Grateful For Member Missionaries!

Hey!

Sounds like quite the week that everyone had! Jordan's comp breaking his leg, Dad breaking the truck, Hailey breaking the rules and going on dates even though I told her not to.. Crazy stuff. And I got the stuff everyone sent me! Thanks to the Lawrences, and the fam, and grandma and grandpa! Thanks everyone!

This week was pretty good. A lot different than what we thought it would be, but good. We were blessed with more lessons with members accompanying us during this week than the whole rest of the transfer combined! It makes a huge difference! The members that helped us did a great job! Augustin, a 17 year old guy that we are teaching, came to a youth activity with us, and afterwards he had invited us and his new friends to eat at his house on a different day! A lesson with Yamila 2 with the bishop's family led to her accepting a baptismal date. A church tour with the help of 2 members helped Yamila 1 really start thinking seriously about baptism and what it would be like to be a member of the church. Lots of cool experiences this week with them. And now that basically every investigator we have has at least 1 member friend, it will be way easier to keep having lessons like that. Its amazing how crucial it is to be able to work with members! I also got to go on exchanges this past week to the area Guaymallen with Elder Shields. We got to teach a way cool lesson together. We walked in planning on talking about one thing, but half-way through, I had the thought of sharing something else, and as soon as I had that thought, I looked to him and realized he was opening to the exact scripture I had been thinking of. Funny how things work sometimes :)

So, a scripture I was thinking a lot about was Alma 31:31. In fact, thats the scripture from the story with Elder Shields during the exchange. In that verse, they were faced with some trials and problems, but what caught my attention (and Elder Shields' attention), was that when faced with adversity, they didn't pray for the problem to be taken away. They prayed for patience, to be able to deal with the situation. I feel like there is a lot I could say about that...but...I'll just let you think about it. Its way cool. I love asking "why?" when I think about the things that happen in the Book of Mormon. Its a pretty helpful question to apply to everyday life too, as long as we don't use it as a way to complain, rather, as a way to learn.

Anyway, I hope you are all doing good! I would have loved to say more, but I'm kind of low on time today :( But I hope you all have a great week! Keep being great!

Elder Webster

Praying for Yamila Q, Yamila D, and Augustin would be great :) Those are some of our main focues right now.

Coming To Know Christ

Hey!

Haha wow it looks like everybody had a ton of fun on New Years! Thats crazy that it snowed in Tucson! It seems like there is always snow whenever I'm not at home. haha whatever I guess. But I'm glad everyone is doing good and I hope that everyone is ready to go back to school/work!

This week was pretty good. Hard, but good. We didn't end up doing much for my birthday. There are 3 missionaries from Peru in my district, so they made a lunch of food from there, and then we kind of just played some games and talked in the chapel. Haha monday night, to celebrate my birthday, we went and knocked doors in the rain and hail, so that was awesome. Haha but seriously...it was awesome. Monday and Tuesday went way well and we were blessed with several lessons and new investigators. New Years Eve was pretty fun but not super eventful, and we weren't allowed to leave the apartment of New Years. Ever since New Years its been kind of hard, because it seems like everyboday left on vacation (summer vacation). Literally, Friday and Saturday only 1 person even answered their door (in total for the 2 days). So you might say we're excited for the holidays to come to an end. But we did have an investigator at church yesterday (Augustin, the one that grew up in the US), so that was way cool. We also have a lot of lessons set up for the next couple days where we'll have members to accompany us, so we're excited for that. Hopefully everything goes according to plan....haha it never seems to work out like that.

As a verse of the week, I was thinking of John 17:3 and 1John 2:3-6. The one in John says that eternal life is to know Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, and the passage in 1 John explains a little bit more about how we can know if we know them. We read that second passage in church yesterday and I found myself still thinking about it this morning. Its interesting to me, the many ways that we can come to know them. I don't know its just way...cool.

Anyway, I hope everyone is ready for school and work again! Love you guys a ton! Keep being awesome!

Elder Webster

Merry Christmas!

Hey!

Merry Christmas! It was awesome getting to skype you all at home! And thanks for the birthday wishes! Haha...you know how much I love celebrating my birthday...

This week was way good. Elder Olsen and I received a ton of blessings! He says that we were blessed with more new investigators and more lessons than he's had in this area in months, and we're excited to try to keep it going. Hopefully its the beginning to a long period of growth here.

Since all of our new investigators are so new, we don't have anyone that has progressed too much yet, and none of them were able to come to church this week. But since school here is out for summer vacation, people tend to have a little more time to talk to us, and it seems like its going well. Dad asked for a list of investigators. Right now, we're working mostly with Yamila, Rocio, Juana, Rosemari, and Aida. We also are just barely beginning to start teaching a kid whose nickname is Willy (not sure what his real name is), and another kid named Augustin. Haha you might say we have "nothing but potential". No one has come along to much yet in these 2 weeks or so, but we have high hopes for them. Its a way exciting time to be here in Dorrego.

The verse I was thinking of this week was in Luke 15:1-7, specifically verse 7. It talks about repentance, and how there is greater joy in heaven for one sinner that repents, than for 99 people that don't need repentance. A lot of times, when people think of repentance, they think of something hard, sad,or maybe even depressing. In reality, its a process thats meant to lead to joy. Yes, it can be hard, but life would be a lot harder without it. In the manual that missionaries use to help them learn more about what to do as missionaries (Preach My Gospel), it says the the central objective of this life is to put our life in harmony with Heavenly Father's will through repentance. We all came here to progress and eventually receive a fulness of joy. Since we all have sin, repentance becomes the necessary step that helps us fulfill the purpose of our life and the very creation of the world. And every part of it is possible because of Jesus Christ. I love Him so much.

I hope you all have a very HAPPY NEW YEAR! And that you guys at home keep enjoying your breaks from school/work! Keep being great!

Love you so much!

Out Of The Office!

Hey!!!

Merry Christmas!!! Haha sounds like everyone is definitely busy with the christmas activities! It'll be fun getting to skype home soon!

This week was awesome. OUT OF THE OFFICE! Haha its true that being in the office was a huge blessing and I learned a ton. I'll miss it in someways...but I don't miss it enough to go back. My new companion, Elder Olsen, is pretty fun. Haha I called him 3 times before we actually had transfers just to tell him how excited I was to be there with him and to work hard (and to arrange how we'd meet, since I had to help with the new missionaries on transfer day). Haha luckily he's way excited also (or else those calls would have been kind of awkward...). We've got a ton of work to do in this area though, it kind of looks like we're starting from almost nothing.  And really our whole district is way fun and excited. I get the feeling that last transfer was kind of hard for the district because it seems like everyone's areas are a little bit...dead, and because everyone is way excited about the changes that happened and are way ready to work hard. Our ward seems cool and quite a few people came to church yesterday (about 100).

Saturday we had a district activity that the zone leaders had assigned us. It was an "open chapel" activity where the district got together to invite everyone near the church to come and learn more. Well, as a district we probably knocked on around 200-250 doors during the activity, and talked to quite a few people...and not a single one came. (wow that story would be way lame if it ended right there...luckily it doesn't). We were all in front of the chapel as we finished up, when a woman walked up to us and told us that she was looking for a church-that she was new to the neighborhood and that she had distanced herself from God, but that she thought she needed to come back to Him-and wanted to know if she could see our church sometime. Well, it was already set up for a tour, so the sister missionaries went inside with her and had an amazing discussion with her! Totally made the activity worth all the effort. And it showed us how even though Heavenly Father expects us to do all we can, when it comes down to it, this is His work and He knows what He's doing. We're just helping it along.

Scripture of the week would have to be...1 Nephi 11:8-23. Nephi's father had seen a vision, part of which included a tree whose fruit would make people happy. Nephi wanted to see the vision and learn more about what it meant. In the first few verses here, Nephi has the blessing of seeing the tree, and then asks what it means. Instead of being told what the tree meant, he was shown a vision of Mary and of the baby Jesus, and then an angel asked Nephi what he thought the tree meant. After seeing Mary and Jesus, Nephi knew that the tree represented the love of God, the most desireable thing for the soul, and which could make man happy. It caught my attention that Nephi wasn't simply told that the tree represented love. Instead, it appears that as he learned about Jesus, he learned about the love of God for mankind. Jesus Christ and His sacrifice is the perfect example of the perfect love that our Heavenly Father has for us. Hopefully as we think about Christ and His birth this Christmas we, like Nephi, can learn more about the love that Christ and Heavenly Father have for each one of us, and that we can begin to love others in that same way.

Merry Christmas everyone!! And Happy New Year (next week)! Love you all, and can't wait to talk to the family later this week. Keep being awesome.

Elder Webster

Daily Disciples

Hey!

Haha literally like half the emails in my inbox mentioned something about me leaving the offices soon. Exciting. Haha I should be finding out the transfer stuff today, it kind of just depends on when President submits them online. Haha it seems like all week the office has been talking about where Elder Barton and I are going to go (he's leaving the office also).

This week was pretty good. Lots of preparation for transfers next week, the new people coming in, and the year-end mission christmas party that we have every year. Haha I feel a little bad for leaving the office right in the middle of what will probably be in the top 5 busiest weeks we've had since I got here, but...I don't feel bad enough to stay here... so...oh well.

We've had appointments set up with Jhony (the recent convert) and Mario (the cool new investigator from a few weeks ago), but both of those fell through. We actually have appointments with both of them today though, so hopefully that works. We also had a cool experience early this week when we went out trying to street contact people. We had knocked on various doors without anyone answering, but twice while waiting for someone to answer a door, I stopped someone that was walking by on the sidewalk and they were both pretty interested in the website we told them about (the church has a cool christmas video on mormon.org that we've been telling people about...which is a little hard here sometimes since it seems like so few people actually have internet but...whatever). The coolest part that day though was a little later on. We were walking down the street when we passed a young man sitting on the side of the acequia. I felt like we should talk to him but didn't. As we passed him, the feeling didn't go away, in fact it got stronger..so 4 or 5 seconds after passing him, I turned to Elder Trelease and told him we had to go back and talk to that guy, and Elder Trelease just looked at me and said, "I know". So we went back and talked to him, and he was way cool and way accepting. He actually lives in a neighborhood a little ways out of our area, called Campo Papa...which is basically the most dangerous neighborhood in our mission...but we passed the reference to the elders there and hopefully it works out...and they don't get killed... haha...but seriously...

So yeah. The verse I was thinking of this week is from the New Testament, Luke 9:23. Here, the Savior tells the people that if they want to come unto Him, they would have to take up their cross "daily" and follow Him. The word "daily" caught my attention.  Well, actually, the words "cada día" caught my attention..but I guess it says "daily" in english. Anyway, I liked it because it shows that discipleship is an active decision that we can make daily. Every day we can (and should) do something to take up our cross and follow Him. Not just on Sundays. Not just at Christmas or Easter time. But daily.

Well, as always, thanks for all the support and emails! I hope you all have a great week! And a great last week of school to Hailey and Jaxon!

Elder Webster

Todo Bien?

Todo bien?

Haha well I'm glad everyone is slowly starting to recover from all of the Thanksgiving parties. Haha everyone told me that this week was pretty "boring" except for Hailey, who said her week was pretty great, and then all she told me was that her math teacher went missing...haha I just hope you guys aren't having TOO much fun over there.

This week was fairly busy. Its the beginning of the month, which is generally our busiest time of the month, making sure everyone has their money and paying rent and all that good stuff. Plus we had 4 conferences this week that we had to get everything ready for, each with around 50-70 missionaries, and then 2 more next week, so thats kept us pretty busy. We only managed to go out to our area a few times and all of our appointments fell through but...hey, thats the mission I guess.

Haha not gonna lie, I struggle a little every week trying to figure out what to say in these emails, because I feel like every week in the office is so incredibly similar. But the good news is that I'm expecting to leave here on the 17th, so that'll be cool. Don't get me wrong, I feel like I have learned a ton here in the office, and probably 95% of the things I've learned in the office apply more directly to life after the mission than the things I learned in the field... but at the same time... the field is the field...it'll be fun to go back.

Anyway, verse of the week. This was another week where it was hard to decide. There were a few I found from personal study that I liked, and a couple that President shared during the conferences that were really interesting. But, I'm going to have to go with Jeremiah 16:16. Its one of the ones the President shared. It has to do with missionary work, and says that at first the Lord would send fisherman to go to His work, but then later He would send hunters (haha I thought Dad would like this one). Remember when Jesus called His apostles, and told them to follow Him, and He would make them fishers of men? We then talked about the difference between fishing and hunting, and how we are now expected to become "hunters of men" (hahah...you know what I mean...don't go killing people..). Just kind of an interesting way to look at missionary work.

Anyway, hope you guys have a slightly more than average week this week, keep being cool!

Elder Webster