Intense, Humbling, Edifying, Uplifting, and Life-Building Week

December 10, 2012

Dear Family & Friends,

What an intense, humbling, edifying, uplifting, and life-building week this has been.  We had a great opportunity to meet with Brother Donaldson and Brother Lusvardi from the Church Missionary Department for some specialized training this last week.  Brother Donaldson went with us teaching on Tuesday, and then on Thursday we met with them and all of the leaders in the mission.  They have toured 34 other missions before ours and had many, many things to share with us and invite us to do better.  They are good.  We as a mission are doing well, however they helped us understand how much more we can improve.  I now have a better understanding of the word BOLD.  They were honest and bold with us throughout the whole process and we came out a little beat up.  What happened after this experience though has made a profound impact on my mission and on each missionary in this mission.  As we have identified where we need to improve we have seen more of what this missions potential can be as we apply ourselves and work to improve on our ability to find, teach, and invite and help others to come unto Christ.  I have come to love this experience and am seeing already the impact of the things they shared with us in the mission.  Elder Metcalf and I had the opportunity to travel to two Zone Training Meetings after the one with all the leadership to assist in training the zones on what was taught at the specialized training meeting.  It's been fun to go and train these things to other missionaries and see a new light come on as they recognize how much of a difference these changes will make in their service.  I am excited for what will be happening in this mission over the course of the next few months.  Also, it's amazing how many more missionaries are headed our way.  We are all going to be training it seems like. 

With the new MTC time being two weeks our departure date is most likely moving up a week, so the last week in May is when I will probably now be departing.  This makes my time here less than 6 months...I think about how fast the last 6 months have gone and can't imagine how fast these next few months will go.  It seems like I just left home yesterday.

I got my package the other day.  Thank you so much!  I have taken out what you wanted me to get now and have put the remainder under our 5-foot Christmas tree.  The cookies are delicious and I am loving the church music.  Just so you know, for some reason the Jeffrey R. Holland talk and the conference addresses wont play on our car CD player or our portable DVD player for missionary training videos.  I am not sure why... the Lamb of God works wonderfully though.  Thank you again.

Well it looks like my time is running short today...this day always moves especially quick.

I love you and pray that you each are safe and have a great week.

Love,

Elder Weaver