HEY!

HEY! (all-caps, thats a fun twist on things)

  Thanks for the emails! It sounds like there's a lot of exciting stuff happening over there! Dad, thats way awesome that your friends are getting baptized! Kind of wish I could see that! And sure, I could do with some mexican recipes. And good job Mom, sharing that website with someone!! We've been handing out cards with stuff about the church websites but...I feel like most people don't have computers so I'm not really sure how effective it is, but whatever. And congrats to Jordan with BYUI!! Way sick. Can't wait to hear what the other colleges say!

 So this week was probably not the most productive week ever, but it was good. We spent a lot of time trying to go contact some references we've gotten and some people we had talked to in the street but... I can't even count how many times we got lost this week, and we never ended up finding most of those people, so, kind of accidentally wasted quite a bit of time with that. But, the baptism that got postponed happened this week! We were worried it was going to rain again, so we put the font in the kitchen of the house we meet in and then spent most of the day boiling water and putting it in there so it would be warm...which took forever and didn't work but...hey, its the fact that she got baptized thats important. Her name is Mariné. She has 2 older siblings that were baptized in the past year, and it was actually her older brother that baptized her, which was way cool.

 In other news, we got transfers last night. Elder Kahmann and I are going to be together for one more transfer here in Rodeo del Medio. It should be good, and we're both excited because the chapel that's getting built is supposed to be finished in a couple of weeks, so we'll both get to be there for that! Mom, you asked about how things were going as far as obedience with members and finding people to teach. The members are getting a bit better about it... I think the problem is that it turns out that they do know the rules and just aren't really worried about that...but its getting better. And as far as finding people....well, lets just say we're really happy that the members all want to invite their friends to come see the new chapel, because we're slowly running out of investigators. But, its good.

Verse of the week, I like Jacob 6:12. Simple and to the point. What caught my attention is the translation in spanish. The english one says to be wise, and the one in spanish could technically mean that too, but it sort of says to be careful or cautious. The two verses have the same idea, but I just thought it was cool that they translated "wise" to the word "prudente" (prudent, cautious, careful) instead of "sabio" (wise). I don't know, it just caught my attention this week.

Anyway, I hope you guys are doing awesome and have a great week! I love hearing from you guys!

Love

Elder Webster

PS I realized that I hadn't told you guys some of the random fun stuff thats been happening, so I thought I'd just send you some random stuff.

1-I got peed on by a dog 2 weeks ago...yup. I was just standing there talking to this lady when a random dog walks up and...yeah. I HATE DOGS.

2-I got another one of the curses, sort of. Bit by a dog. It didn't technically bite me but...it went crazy at me and ripped my pants. Don't worry, the pants are all fine now but...I HATE DOGS.

3-I got to ride in a semi truck the other day. It was during the rain storm and the guy we were teaching offered us a ride after the lesson...and he had a semi. So that was sick.

4-I ate a chicken heart for lunch the other day. Not sure why it was there. We were having spaghetti and chicken and for some reason there was a heart on my plate (my comanion didn't have one). I guess technically I don't know if it was a chicken heart but... definitely a heart from something. That family just gives us food and then leaves us alone to eat by ourselves, and I couldn't help cutting it open and showing my companion how it worked before eating it. Not going to lie, it tasted pretty good.

So yeah. Fun stuff. I feel like random fun things happen every day, but those are the ones that are coming to mind today. But yeah, have a fun week! And don't get peed on by a dog!

this is some people in our ward at Mariné's baptism, standing in front of our little church. Mariné is the girl in white, her brother Josía (not sure how to spell his name) is the guy in white, the legendary JuanP is the one in blue next to Josía. Samuel (the one that baptized Sol a few weeks ago, is the one standing behind Mariné). The people on the far right is JuanP's family, and the rest of the people are...members...who's names I can not remember.........oops

New chapel

Pure Religion

Hey!

Haha I need to think of a cooler way to start my emails than just saying "Hey!" everytime. Any suggestions? And thats way cool about Dads friends! As soon as I read that I told the other missionaries here on the computers and everyone started celebrating :) And that Gilbert Temple looks amazing!!!! There aren't any temples in this mission and I'm super excited to get to go to one again. And good luck Dad in Mexico! Haha that'll be fun. And thats a pretty cool stereo in the buggy. Nice.

So this was kind of a weird week. I feel like we didn't accomplish a ton because we spent most of the week trying to prepare everything for the baptism of Mariné Copa, but then we had this crazy freak storm and it got cancelled, since our baptismal font is outside and because everything flooded and no one could make it. Haha normally for the sunday meetings there are like 80 people there, but this week there was only 25 because of the rain. Rain is especially bad when you live somewhere where half the roads are just made out of dirt, and even the paved roads don't really have actual sidewalks. I'll send you some pictures of that and some other stuff.

As a verse of the week I thought of James 1:27, which talks about "pure religion" and how it involves helping those in need and some other things. I thought of it because of what happened yesterday. On sunday, a lot of the members were calling everyone that didn't come to church to make sure they were okay. No one announced the service project, but somehow everyone found out that there was a family that needed help, and everyone went to their house right after church. Their whole yard was flooded, and the inside of their house was flooded and full of water and mud. We got there and everyone started to help bring everything outside to a dry spot and then we all went to work getting all the water and mud out. It was the coolest sight ever, seeing everyone there in their shirts and ties, their skirts and dresses, everyone's sleeves rolled up, helping to get all of the mud out of the house. When we got there the single mom was their crying and it was amazing to see how much the simple act of service really was able to help her, her family, and the ward as a whole. Way cool experience.

Anyway, I hope you guys are doing great!! Dad, tell your friends I'm happy for them. I hope you guys have a more exciting and fun week than this past week, oh, and happy valentines day!! Keep being awesome!

Love

Élder Webster

Sol Jofre's baptism

Baptismal Font

Rainy day.... And a restoration pamphlet!

I Smell Change In The Air

Hey!

Haha you guys had a lot of cool stuff this week! Thats way cool about that youth conference, it sounds like you guys had an amazing time!!!! There isn't a temple in our mission so I'm excited to go to one again when I get back. Haha and I like that buggy you guys bought, and the spanish name is pretty sweet too :) And that Saratov Approach movie sounds interesting, I'd like to see it someday. And no, I still don't have the packages, but we have interviews with president this week and we may or not be getting them...no idea. So I can probably tell you whats up about that next week. Sorry! And Dad, thats way exciting about your friend! Hopefully all goes well!

This week way pretty good. We've been focusing a lot on the progressing investigators that we're teaching, and I really want to change how we're working so that we can start finding more people, because we visit our investigators so often and they live so far away that we haven't been doing very much actual finding of new people...which needs to change. But its going pretty well. And we should have a chapel finished in March, so everyone's really excited about that. And last saturday ,the daughter of a less active family we've been teaching got baptized! Her name is Sol. Her uncle got to baptize her which way cool, especially since he's thinking about going on a mission. I don't really have a camera so I'll try to steal some photos from my companion to send to you. There should also be a baptism this upcoming saturday, the sister of a recent convert. Her name is Mariné (we're not quite sure how she spells her name). She's way cool. I'm pretty sure her brother is going to baptize her, which is super exciting!

As a verse of the week, I was thinking of 2 Corinthians7:10. As missionaries, I feel like we almost spend more time listening to peoples problems than actually teaching people, and its showed me how many problems and how much sorrow there really is, and how some people use that sorrow to help them become closer to God, while other people use it as an excuse to distance themselves from God. It was actually a thing that happened yesterday that made me think of this. We were walking when this lady kind of chased us down and started talking to us. She explained how she saw us and decided she needed to talk to us, and then told us all about her boyfriend (for 40 years...people dont like to get married here) and how he's been beating her and doing all these bad things. She was way sad and she invited us to come over this week to teach her. It was interesting seeing how her hard life made her so open to listen to us. So, yeah.

Anyway, I hope you guys have an awesome week and that your wildest dreams come true! And that Jordan will hurry up and get his mission papers in! ;)

Love

Elder Webster

We Built A House... Or Something

Hola!

Haha I totally forgot that it was super bowl time! Thats kind of lame that it was a blowout, but yeah...the snacks and commercials are the best part anyway. And I got a birthday letter from the Lawrences, so thanks for that! Dad, thats way cool about your friend and how you've been inviting so many people to talk to the missionaries! I'm sure the missionaries in the ward love you guys! And Jaxon told me he's still injured but played in his game and they did awesome! Thats way cool! Congrats!!!! Haha I'm pretty sure the celestial kingdom has a soccer team...

So this was a fairly fun week. We got to go and help build part of a house again (haha to be honest I'm not entirely sure exactly what we were doing...my companion and I don't speak "construction worker spanish"...but I think its meant to be some sort of support wall thing.). Also, during the service project the next door neighbor, a less active member, came and asked my companion and I to give a blessing to her sick kid, so we went and did that and then went back to work, and then she came out like 20 minutes later to tell us her kid wasn't sick anymore, so that was pretty cool. We also put a few baptismal dates, so if all goes well we should have one this week and one next week. We'll see how that goes! Haha we also had a zone meeting this week, and one of our zone leaders is chinese, which is interesting. He has a hard time with spanish because apparently there aren't very many people or books that know how to teach spanish to someone that only knows chinese...so that kind of made me feel like I've had it easy. We also got several references from the ward, but our area is so big and we've been focusing so much on the people about to get baptized that we haven't manaeged to contact all the references we got, so we might be doing that this week too. So, they're definitely keeping us busy! Oh, and the youth in this ward kind of amaze me. They all got up yesterday to share their testimonies and experiences from a camp they had this weekend. Hearing their testimonies, you'd never guess that half of them have less active parents and more than one of them have a dad thats leaving the family. I've never heard a single complaint from the youth in this ward, even though I feel like everyone one of them has had a harder life than me. All I ever hear from them are laughs, jokes, and testimonies.

As a verse of the week, I really like Luke 21:19 "in your patience possess ye your souls"...its cooler in spanish. In spanish it says "con vuestra paciencia ganaréis vuestras almas" which would basically translate as "with your patience you will win/earn your souls" (google translate says differently but....yeah). I also like the footnote for the word "possess" that says "win mastery over". I don't know, it kind of blew my mind but...I'm not really sure why. Its just cool.

Anyway, things are going good here, lots of fun and lots of good stuff happening. Haha our area is too big and we can't do everything we want but, whatever. I hope you guys have an awesome week and keep being amazing!!

Love

Elder Webster