WEEK 15 - JOY to the WORLD!

Happy Holidays, one and all! This is your very merry Mormon Missionary, Elder Weber, reporting in on another wonderful week spent in the Fossil Creek Ward, the Loveland Stake, the Colorado Fort Collins Mission! To start, I'd like to say to all of you out there reading this right now, hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving day, filled with loving kindness and surrounded by eternal memories made with friends and families by your side. This was my first Thanksgiving away from my family this year, starting off the first holiday season spent away from home, so I have to admit it was kind of interesting for me. But, much to my pleasant surprise, I haven't gotten the least bit teary-eyed or homesick yet! After all, I have seventeen years worth of wonderful family Christmas and Thanksgiving memories to keep me from being down in the dumps all of November and December. So, before I go into my weekly report, let me just say...Mom and Dad, thank you for making those last seventeen Thanksgivings and Christmases the seventeen best Thanksgivings and Christmases a boy could ever have.


Elder Weber spent the evening before
Thanksgiving at the home of my best friend
 and angel Shawna Banagas
 

Now, then, onto the week. As you all already know from my last email out, Elder Proffit is no longer among us here in the Fossil Creek Ward, and Elder Wengreen has jumped ship and headed back home to start out on his next mission--his life-long mission. So, with that in mind, on Tuesday morning, Elder Proffit, Elder V, Elder Corpus, Elder Mangrum, Elder Earl, Elder Sellers, and myself piled into our fairly cramped Grand Caravan, passed our bags over to the Zone Leaders, and took the twenty-minute drive down to the Stake Center for Transfers. While there, I was very happy to see some old familiar faces again. Elder Noh was there, passing off his Trainer to another missionary, and Elder Genther was there waiting for the Transfers van to take him up to Laramie. I also saw Elder Lires, who's coming here to serve in the Loveland Zone, and Elder Leavit, who's replacing Elder Mangrum in the Stetson Creek Ward. It was nice seeing friends old and new, all together in one place, before the major changes in our lives as Elders could begin. And, trust me, they began.


More time spent at the Banagas home.

For starters, I am now living with our Ward's Bishop, Bishop Kyle Cleverly and his family. Bishop Cleverly is a very kind and friendly man, someone I have rarely if ever seen without a smile, and his family is just as wonderful as he is. Elder V and I live down in their basement, which they made as the traditional teenager's paradise. Sadly, the TV, Wii, and X-Box were taken out of the room, so it could be used for an Elder's home, but the ping-pong table and air-hockey board are still up and ready to play at any moments notice. We don't have as complete a kitchen as we did in the House's house, but what we have we can get by with fairly easily. Elder V is a little bit slower than Elder Proffit was at getting up...about an hour and a half slower...but once he's up he's always doing something productive. And, I do have to admit that serving beside a Tongan has been difficult, especially with the language chasm between us (he just beginning to learn English, and I having the entire Encyclopedia Britannica crammed into my head), but we seem to be doing all right. I even have started to get his sense of humor a little better!

Thanksgiving dinner at a kind member's home with Elder Vakameilalo

Of course, this was all after Sunday, which I have to admit here, was a mistake on my part. Looking back now, I don't exactly know what happened, but to sum it all up in a few short words, Elder V and I had a falling out. I'm not sure why, or even what about, but because I wasn't listening to him I almost ruined our companionship. Elder V was just minutes away from calling up the District Leader and having us split up for the day, he was that ticked off with me. However, after we managed to calm down a bit, we decided to talk it out and figure out exactly what went wrong. It was a very humbling experience for me. I recognize here and now, I was the one at fault, not Elder V, and as such it is my responsibility to make things right. And, as of last night, things seem to be going better for us. We even had three lessons, the most we'd had in one day all week, and we worked so well together, I thought for a moment that I was working with Elder Proffit again. So, yes, I am confident that as long as we talk together and work together, we'll get along just fine, and be a very powerful companionship for however long we are together.

Elder Weber and his new companion
 Elder Vakameilalo. 

When it comes to the actual lessons, though, we haven't done so hot. We've had about six appointments that we have had set up for about a week or so, and then all of a sudden they've cancelled on us, deciding to head out of town for the holidays, or have family come into town for the holidays, and not wanting us around to disturb them. That definitely was trying on the nerves, but neither I nor Elder V have been deterred because of this. It just means we have more time to tract, to talk to members, and find more people to teach in our own ways. Besides, next week will definitely be better than this week, right?

Well, it's about time I wrapped this up, but before I go, the spiritual message!

About two-thousand-fourteen years ago, give or take a few months, a man and his wife traveled a very long and tiring journey across the hot desert land of the Middle East, away from their humble home in Nazareth to the man's place of birth years earlier, the City of David, the City of Bethlehem. Their reason for leaving their home was to obey the commands of the current ruler, Caesar Augustus, and pay their taxes in the city of the man's birth. The man, who traveled on foot, was known as Joseph. He was a simple carpenter, but his heart made him far greater than any simple carpenter before him. The woman, who rode on a donkey's back, was his wife, Mary. For her, the journey was even more burdensome, because she was nearing the end of her pregnancy, and would at any given moment give birth to her first son. But this was to be no ordinary son. This baby boy that she would give birth to was to be the King of kings, the Great Jehovah, the Holy Messiah. He was to be Jesus the Christ, the Savior of the World.

I bear my testimony now that Jesus is the Christ, and that on that beautiful desert night, He was born. Though He is the King of kings, He was born of humble and simple parents, who lived honest and simple lives. He was born not in a great castle or palace, but in a barn, surrounded by the animals of those who filled the inn nearby to near bursting. He was not wrapped in silk, but in swaddling clothes, and laid not in a luxurious crib, but a simple manger the animals fed from. In spite of these simple beginnings, though, Jesus Christ grew up to become a greater man than any other man before Him, or any man after Him. He was a great leader, teacher, and healer. He was the Christ, the Son of God. He lived, and He still lives. And some day, He will come again. Of this I know with utmost certainty, in His Holy name, even the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

See you all again next week!

--Elder Z.S.Weber