Lots of Study Time

Hey!

Wow sounds like everyone had a fun Thanksgiving! I'm glad everything went well! And thanks Elder Webster 2 for all the pictures! San Francisco looks way fun!

We had another typical week in the office. Nothing too out of the ordinary. The next two weeks are full of conferences that we have to prepare for and then right after that we have to have the christmas party ready, so thats keeping us busy enough. Haha and yes, my piano playing is coming along pretty well-ish. I found a book of like 50 "simplified hymns" and I can pretty much play all of those now, so thats pretty cool. I've only really been practicing with my right hand though because, well, I wouldn't want to be too good at piano or else that would take all the fun out of it haha or something like that. I helped Elder Trelease pay rent for his first time so that was...about how you might imagine. We haven't quite finished, but we've gotten most of it ready for the beginning of the month. Plus, we talked with President and got the amount raised that all the missionaries receive every month for food and stuff, so that was different. More than anything I think I've just been helping Elder Trelease with things and daydreaming a little bit about when I'm going to get out of the office...

We got to go out to work a few times this week. All of our appointments with Mario keep falling through. When we call him he's always way happy to talk to us, but he works pretty much all-day, every-day, so he's been really hard to get a hold of. He agreed to come meet us on sunday at the church though, so hopefully that works out. Elder Trelease and I have also taken up a new game while we're out. We work in one of the richest parts of the mission, so we've kind of set the goal of finding the nicest houses we can and then knocking on their door. Haha it didn't really start out that way, we would just go, and anytime one of us said something about the way a house looked, we'd go over to knock on the door. We're also thinking about trying to bring a giant whiteboard or something over to this walking path near the office, and then writing a question on it or something to start conversations with the people at the park/walking path, because there are always a ton of people there. We'll see.

As far as verse of the week, it was a hard choice this week. Training in the office means I have lots of study time, and this week I've been having some of the best personal studies I've had in a long time. This isn't necessarily my favorite thing I learned this week, but I decided it would probably be the easiest to put into words, so here it is: 1 Nephi 17:12. Pretty simple. Nephi was explaining that they hadn't really made very many fires on their journey because the Lord had promised that he would take care of their food. But that made me wonder.....why? Would it really have been that hard for Lehi's family to make a fire that they were in need of that type of miracle? Surely living in the desert didn't involve so many time consuming tasks that they didn't even have time to make fire..? So then I started imagining what that would have been like. Every meal would have been a trial of faith...looking at the meat they were going to eat, knowing it hadn't been cooked...and then eating it, trusting that the Lord had taken care of it. It kind of gave meaning to verse 13 where it says that they would know who it was that was leading them on their journey. It would have been hard to deny the Lord's hand when literally every meal was a obvious reminder of the miracles He was doing to help them. Not to mention it would have been pretty humbling knowing that the Lord cared enough to basically cook your food for you. Kind of interesting how, in a way, the blessing wasn't so much a physical thing, but a spiritual thing that helped their faith and humility.

Well, I hope you all have a great week this week! And I'm glad you all had a great Thanksgiving!!

Elder Webster

Training and Door Knocking

Hey everyone!

Sounds like everyone is keeping busy and is excited for Thanksgiving!! You'll have to tell hi to everyone for me! And I hope mom's jewelry thing goes great!

This week was pretty good. Its way weird training the new financiero. He's been here long enough now that he can do most things without my help...which means I'm starting to honestly not have a lot of work to do...which feels weird. Its not really a job that requires two people...or that can even really be done by two people, and I'm trying to get him to do as much of it as possible so that he's used to it when I leave. But unfortunately, that means I kind of just sit in the back of the office and study and every once and a while I'll help him if he gets stuck. Haha but on the bright side...I hooked up a keyboard that we have here in the office and started learning piano! So thats kind of fun.

 

On the other bright side, having two financieros means that its a little easier for us to go out to our area and work more often. Mario was out of town all week, and we don't really have any other progressing investigators, so Elder Trelease and I got to spend a lot of quality door-knocking time! I can't say we actually ended up finding very many investigators that way....in fact I can't say that we actually found any investigators that way...but I can say that I feel like I've probably been rejected in almost every way that I can imagine. Haha the weird thing about missionary work is that no matter how many (or few) physical results your efforts bring, you always feel good for doing it. I can't think of very many other things that are like that. And then last night we got our ward mission leader to come with us to an appointment...which fell through, so then he came with us to basically every person that we knew that lived by there...and not a single one opened their door. But hey, A+ for effort I guess.

So the verse of the week is actually something that I was thinking about this morning. I was reading in the New Testament when Hebrews10:14 caught my attention. "For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified." One thing that helps me think about what a verse is saying, is thinking about what the verse is not saying. Of all the words that could have come at the end of the sentence, he intentionally put "sanctified"...which means there are a lot of words that he intentionally didn't put. He didn't put "sinners", even though everyone that would receive help from His sacrifice is a sinner...He didn't put "humble", or "faithful", or "forgiving", even though those are all things that Christ asked us to be in order to be saved...But he did say "sanctified". And then that led to a  search for a bunch of scriptures about exactly what it means to be sanctified and how to become sanctified. Interesting stuff.

Anyway, I hope you all had a great week and that you have a great Thanksgiving!!! Hopefully all the stuff you have planned for this weekend goes well! Say hi to everyone!

Elder Webster

The Wise Man Built His Family On A Rock

Hey,

Sounds like its been yet another crazy week over there! I'm glad that everyone is doing so well! Shoutout to Elder Funckes for being a stud!!

This week has been pretty good, not too crazy. I'm still training Elder Trelease as the new financial secretary, so thats going well. Haha I like him a lot...which makes me feel a little bad, knowing that he'll have to be here in the office for like 6 months. But I really am glad for the things that I've gotten to learn while I've been here. At the same time, I'm way excited to leave here next transfer. So...yeah.

Honestly, this week has been pretty calm. The president was in Buenos Aires all week, and the banks were all closed/on strike or something for 2 days, so that was sort of lame. That appointment we had last week with Mario fell through, but we got to meet him this week on thursday! He was supposed to meet us at the church, but he didn't show up, and we had his address, so we went to see if he was home. He lives in a small group of houses, so we touched the doorbell that had his name on it...and nothing happened. So my comp said we might as well try another one since we were already there, so he touched another doorbell...and guess who answered? Mario! He's way awesome and super prepared! It was sort of a joint lesson with the sisters from our ward, because they wanted to be there to introduce us to him and explain to him why we were going to be teaching him instead of them. He told us all about how he had grown up planning to become a catholic priest or something, but eventually came to the decision that he didn't like the things he was learning/seeing there. Then he had spent a long time looking for the truth, and said that nothing had ever touched him the way he had been touched when he met Hermana Russell on that bus 11 months ago. He lives sort of a lonely and busy life, and admits that he wants religion to play a bigger part of it, he's just always been skeptical about which religion. He has a strong testimony of the apostasy and is really just looking for something that will help him feel more happiness and love in his life, and he's eager for the rest of his family to find it too. We only had a very short meeting with him, so there's still a lot to do for him. We have another meeting with him tonight, so hopefully it works out.

As the verse of the week, I chose 3 Nephi 14:24-27. I was reading in Preach My Gospel (the missionary handbook) in the section about how the Book of Mormon answers questions from our lives. One of the questions had a reference to this chapter and I was curious about how that chapter answered that question. I found these verses and I started thinking of them differently. They talk of how those who build their house upon the rock will remain after the storms come, but that those who build their house upon the sand will be washed away by the storms. For some reason, changing the word "house" with the word "family" made a huge difference in how I read the scripture. Pretty cool.

Anyway, I hope you are all doing well! Hopefully next week is even better!

Elder Webster

hey sorry, we left early to go to centro, so I didn't finish my email time...plus, unlike every other missionary in the mission, I don't have to pay to use a computer..so I figured I'd take my last couple minutes to send some pics.

Eating some alfajors with my new comp

Elder Arndt contemplating transfers after we helped him update the transfer board at President's house

Preparing the sack lunches for the missionaries that had to travel a long way after hearing Elder Christofferson

The view from President's house... I guess we've been there kind of a lot lately to make all those lunches and update his boards...which was weird since no one was there either time