Arizona Phoenix Mission

My first Christmas I got extremely homesick and it was very painful. And that second Christmas, I was worried that the same thing was going to happen. I went to the mission home for our little Christmas celebration and we watched the Polar Express, which for my family, it was a big Christmas thing that we always did every single Christmas. And then I got a present that was for my mom and she sent me this beautiful necklace. It just reminded me that my family loved me and that they were aware that it was a sacrifice for me to be serving on my mission. And it was just really neat to know that God remembered me. I got to help with the stake musical production in Peoria. They were doing this huge collaborative event. They had a full-out orchestra, acting, dancing, singing, you name it, they had it. It was fantastic. My companion at the time, she and I both got to help in the orchestra. She was on the chimes and I was doing a bunch of random different percussion stuff. And it was just amazing to me how many people were there, non-members, who were touched by the spirit of Christmas. It was an incredible missionary opportunity and I loved it.

My very last, second to last transfer, I was having a shoe problem. All of my shoes were too small. Well, they weren't too small, they were just like all falling apart, because you walk a lot on your mission. And I was nearing the end of my mission, and they were just falling apart. And I remember one Sunday after sitting in Zachary meeting, just thinking about how much God loved all of these people. We were walking back to our apartment that day, and this random lady calls out to me like, hey, hey you, hey you. And I like, turn around and say, yeah. She's like, what shoe size do you wear? And I'm like, size 10. She's like, I have a pair of shoes that'll fit you. So she runs back to her house, and she's pushing a stroller with a baby in it. And she comes back like three minutes later, and she has this pair of shoes. And she gives them to me, and she's like, this is for you, thank you, and have a good day. She left. And that pair of shoes fit, and they lasted me till the end of my mission. And it was an amazing, tender mercy to me that God is very aware of his missionaries and their needs. And you'll send random strangers to fill them sometimes.

Long story short, I had a lady who, a lot of negative things in her life, her husband used to be a member and was actually pretty darn less active and kind of against the church. She had two young children, a daughter and a son, and just crazy kids. Kids that would just scream and rip your scriptures and throw crayons at your face, just to kind of a crazy atmosphere when we taught her, but man, I tell you what, it doesn't matter what we were saying, she could feel the spirit there and it was cool. We taught her for three or four months and she accepted the invitation to be baptized and totally changed her life around, man. Her kids went to primary, calmed down a little bit, and the coolest part was her husband became active again, and now their family is sealed in the temple, and it's a really cool experience.

One of my favorite experiences on the mission was meeting one of my friends named Mary. She lived in North Phoenix, and we met her because her neighbor had responded to a service ad on Facebook and asked that we come and leaf blow her leaves and her neighbor's leaves. So she went over to introduce us to her neighbor Mary, and before we could even talk to her about her yard or anything, she asked us if we knew anything about family search. And the family history centers had been closed, and so she needed to get some of her family history done and needed some help with it. And so we were able to help her organize many, many documents about her family history and different time periods that her family lived during. She was trying to compile basically her family story of all of the ancestors that she could find, and it was just so inspiring to see somebody who was never really interested in the church be so excited about family history and so engaged in that work.

There was an investigator we were teaching named Rosanna. We really wanted to take Rosanna down with us to the Mesa Temple. Our mission person allowed us to take investigators there to explore the Temple Visitor Center. And so we went, and we had a fantastic experience on the Temple grounds, and at the Visitor Center with the sister missionaries there. And Rosanna told us she wanted to start reading the Book of Mormon. And so we started reading the Book of Mormon with her. We were working with Rosanna to try and see if she would want to get baptized. Rosanna went through a lot, and her father was being very restrictive. Because Rosanna had some mental issues, it made it a little bit trickier for her to understand everything. So we had to simplify everything. It was looking promising, but she wasn't on date when I went home. She called me about two months later. She's like, Sister Weidman, guess what? Guess what? And I'm like, what? She's like, I'm getting baptized in a month. And I'm like, no way! And we never thought that she was ever going to get baptized. But her dad gave the okay. Rosanna was baptized. And it was an incredible moment for me to see how much she had grown and progressed in the gospel.

There was a lot of trouble with one of the wards. The bishop didn't really like the sisters very much, and there hadn't been any baptisms in over a year. The war missionary was getting frustrated, the missionaries were getting frustrated. I had a trainee who I was training in that area. We worked our tails off in that ward, bringing people to church, having members come with us to lessons, and by the end of the year we had two baptisms. And that bishop shook my hand, looked me in the eye, and said, thank you for the service that you provided to our ward. And that really touched my heart. I got transferred from Flagstaff back to the valley in June, but I know I got transferred down to meet this particular family. We clicked right off the bat, and I was so happy. Things were going really, really well. And then they moved! The elders who were in that area tried and tried and tried, and they were not able to get in with them, and there was no connection there. Next transfer, I get transferred to a neighboring ward, so I was right next door. We got permission from the mission president, and I got to go, and I got to teach that family again. I ended up teaching them for about six months of my mission, and they were so amazing.