Hey Everyone!
I can't believe there is now officially another Elder
Webster out in the mission field. I can't wait to hear about it! And that's cool
about the new callings, mom and dad! Hope everything is going well!
So, I've got lots of stuff to write this week, so hopefully
I remember to put in all the cool things that happened--
First, we got all the new missionaries this week, so that
kept us way busy! It was way fun getting to talk to all of them/see them all
kind of freaking out. It was kind of funny, all the questions they were asking
us. But probably my favorite part of the things we did with them was on
Wednesday night. They got their comps on Thursday, but the president and his
wife wanted them to go out to work as soon as possible, so on Wednesday, we all
split up, and I got to take 2 new missionaries out to go talk to people in the
streets. It was awesome! We got to this little plaza, and I saw about 4 or 5
teenagers sitting on a bench smoking weed so...I decided we should go talk to
them. As we were introducing ourselves, I thought of the Preach My Gospel DVDs,
so I turned to one of the new missionaries and told him "talk to them
about the restoration". The new elder looked at me for a second, then
pulled out a pamphlet and started explaining. One of the guys interrupted to
ask about life after death, and long story short...we ended up teaching the
plan of salvation to about 15 teenagers while all of us were sitting in a
circle on the ground in the middle of the plaza. There was like 3 rows of
people in the circle all trying to listen to us. Way cool. Afterwards, the new
missionaries were like freaking out and asking me if I had done that a
lot...haha, nope! But way cool. I ended up going back to that plaza with my new
comp (Elder Magdaluyo-the graffiti artist elder that is in the office waiting
to see what happens with some knee problems), and a bunch of the teenagers
greeted us and started calling their friends over to show them we had come.
We'll see where that all goes I guess.
As far as Johnny goes, it looks like he'll be getting
baptized next Saturday, unless something unexpected happens. So we're all
pretty excited about that too. In one of our lessons with him this week, a
new sister missionary and her trainer sat in on the lesson also. It was kind of
fun seeing the new missionary in her first ever lesson. Haha she didn't say a
word, but, still cool. Its amazing how many people we've gotten to teach/talk
to this week, with how busy we've been. Literally, mission rules say to be back
at the apartment by 9pm, but we've had to stay out until like 11pm 3 times this
week because of all the things we had to do to organize transfers and receive
the new people. And we need to get everything ready for a general authority
that is coming next week (Elder Viñas of the 70), so, plenty busy. But since
Elder Magdaluyo doesn't know for how long he'll get to stay in the mission
because of his knees, we set the goal to really make an effort to try to get
out and teach as much as possible. Which brings me to another fun lesson we had
with a less active. I'll keep it short but, the lesson started when the teenage
son stole his dad's bag of weed, and ended when the dad threatened his son by
saying that he better say a good closing prayer or he'd "break him
bad"...so...that was interesting.
Anyway, as a verse of the week, it was something that I read
a couple days ago that kind of stood out to me. It was really a phrase more
than the whole verse, but I liked it a lot. Jacob 4:12. Here, Jacob had just
finished teaching about Christ and the gospel, and in this verse he tells the
people to "marvel not" that he would tell them those things, because
"...why not speak of the Atonement of Christ..?" I really liked that
phrase. Why not speak of the atonement of Christ? I feel like it really applies
a lot to the goal that Elder Magdaluyo and I have set. And it is a great
guideline for new missionaries. So often, especially at the beginning of the
mission, we feel unsure of what to say, because we really want to say the
perfect thing, or we don't want to mess up. But can we really go wrong if we're
talking about Christ's atonement? Why not talk about that?
Well, I feel like there was something else I was going to
mention to all of you but..I can't think of what it was. So, I'll just leave it
there. I hope you all have a great week! Go and be great!
Elder Webster
Oh, haha I remember the other thing I wanted to mention.
Another elder from the offices got in an car accident this past week. No one
got hurt, but we have some pictures of the crash and I can not even tell you
how tempted I was to send you an email from the official mission email with
those pictures saying something like "We're sorry to tell you that Elder
Webster was in a serious car accident and is currently at the
hospital......." but don't worry, I'm slightly more mature than that.
Don't worry, I wasn't even in the car. But I thought I might as well send the
pictures, because...why not. The white truck is the mission vehicle, the black
car is what he crashed with. I guess that's what happens when we have to keep
running errands until 11pm trying to get everything ready on time.
Oh, I'm also attaching a pic of the new steeple they put on our
chapel. It didn't have one, but this whole place has been under construction
ever since I got to the offices. And a pic of us after carrying all the
suitcases of the new missionaries to their hotel. That is only about half of
them in that pic though.
Missionary truck
The other car
No comments:
Post a Comment