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

Phew!

Hey!

Wow sounds like everyone had way cool weeks this week! I'm glad you are all having fun and being awesome!

This week has been way super busy, but way good at the same time. We had transfers this week...and guess who is training the new financial secretary!!! So this should be my last transfer in the office, I'll be out of here as soon as Elder Trelease more or less knows what he's doing in here. This transfer ends the week before Christmas, so that should be when I leave, unless something weird happens.

But yeah this week has been way crazy. I think getting to see how my new comp and how the new secretary have responded to being in the office the last couple days, its showed the rest of the office staff really just how much we've adjusted to being here and how different it is from the field. Its been a mentally exhausting week for all of us, but the 2 new office elders are just dead after these couple days. But we managed to get it all done!! Last night we were still making phone calls at like 11pm and we had to wake up today at 5:30 trying to make sure everything went smoothly for the meeting. Haha needless to say, when we were finally the only missionaries left at the chapel after the meeting, we all just felt a big load get taken off of our shoulders. But it amazes us how much the President must trust us. He left us completely in charge of getting all 250 missionaries to the meeting from all 3 provinces of the mission, renting 3 double-decker buses, renting 2 hotels, and buying like $5,000 USD worth of food for all the stuff that happened. But hey, it all got done! And the meeting today was a great way to cap off the week! Elder Christofferson was way funny and it was way good. His spanish is amazing!

Francisco is still doing good. And we have an appointment tonight with a guy named Mario who is kind of a miracle reference. Long story short, one of the sister missionaries met him like 11 months ago in a different province and just found out that he lives in our area. So she set up an appointment for us to meet him tonight at the church, so hopefully that goes well!

So verse of the week comes from John 8:29. Its pretty self-explanatory, but it came up like 5 times in our meeting today with Elder Christofferson, and I like the self-applications we can make. Could you imagine if we could honestly say of ourselves what Christ said of Himself in that verse?

Anyway, I hope you have a great week!

Elder Webster

Tattoos, Birthdays, and Other Stuff

Hola,

Haha I'm glad to hear everything is going good up there. Hopefully your lesson with the missionaries and the investigator goes great again! Keep being super awesome examples!

This week was pretty busy. Haha I'm not even really sure what we did that made it so busy, it was just...busy. President has been doing his interviews with everyone here at the office, so there's been a ton of people coming in and out of the office this week. Plus it was the mission president's wife's birthday and the mission nurse's birthday, so we celebrated both of those. The days really just kind of blend together here in the office though.

We didn't get to go out to our area very much this week unfortunately. We got to go contact an interesting reference, so that was cool. She has a tattoo place in her house, and when we got there the door was open and she was inside giving someone a tattoo. She talked to us for a little bit and was way nice, but said that the mornings are the best time to find her...which is cool that she's willing to let us come back, but we can't go out in the mornings, so we had to pass the reference off to the sisters that share our ward. We also ended up passing Valentin and Franco off to the sisters also (2 of the kids from the plaza). And then last night I went on a 2 or 3 hour "exchange" with one of the assistants because they had a service activity but one of them had to be at the office, so that was pretty fun. I went with Elder Rainock. He's been way fun to get to know here in the office. We've been talking a lot more this transfer, especially since he found out he got accepted to BYU. Haha pretty much everyone in the office isn't really what you'd expect.

Well, as a verse of the week this week, I was thinking of something I read in D&C 107:30-31. The whole section 107 pretty much talks about the organization of the church, and verses 30 and 31 explain a little about how a church group should make decisions, and then goes on to give a promise to those that make decisions in that way. I was just thinking about how our lives might be different if we made all of our personal decisions with those things in mind. It says that decisions should be made with humility of heart, meekness, faith, virtue, knowledge, patience, and charity (to name a few). I can honestly say that not all my decisions are as strongly based on those characteristics as they should be. It reminds me of the conference talk from a few weeks ago when we were told to ask ourselves if the things that we do will make us better people, or not. Food for thought I guess.

Anyway, I hope everything is going great. Mom and Dad, I hope your busy jobs/activities are going well and that you still have plenty of time to do good fun stuff. I hope you all have another good week and a happy halloween!

 Elder Webster

Dead cockroaches from my shower..

A cool band that we saw in Centro

The wonders of Argentine construction

Buying stuff for meetings next week

More graffiti for the Tomba soccer team...cuz they're cool...almost as cool as River

Visit to Rodeo del Medio

Hey!

Sounds like everyone is keeping pretty busy this week! I hope you're all doing well and just as awesome as ever! And shout-out to Hailey for the letter, that was awesome!

This week was pretty good, pretty busy. We had to send home 2 elders on Tuesday, so that was sort of sad. It was a pretty weird situation. Plus, the president basically has the mentality of "if you don't want to be here, I don't want you here". Which honestly, is pretty awesome. But now that people are starting to figure that out... it seems like every week 1 or 2 missionaries comes up with a new "medical problem" that no one can solve. Anyway, on monday, my comp and I had gone out to our area to work, but, as always, the office has a way of not letting you go. We got a call from the APs asking us to drive out to San Martin to pick up the suitcases of one of the missionaries that was going home, so we ended up doing that. But the good news is that the drive to San Martin goes right by Rodeo del Medio...and the Gutierrez family literally lives on the freeway...so we got to stop there for like 10 minutes on the way back!! It was way awesome getting to see them again! The mom started crying when she saw me through the window, and none of really new what to say, so it was just a sort of awkward, happy silence sitting around there table for a couple minutes. I found out that Patricia now has 3 callings! And that Carolina and Jorge are now regularly attending church and area still thinking about baptism! Haha it was so great getting to talk to them for a second.

We also got to go find the houses of 2 of the teenagers that we've been teaching in the plaza. Neither of them were at home when we went to their houses, but we met a couple other people at their house and they all seemed really nice. We've got an appointment for monday with Valentin´s family, so hopefully that goes through. They technically live in the sister's area, so we're going to all go over there and have a lesson/pass them off to the sisters. Hopefully everything works out.

So, verse of the week. 3 Nephi 13:19-24. Its kind of a confusing explanation, but basically, when I thought about those verses, the "formula" came into my head of master-->goals-->thoughts-->actions. I came up with like 5 versions of that formula, but they're all pretty much the same. Basically, the scriptures said that your options are either to serve God or to serve the natural man. Who you want to serve will change your goals, which will direct your thoughts, which will lead to your actions. But the more I thought about it, I realized that the formula isn't so much cause-and-effect, because it works in reverse as well. Really, changing any of them changes the rest of them, over time. I guess its not so much a formula, as it is just a bunch of inter-related thingys (thats a mathematical term...duh). If you want to change your "master", you can start by changing your actions. By changing your actions enough, your thoughts and goals begin to change with them. And before you know it, you're dedicated to serving someone else. I guess that might be way He wants us to be "anxiously engaged" in good causes of our own free will (D&C 58:27). Of course, none of it is possible by ourselves, so Christ's atonement serves almost as a catalyst. (haha I miss school). You could also include things like "surroundings", "peers", and a lot of other things into the formula. Like I said...its kind of hard to explain how I got that out of those verses but...yeah.

Anyway, I hope you're all doing great! I hope the lesson that you have planned with the missionaries and the investigator goes super well! Have a fun week!

Elder Webster

Dad asked for pictures. I don't really haven any pics from this week, but I just looked through my flash drive for some random pics, because I know I haven't sent you all of them. I'm not really sure if I've sent these before on not though, I can't remember.

"Esto es CDGCAT Barrio"-- the Tomba soccer team stadium is in our area/at the edge. Its kind of known for being a ghetto team...so we don't really go over there much. But like last year Tomba made it into League A, which means I think they are officially on the new FIFA videogames, along with River and Boca. Fun fact

Other pic of the area near the stadium

Mate cups. We aren't allowed to drink mate as missionaries, just because its a social thing that people will do for hours and its kind of a waste of time...but I'll probably try to bring some back...because its way good (with lots of sugar) (Presidente Ávila made some for us on our last pday with him)

The last pic is from back in Rodeo del Medio, in the spring time here. I kind of hate that picture...which is why I figure I probably didn't send it to you.

Daily Revelation...

Hey ¿cómo estáis? haha

Haha sounds like you've all been doing pretty good this week. Glad to hear that nobody died. I wasn't really expecting anyone to die, but hey, all the more reason for me to be grateful it didn't happen. Unexpected deaths are the worst. So anyway...

Pretty good week this week. Any week that includes general conference is pretty much bound to awesome. We watched it all on a projector here at the offices. I've watched conference before while looking for guidance or answers, but this was the first time I've really taken time to think about and write down some of the questions I wanted answered, so that was a pretty good experience. I've noticed that the notes you take during conference say a lot about you...I've compared small bits of notes with other missionaries after other conferences, and sometimes it looks like we weren't even listening to the same talk. So it was kind of interesting to go back and look at my notes this time and think about what they say about the types of things I've been thinking about and the kind of guidance I need. Interesting.

As far as other stuff this week... the offices had their interviews with president on monday, so that was cool. It was a little weird, just because I remember that before I came to the offices, the only time we ever talked to president was during interviews, but now I text him/talk to him all the time. Haha my interview was literally like 3-4 minutes long, and all we talked about was about whether or not I'll be training my replacement next transfer and what kind of skills he might need. So...hopefully I train a new financiero next transfer! Haha he asked me how I would feel if I had to stay 5 transfers instead of 4, and I told him I would do it if I had to...but he laughed and caught that I would only do it if I "had" to....which is totally true.

Besides that, nothing too exciting. Paid a lot of rent money and bills this week. Hahaha I accidentally got the electricity of the sisters we share a ward with cut off because I put their bill in the wrong pile and didn't pay it in time. They called me and apologized a bunch because they thought it was their fault for not getting me the bill in time...but...I ended up having to call them later to apologize when I found out what really happened. So...that was different.

Well, as a verse of the week, I was thinking about Helaman 11:23. During Conference, it seemed to me like a lot of people talked about receiving revelation. The thing that caught my attention in this verse is that is says that they were receiving many revelations daily. It made me wonder about what exactly they were receiving revelations about...? Or, if I had many revelations every day, what kind of guidance would Heavenly Father give me? Obviously, personal revelation is personal. But if we've been commanded to pray always, and God always answers prayers, it seems logical that we should always be able to receive communication from Him. I don't know, the scripture just made me think that maybe we miss out on a lot of opportunities to receive revelation just because we realize they are opportunities. Kinda cool.

Well, I hope you all have a great week! Keep being awesome!!

Elder Webster