism

Iotebwa is the one with the yellow tie... He is great. :)

War Chapters of Alma

Howdy y'all!

Life is great!  There is plenty of work to be done and it is going well.

So, ten Timon, will be baptized this Saturday. It is exciting.  We are happy for him.  We had our first lesson with his 30-something year old son, named ten Miriata, and just after we opened, he said, "I have a question. Once I am done with lessons, when can I be baptized."  (cue the fireworks)  It was great!  He is great and his wife is less active, we hope that we can help reactivate her and that Miriata's desire to be baptized stays strong.

Well, Happy Christmas to you all!  So, to explain the title... I have been reading in the war chapters of Alma.  Yep.  They are amazing!  They teach so many lessons!!!  It is great!  One that I really liked is found in Alma 62:41.  The lesson I gained from this section is that the same event can change people in different ways.  It is up to us how we will be changed.  We can choose to be changed for the better or for the worse. It is all up to us.  Another good lesson was in Alma 58:33. "But behold, we trust in our God..." That is that.  Trust in God.  In God we Trust.  Trust that He hears our prayers and cares. Trust that His plan is better than our plan. Trust that His ways are truly higher than our ways.  Trust that He loves and cares and will do anything for us.  Trust Him. I am grateful for the war chapters of the Book of Mormon. They testify of the truthfulness of the book. I mean, the fellow who compiled the book was a captain in war, so clearly a great way to present lessons for him would be in chapters on war.  Just as the prophets and apostles today, his work and past experiences affect the stories he shares.  I think that is a pretty cool thought.  Well, the Book of Mormon is true.  One hundred percent.  Any fault is the fault of man, and not of God.  

The church is true.  It is real.  Christ is real.  The Book of Mormon is the word of God and teaches us Christ's doctrine.  I know it and love it.  What is great is that we have the opportunity to live it! :)

Love you all!  Hope you have a great Christmas season.  Go Light the World with Christ!

Merry Christmas!

Hurrah for Israel!

Elder Weenig

PS:  Also, Luke 2 is a good chapter for Christmas.... Sorry, I recognize that the war chapters are a bit odd to be shared in a season celebrating the Prince of Peace.  But they are found in His book, so I figure it is okay. :)

Child's birthday party that we attended for one of our dinners.

A breadfruit tree with lots of breadfruit. :)

Zone Conference

Howdy!

Hope you are all well and living. Happy Christmas season to all y'all!

This week went very well. We had Zone Conference and a new intake of missionaries came in.  It was exciting.

I am grateful for this week, it has been great. We gave the training at Zone Conference.  We taught on teaching in unity as a companionship and using the Book of Mormon earlier and more often in teaching.  It went well.  Elder Sheffield is great fun to teach with. We now carry a Book of Mormon in our hands where ever we go, so that if we have a street contact or we tract a house, we have a Book of Mormon ready to give to them.  That book is true.  It is real.  It is good. I am grateful the Lord has blessed us with this book.  It is His book.

Timon and Iotebwa are doing great!  Iotebwa came to church, Timon didn't because he was sick.  Timon is going to be interviewed this Saturday for baptism.  He is awesome. :)

I went on an exchange with Elder Holbrook. He is from Alpine. He is great!

So, a quote to share with you all: "Satan don't kick no dead dogs." It is from the talk "The Mortal Christ" given by Jack R. Christianson. Satan fights against us.  So, when life seems hard and light-less, that is only because Satan sees us as a threat.  Kind of a cool thought, right?  Satan's kingdom can totally be shaken by the voice and faith of one person.  Just so long as that person's faith is in the One, which is Christ.  Anyway, that is my small thought. Keep on pressing on,  keep on being amazing!   You are all rock solid.  We are all rock solid. We chose to come here and we agreed to come here at this time and in this place. We are extraordinary sons and daughters of the Most High.  We are important, we are needed, and we are essential to the Lord's plan.

Thank you for all you all do!  Hope that you are all enjoying life -- remembering that "Adam fell that men might be, and men are that they might have joy." (2 Nephi 2:25).  Hope you are all having a joyful time this Christmas season.  Let's all remember the reason for the season!

Love you all!
Hurrah for Israel!
Elder Weenig

Elder Rowsell transferred to my homeland, Abemama

Sending Elders off to Christmas Island

Thanksgiving and a Baptism

Hello!

This week was great. We had Thanksgiving and a baptism.  So, for Thanksgiving -- we ate dinner as a district. Elder Sheffield and I cooked the turkey, and other people in the district brought other foods.  It was really fun.  We ate in the high council room at the Stake Center, so it even had a big long table.  I liked it.  We had turkey, potatoes, corn, rolls, jello, salad, fruit... It was a lot.  It required people to give a bit from their packages from home and also a lot of luck when we went shopping in Betio (the place with the most variety of cargo). It was great.  It was very fun. :) There are 12 of us in our district.

The baptism.  It went well.  We had a good turn out and he, Panette Naatua, was very excited.  He is a nine year old and his family is preparing to go to the temple.  We are excited for them.  They are such a delightful family.  I am glad for them.

Also, Timon and Iotebwa both came to church this past week. Whoot! I am excited for them. They are progressing very well towards baptism! They are the first investigators that I have seen a great change in their countenances. They look happier. They are changed by the Lord's words.

Work is going great.  We are working on doing better studies because a major focus of our mission tour was to become Master Gospel Teachers and to study well.  We need to take care of our own souls before we try and help others with theirs.  I like that lesson.  We need to help ourselves before others. Otherwise, we are not being responsible. It is not selfish, it is a must.  We need to help ourselves, so we can help others. Learn ourselves, so that we can teach others.  It is great. :)

Well, love you all!  Hope that all is well.  Keep the faith!

Thank you!  Love you all!
Hurrah for Israel!
Elder Weenig

Elder Sheffield and I with Panette Naatua and his family

 No one is ready, but they are all smiling, something they would not do when posing for the picture.... :) So, yeah, this is just to show you all that they are not angry people.

The Feast

Thanksgiving with my district

Smile

Howdy!

Life is going well!  It is almost Thanksgiving.  Exciting, right?  We will have Thanksgiving dinner with our district.  My favorite thing to eat here is breadfruit soup and fried breadfruit. It is yummy. :)

Well, this week we had two investigators come to church! Whoot!  Ten Iotebwa -- an older man, and ten Timon -- a man in his 40's. We are so happy.  The ward was great to fellowship them!  Members are the greatest!  They literally swarmed them. They were all like: "He's new -- go get him." "Take him to class" "Bring him over here"  It was perfect.  Yep. Teaoraereke 2nd Ward is truly the greatest and is supposed to be splitting soon.  Anyway, ten Iotebwa also went to an activity with the high priests that afternoon.  It is good.

The members in Banraeaba are fun and very missionary oriented.  They are great examples for what I want to be.

All is well over here.  Thought of the week is to smile more often. Even though it is a small thing to do, great things come from it. :) "The grass grows green still". Little things make the world better -- a lot of little things therefore make the world a lot better.  Seeing as there are lots of opportunities to smile, we can make the world a lot better if we smile more.

Love you all and pray for you all! Thanks for all you all do for me!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Thank you!
Hurrah for Israel!
Elder Weenig

Marshall Islands/Kiribati Region Missionaries -- November 2017

My intake at Mission Tour

Te moii moto --  coconut juice.  Yum. :)

Betio Cannons :)

Jelly fish...  But it looked cool...

Mission Tour

Hello!

Well, this week was amazing!  We had our Mission Tour.  It was exciting!  Elder Ardern of the Seventy came to speak to us.  He spoke at the last General Conference. He gave great lessons.  He spoke on using Preach My Gospel everyday.  He also spoke a lot on the power of the Book of Mormon to convert people.  It was amazing!  It was really fun, because we, the Zone Leaders, Sister Training Leaders and the Assistants to the President, got to do a Mission Leadership Council meeting with him. He taught us our roles, helped us form a list of attributes for our culture, and how to use our planners. It was amazing.  I loved his training.  I really loved how well he and his wife taught together.  Usually the man talks a lot and then the woman shares a tiny bit and sits back down, but these two were like missionary companions -- they switched off frequently and were a team.  It was awesome.  I want to teach more like that with my companions in the mission.  I loved the conference. :) We helped bus everyone there.  It was fun. :)

Transfer: So Elder Veresoni flew out to Washington Island in Kiritmati.  So that is cool.  He is amazing.  I have a new companion now, Elder Steven Sheffield!  He is from Lindon, Utah, and we went to the same Junior High School -- Oak Canyon.  Cool, right?  And yep, we did know each other before the mission.  He is amazing and is going to be an great companion. We just became companions today.  So, it will be exciting. :)

I am grateful to work as a missionary of the Lord.  We are focusing on acting more like messengers of the Lord would act. Life is good.  Life is great.  Life is short.  I hope we all appreciate it for what is worth.  I know that today is the day to change and repent. (Alma 34:31) Today is the day to be happy. (2 Nephi 2:25)  We can seize the day if we wake up happy (Alma 37:37 -- let your heart be full of thanks to God).  Today is the day.  Seize it.

I love you all! Thank you for everything you all do! I love and pray for you!  Hope all is well!

Thanks!
Love you!
Go, fight, win! (remembering that life is a constant fight with Satan. :) )
Hurrah for Israel!
Elder Weenig


He hasn't been able to send pictures because the computer they use has viruses and he is afraid it will delete his card.  Fun to find these pics on the mission Facebook page.

Zone Conference

Enthusiasm

Howdy!!

So, this was a great week.  We had great lessons.  So, in companionship inventory, Elder Veresoni mentioned that I could be more enthusiastic in lessons. He was right. I have literally almost fallen asleep in a couple of lessons....  Yeah... Oops... Anyway, not anymore. So, we added more enthusiasm to our lessons and it has been amazing!   I mean we are teaching the gospel of peace, the gospel of joy, the gospel of Christ, what is there to not be enthusiastic about? So, might as well teach with the voice of a trump.  Anyway, we had good lessons.

One investigator is ten Tetoa.  He is in his twenties.  His mom is a less active.  She sat in on one of our lessons and it was great.  She committed to come back to church!  Whoot!  We are excited for her to come back.

We had a lesson with ten Toabo.  He invited his family to have lessons, only a couple of the kids agreed to take lessons, but at least he shared the gospel.  That is one thing that I love: as our faith in the gospel increases, so does our desire to share it!   Yep. It is awesome!  I am glad to see him share the gospel with those around him.  Ten Timon also did the same thing with his family and his son came to church, before we even had any lessons with him!  It was amazing!  I am so happy to see the growth of people's faith, and my faith!

Life is good!   The gospel is real and true!   We are living in the dispensation of the fullness of times. What a great time to live.  We have so much to share -- the gospel. We have absolutely no reason not to!


It makes me happy to see the spreading of the Gospel of Christ and seeing the joy that it brings to people's lives. I am grateful to live in this time, this blessed latter days. There is more light than ever before.  We just need to look at it! Look to the Light!  Look to Him!

Love you all! Thank you for y'alls examples!

Love you!
Share the Light!
Hurrah for Israel!
Elder Weenig

Zone Conference

Howdy!

Hope you all are doing great!  I am doing just dandy.  We had Zone Conference this past week which is always accompanied with transfers. I am staying and so is my companion, Elder Veresoni. It is great.  I am excited for this coming transfer.  It is will be amazing, Elder Versoni is amazing! He said to me on the way home one day, "By the end of the transfer, let's have 60 people in our teaching pool" (teaching pool: how many people we teach).  I am excited!!  I love having a companion that is driven and motivated!  I hope I can be more like that -- optimistic, pleasant, and motivated.

So, Zone Conference was amazing!  We had great trainings.  Elder Murri from the East Zone gave a training on tracting and good first impressions.  It was great!  He started with the classic "Sorry I was sick this past week and so I didn't have much time to prepare, but we will see how this goes...." and you could see the attention in the room drop by a good 200 percent.  Then he clapped his hands nice and loudly -- giving several people heart attacks and pointed out that saying that is a horrible first impression.  He then restarted by doing a rap about tracting, and everyone paid attention very well in his training and we all loved it!  It was amazing!  Moral of the story:  First impressions are extremely important and even if you don't have much time to prepare, don't demean your talk or training or speech or whatever it is that you do by pointing out the fact that it may not be very well prepared or that it may not be of worth.  Because the moment we say that, people don't listen.  Yep.  Be creative and enthusiastic when giving talks or, more importantly, when sharing the gospel. It was a good lesson for missionaries and for everyone else as well.  We also had a great training from Sister Moungatonga-Fowler (from the West Zone -- the zone I am in) on opening our mouths.  We need to try to talk to everyone.  Even those people that seem hopeless and even if people reject us, our goal is to at least leave them with a good impression of the church.  We need to smile more, make people laugh more, and share the gospel more (we is an all inclusive pronoun being used here to imply all those that are members of the church, not just missionaries.).  I found their trainings to be amazing and inspiring! Zone conference is amazing!  We also had Stake Conference.  It was good.  Elder Sinjoux of the Seventy came to speak to us.

Well, my thought for today is to be happy.  Be positive.  Be optimistic.  From Gordon B. Hinckley's life, we see that he was an optimist. One thing I noticed is that he said he was an optimist. It was not only said about him, but he said it himself.  To me, this means that he CHOSE to be an optimist. Just as one chooses the choices that lead them to say "I am a doctor" or "I am a teacher", one also chooses the choices that lead them to say "I am an optimist."  I know that people are born good. People are by nature good (any one wants to argue that? Because you'll lose -- we are children of God and we chose to follow Him in our life before we were born, and are therefore good), but life is not quite so good (due to a not so pleasant fellow named Satan).  So, we are put in a position to choose whether or not we will be happy in this life.  It is all up to us.  We can look at a day and say : "Today is going to be a great day" and it likely will, so long as we continue to say that even with Satan whispering just the opposite in our mortal ears.  My point is this, we choose to be positive. We choose to be happy.  We choose to be optimistic. That is what is so great about agency. It is all up to us.  I know that we can choose.  I know that we can always choose to be happy because the Lord Christ died and rose for us.  He loves us and supports us and blesses us and is our greatest, truest friend.  I know He lives! He is real!  He is true!  He is fact!  He has a Gospel for us -- the Gospel of Peace, the Gospel of Joy, and a Gospel of Happiness.  I know this and hope to hold true to it.  I hope we all continually remember to choose to be happy (choose the right - choose to be happy.).

I love you all!  Hope you are all well!  Keep on being amazing!  I look up to you all and you all make me happy. Thank you so much!  I love you!

Choose the Right!
Hurrah for Israel!
Elder Weenig

Zone Conference

Happy Fiji Day

Mauri!

Happy Fiji Day!  October 10th is Fiji Day.  It is like Independence Day, but for Fiji, cool, right?  My companion, Elder Veresoni is from Fiji.  It was a good day. We made a fancy dinner at home - courtesy of the "Just add boiling water" mashed potatoes that came from America (thank you family!).  It was fun. :)  Anyway, I hope you all had a fantastic Fiji day.

This week was great!  I am grateful for it.  A couple rough days where we did not get very much done and motivation was not at its peak... But it was great, because the past couple of days have been amazing -- great lessons, new people, all that good stuff.  This week is a proof that even though the sun doesn't shine super bright every moment of every day, it will always come back out.  I like that lesson -- yep, the knowledge that even though life can seem hard, the sun will come out tomorrow. :)  (the song from Annie begins to play in the background.)  Love you all! :)

I love being a missionary.  I love knowing that the Christ is my Lord and my Savior. I hope and pray not to lose sight of the knowledge of Christ and His Atonement and His Gospel.  Satan attempts continually to chip away at that knowledge and faith. I hope to keep it strong through increased faith in Christ -- prayer and study and fasting, a brighter hope, and truer charity.  Please don't lose sight of that bright and glorious light, which is Christ, our friend, our brother, our all.

Love you all!

Keep the Faith!

Hurrah for Israel!

Elder Weenig

One year mark party with my MTC intake (We had burgers and fries... Expensive, but yummy. :) )

Happy Fiji Day Meal (It was also Elder Schoeny's and Elder Rowsell's one year mark in Kiribati)

Haircut -- done by the one, the only, Elder Veresoni.  He is amazing!

General Conference

Mauri!

And yep, I recognize that the title of my email is probably the exact same as 70,000 other missionaries.... :) But creativity requires effort.  If anyone wants a cool name for it, use Maungatabu -- that is the Kiribati word for General Conference.

Well, love you all!  This week was remarkable.  I will get down to explaining why it was such a great week: GENERAL CONFERENCE!!!

Aren't we so lucky that we get to hear the words of the Lord through His prophets each six months?!  I hope that we are more like the pioneers who accepted the words of the Lord to the fullest of their understanding. I hope that we don't act as other peoples in the past (Nephites, Lamanites, or Jews) that had the prophets among them, but did not hear their words.  I know that General Conference is real.  Their words are real. Their talks are real.  Their testimonies are real.  Their promises are real!  They are real, because they are not theirs, they are His.  I am coming to understand what it means when people say that the Lord will speak to us through the mouths of His holy prophets -- it means that He will.  If we come with a sincere heart, and a desire to be learned of God, we will be able to receive more light from on high.  I am grateful for the light that was poured out and illuminated the area around me so that I could see the answers to my questions.  I know that the Lord will answer our questions if we ask in faith.  I have asked Him questions before, but now I am learning to ask of Him with faith NOTHING wavering.  In the Infinite Atonement book by Tad R. Callister (the nice fellow, who gave a remarkable proof and testimony for the validity and absolute truthfulness of the Book of Mormon in the Sunday afternoon session of conference), it says that for us to understand the Atonement of Christ we must become like Joseph Smith -- master askers!  I believe that for us to receive answers to our personal questions, we need to learn to ask questions and act on what we are told. I want to work on this. Ask and he shall receive.

I have had a great week!  We are working to get new investigators. We are teaching a man named Iotebwa. He is great!  He is an old man. He even came to General Conference. We didn't see him, because he went to the other building which is way far away...(he didn't know where our church building was.... which is understandable, but also a bit funny seeing as there is only one road on the island, so just so long as you go in the direction of the building you are looking for, you cannot miss it....) But anyway, the moral of the story is that we are very glad that he came to General Conference, we have only been lessoning with him for a little over a week.

Love you all!  I want to write more, but my time is up! Keep on being amazing!  The church is true.  It is real.  I know these things are real!  In the name of Jesus Christ, our Savior. Amen

Hurrah for Israel!

Elder Weenig

State of Mind

Howdy y'all!

Our mission has a high baptismal goal and for us to reach it, we all need to get a high number of people to baptism before the end of the year.  It has seemed out of reach,  but I have come to realize that it is all in the state of mind. If I believe that I will be able to do it, I will be able to.  There is a poem that says: "If you think
you are beaten, you are.  If you think you dare not, you don't....  For out of the world we find, success begins with a fellow's will, it is all in the state of mind...."  (I tried to do it from memory,.....  Dear poet, forgive me for slaughtering your poem!)  Anyway, the moral of the story is that if we dream big and work big we achieve big, if we dream small and work small we will reap small rewards....  And as a disciple of Christ it is always great to remember that  in the Lord we can do all things through the Lord who strengthens us.  Anyway, I am learning to shoot for the stars and then learning how to pack enough rocket fuel to make it there.

This week has been great.  I am learning the area and the people.  We are working on finding new people.

Being a zone leader, we get to do baptismal interviews for the district leaders.  I love doing those interviews.  I feel the Spirit so much, and the people are so determined to be baptized.  I feel the gift of tongues come into effect more, as they all seem to more fully understand me when I speak.  It makes me happy.  I am glad to
have that opportunity.

For my study on Sunday, I did the Christlike Attribute survey at the back of PMG Chapter 6, Christlike Attributes.  It was great.  It helped me see where I need to improve.  If any of you have a spare five minutes or so, it is definitely worth it.  It was super helpful to me.  I am grateful to have that as a resource.

Love you all so much!  Keep on being amazing!  You are all the greatest!  I am so lucky to have family and friends like all you all! Press forward with faith.  Hope for a better world.  Smile today and tomorrow.  That is the lesson I learned this week -- smiling is a choice.  Smile.  I am glad for it.

Love you!
This is the place - whatever place we happen to be in is the place.
Hurrah for Israel!

Elder Weenig

Lesson on the beach with Elder Veresoni

Elder Peterson and I in Tab South. ... Rain storm

Canoe across from Takuu with ten Baretoka

Fishing with ten Biita - he is a less active in Tab South

Dramatic fallen coconut tree... :)

Tab South - Hurrah for Israel Jump ... :)