Hey
Sounds like everything is going pretty well over there! Glad
to hear that everything is...well..going well...I guess. Haha but seriously,
thanks for all the emails and support!
This week was pretty good. Hectic as always. Last sunday we
all set some companionship goals about getting to our areas this week. So I
actually managed to go out and work 3 times! That was way nice. Unfortunately
we had to really squeeze that time in there, so each time was only about 30-40
minutes long, so we couldn't do a lot, but we all definitely enjoyed getting to
finally get out of the office and do some missionary work, even if it was just
a little bit. And we're all way excited for general conference today. We've all
been trying to prepare ourselves for that. Should be awesome.
Did I tell you about the "activity" we did last
sunday? It was definitely a different idea, but our ward is pretty well known
for not really retaining new converts or helping investigators....so the
sisters thought of an idea. We had to get it approved first, but it was kind of
cool. Half of us missionaries showed up at the church wearing normal street
clothes and giant signs that said "investigator" on it, while the
other missionaries and the ward mission leader tried to tell all the members
that they had brought an investigator family and to get the members to come
welcome us and take us to our classes (we have sacrament meeting 3rd hour). It
actually turned out really good, and the members loved taking us to their
classes. We were all posing as people of different ages, so they needed to get
people from each organization to help us. Then we changed clothes before
sacrament meeting and spoke a little about our experience and about some gospel
basics. Hopefully they'll be better prepared for the next time they get to
welcome a non-member friend into the church.
This week Elder Barton double schedule the visa work he was
going to do with missionaries, so I ended up having to go with new missionaries
pretty much every morning this week to take them to go do visa work, while he
took the other groups. Its always fun getting to be with the new missionaries.
Haha they say the funniest things sometimes. But I guess I did to when I first
got here...haha I guess I still talk like that sometimes actually. But
whatever. But doings visas every morning meant I had twice as much financial
stuff to do in the afternoons, which kept me way busy since its the beginning
of the month and I had to pay everyone's rent. But I feel like we all really
managed to prove to ourselves that if we really really try, there's always a
way to find time to go out and do missionary work, even if it isn't as much as
we'd like to. Before, if we got towards the end of the day and only had like 30
minutes, we'd just start working on the stuff for the next day since we figured
it wasn't really enough time to go do anything, but this week we decided that
if that happened we'd go out to work. It was hard to coordinate with companions
being free at the same times, so I went with a different missionary everytime I
went out, but hey...its a start.
So, verse of the week. This week I chose Helaman 5:40-41. It
is when Nephi and Lehi are in a prison, and a cloud of darkness comes over the
other people there. The people ask among themselves about what they can to do
get the darkness removed, and one of them answers that they must repent and cry
out to the voice they had heard until they had faith in Christ, so that the
darkness would be removed. When one considers that sin is like a darkness we
have over us, this becomes very applicable to us. In the moment, those people
had no faith in Christ, but finding themselves with the need and desire to be
cleaned/forgiven/helped, they found the need to cry out to Him, or in other
words, pray. It shows me that to begin the repentance process or to begin to
pray, we don't need to have great faith or knowledge...just desire. But as we
pray and repent, the faith and the blessings will come. The hard part is just
taking the first step.
Anyway, I hope you all have a great general conference and a
great week!! I'm sure we'll all be able to learn a lot as we listen to the
Prophet. Hopefully we'll be able to apply what we learn :)
Love
Elder Webster
