Elder Webster: Chapel Dedication!

Hey!

Haha you guys had a pretty fun sounding week! And you'll have to say hi to grandma for me! I hope you guys enjoyed your Spring Break!

We had a pretty interesting week over here. This weekend we had the dedication of the new chapel so that was really cool. There was a family history class there on Thursday, a talent show and dance on Friday, an Open Chapel on Saturday, and then the dedication on Sunday. Kind of a crazy week, and we ended up spending the majority of our time working with members to get everything ready, and inviting every possible person we could find. Haha I think we ended up giving out a couple hundred invitations last week. But it all went pretty well, and I'll have to attach some pics from the activities. I absolutely love the new chapel though! The first time my companion and I got to go in there we were amazed! It looks so nice! Easily my favorite building in all of Argentina. And they've told us that if we can keep attendance up over the next couple months, they're going to build a cultural hall thing there on the side of building (it doesn't have a cultural hall...and its actually still missing a few things with the landscaping and the paintings for the inside haven't arrived yet, but they didn't want to keep postponing the dedication....).

We also got to see some cool progress with some of our investigators! Patricia committed to stop working on Sundays and she came to the dedication! Which is a huge deal for her, considering the only day of the week that she worked was on sundays, so now she doesn't have a job. She also participated in the talent show (more than anyone else, she was in 4 different acts) and she's excited for General Conference this week. We also saw good progress with some less actives we've been working with, most of whom attended more than 1 of the events this past weekend. But yeah, we're super excited about the work here. And the members are too! Yesterday during church, this Ivan, a18 year old semi-active friend of ours, gave us a reference, and we asked him who the reference was and how he knew him. Apparently Ivan stopped this older guy in the street to invite him to church and ended up getting the guys address so we could pass by. Haha seriously, thats just one of many stories of the members during these past weeks just randomly sharing the gospel with people they don't know, they're so awesome!

And so, the moment you've all been waiting for, the verse of the week! Haha just kidding, you probably weren't waiting for it, but I'm going to tell it to you anyway. Its Malachi 3:8-10. Yup, thats right, tithing. Partially because I'm so grateful for the donations that went toward building our new chapel. And partially because its a cool scripture. It says that the windows of heaven will be opened and blessings will be poured out that we won't have room to receive...but I don't think its saying we'll end up with so much money that it won't fit in our bank account, or that we'll have to many cars for our garage. I was reading Elder David A. Bednar's talk from last conference and thinking about the simpler, spiritual blessings we can receive. It seems to me that the more grateful we are, the more blessed we are. Those that aren't grateful always feel poor, but as we become more grateful, we are always finding more and more blessings. The promise in Malachi implies we have a limit to how much we can receive, but I think that by becoming more humble and grateful, we can improve our ability to receive and recognize blessings, which will lead to even more blessings. The scripture says there will be a surplus of blessings, but I think that the better we are at receiving and recognizing blessings, the more will end up with. Its kind of like the parable of the talents, where it says that more will be added to those who strive to get more, but all will be taken away from those who don't value what they have. Haha I'm not sure if this paragraph made any sense...sorry about that.

But anyway, I hope you guys have a great week and a super awesome General Conference! I can't wait to hear from you next week!

Elder Webster