Christmas Week and a Transfer....

What a week. Went by wayyyy too fast. I quite frankly don´t even remember what happened this monday and tuesday. I know that monday was p day and tuesday was my district meeting. My last one for this change. We took some district photos but I didn´t bring my camera with me to the cyber so I will have to send those next week maybe. Wednesday we had a pretty full day, mostly because they celebrate la noche buena, (christmas eve) more than they do christmas. We had lunch with this really cool family called the family Gonzalez. They help us out so much, so we wanted to spend it with them. Then we worked for a while, visiting lots of less active families and converts and then we had dinner with a recent convert called Blanca. We never get dinner! Lunch is the bigger meal down here so we eat lunch at around noon and then work until 9 and maybe have a quick snack while I call the district, but since it was christmas eve, we were going to have a dinner. We showed up and there were a few non members so we talked with them but they didn´t want anything and then there were complications with the bbq and we ran out of time and had to run home without eating. Blast. Oh well, president gave us permission to stay out till 1030 and we got back at 1028, running. We planned and stayed up to watch the fireworks. Gee wiz, fire works a full. Everywhere we looked was just explosions. Super awesome. Christmas had lunch with Christian DaSilva. He is a boss, simply stated. Then we went to another family to skype. Good to see errybody. Josh is still a bum. My companion was kinda shocked at the amount of naked butt haha. That´s what I´m talking about. Friday saturday and sunday were normal days and we had 5 investigators at church. Most of which cannot progress because they are not married but oh well. Laticia didn´t come to church, so her baptism will have to be postponed until next week. Again. ugh. We spent sunday night with the zone leaders where we had a fry sesh with elder Wilson from Georgia. A real life hick. A big pot of boiling fat and we just fried all the junk we could. Oreos, alfahores, pop tarts, cookies, cheese, etc. Needless to say me and companion couldn´t handle it and we got vomitous and the runs for the next two days. My companion is still recovering. That same night I got a call from the assistants, asking me if I wanted to be Zone Leader. Uhhh yeah I do. So now I will be leaving here and going to a zone called treinta y tres. Which just means 33. I don´t know why its called that. I don´t know what my area is called but my companion will be....... Elder Rodriguez! Yes, the same Elder Rodriguez that I was with in my first area, and the same Elder Rodriguez that I was with when I was in my second area, reunited for the third and last time to zone lead together! The dynamic duo. I don´t know how I feel about that. We work very well together and all and hes a great missionary and we´re close friends, but 3 times in 3 different areas? That´s strange. Oh well. So I am excited to be zone leader, lots of responsibility especially now that they changed the missionary world. So listen to this, 

Normally everyday, the district leaders have to verify with all the elders in their district, which composes of about 8 different stats. Then sunday rolls around and they have to collect an the total of 20 numbers. Then all that is reported to the zone leaders and the zone leaders to president and his assistents. Its alot of numbers. The mission has been numbers. As a district leader we are instructed to teach about the importance of the numbers and how they help us, until yesterday. They came out with an announcement that there will be no more numbers. No more. I have no idea how we are supposed to know how well the missionaries are working and what they are doing. I guess we just have to trust them on what they say, because we have no numbers to reflect how they are working. It will be hard, because not all missionaries have a whole lot of integrity. So now if there are no numbers, there is no way to know if they really are working as hard as they should. I knew about it alittle bit before, because I have friends in sneaky places, (my zone leaders liked me). But now I will be zone leaders and will have to deal with this stuff. oh well. 

Well that´s about it for now, Thanks for the photos! That pool looks ridiculous. haha.

love,

Elder Webber

Christmas Week

Well christmas week. not a whole lot to say because we´ll just talk over skype this week. We had the mission christmas conference which was fantastic, they sent us a link, we had to give a special musical number as a zone, all the zones did (some better than others) and the choir was fantastic.(you can tell who the choir is)  If I can, I´ll try to attach the link to youtube. Yes they gave us permission to go on youtube and watch the christmas conference if we wanted too. We also had the zone conference with interviews with president. Those are always fun. That same day, thursday, I had to do an intercambio with one of the elders in my district. Elder Gordillo from peru. He is a pretty interesting elder. We had a good time and I had to do an interview for a baptism while we were there. We were walking in the street and I got a call from the sisters who are in my district saying they were still at the bus stop. It had been a good 3 hours since the conference ended. I guess there was another protest at the bus company so I had to come down to the bus stop and call the offices to see what we could do. They were all pretty hungry so I left to get them some chips and drinks, but when I came back, they were getting on the bus. Oh well. So we just had junk for dinner that night. Glad it all worked out. We are working on the skype thing, we are pretty sure that we will be getting on to skype here at about 5 uruguay time. I don´t know what time that is there but ok. so 5 christmas day. If anything changes, we will probably email you the day of. This week the little children started to bring out their Judas´s. I dont know if I already told you, but they have a tradition here where you make a life size effagy of judas iscariot, beg for money, then burn him on christmas eve. I don´t know. I dont really understand it, but there always little kids coming up and going through our pockets looking for coins for judas. Sunday we didn´t have the turn out we wanted because it was pouring rain. In a ward that has close to 550 on thier list we only had 36 show up. Ugh, its hard to get the investigators to church when the members dont even want to. Its what we got. Laticia didn´t come to church, who is our most firm investigator right now, but I´m not too worried about it. She wants to be baptized, I´m just not sure if I will still be in this area when she does because changes are next week. I think that´s about it for now.

See you on christmas!

Elder Webber

The "Stick-Up"

Yeah! I got both packages! woohoo. I´m yet to hem the pants but I will today during p day. I told my self I was allowed to open one present, so we opened the two small planes and the fridge rover car thing. Then I opened up one more which was the sketch pad and then I figured I had to open the pencils as well to finish it off. Then my companion wanted to see what was the one that sounded like a box of nails so we opened that one too. The puzzles were super cool. Took us a good half hour or so to figure them out, then we used them in our lessions this week to explain ¨the mysteries of god¨ yeah yeah. Well monday we didn´t really do a whole lot, p day so we just played soccer with some of the other missionaries and went home to clean and sleep. I guess I fell onto my bed alittle too hard and broke the bed. Now it is being supported by a pile of old ensigns and friends. Woohooo. I also received a letter frommmmm MIRTA!! my first convert! she´s getting ready to go to the temple and my trainer told me it will probably be this next saturday! I´m so excited for that because we will get to go with her. Good ole mirta. But yes, we are teaching english classes here now and wednesday we went to the church to wait for people to show up, half an hour goes by and nobody. Then this stranger comes walking in all dirty and torn up. So we went to greet him and welcome him to the classes but he didn´t want to learn english, he just came in to beg for food and money. Ok dude, well we dont live in the church like you all think, and we never carry money with us, especially not in Bella Italia. So what does this guy do? (obviously on drugs) sticks his hand under his shirt and uses his finger like a gun and tells us to give him everything or he´ll shoot us. Ok man, we know you don´t have a gun, we just saw you put your finger in your shirt, but ok, come with us to the kitchen and you´ll see, because there is never anything in the kitchen. Sure enough, nothing, but he searches the garbage and finds half a watter bottle and two suuuuuuper moldy empanadas, (like a meat turnover) and he eats them and leaves. Well, we locked the doors behind him. He wanted back in, but that´s too bad. Stay classy. Our investigator Laticia is doing very well, we are teaching her the word of wisdom and she is trying to stop smoking. I think she can, she should be down to one or two cigarretes a day now. Woohoo. Maybe her baptism will be next saturday because today she didnt come to church. We will see. She´s great, she will be a great convert. It got really really hot friday and saturday, we got alittle sunburned so we went back to the house to splash water on us and we found some old straw hats in the house. Ohhh yeah. We got called yankees too many times that day. That´s this week, we are thinking of doing Skype on christmas around 3 or 4 our time. We just need to find somebody with a computer. We have a few ideas but we will let you know in the next coming weeks for sure. 

 

A few photos, christmas tree that I´ve carried around with me since my first area, cool hat, and my comp touching a baby cow we found.

Love,

P.S.  Oh I forgot to say my companion had some really bad blisters this week. His shoes have already gone to shreds. Poor guy, but we managed to work and we found this cool flower. 

A Good Week....

This week was a different week because we didn´t church at our chapel because of the voting. Its hard to get investigators to come to a church that´s 45 minutes away in a bus and its even harder when its raining and they have to vote. 
Hard week, but we did see a good amount of success with our progressing investigators Laticia, Santiago and Walter. Tuesday we had a district meeting and I just went over some principles that I felt were important, one of which being diligence, and afterwards of course we had a snack. You gotta make sure the missionaries are happy and full if you want them to work hard. haha. Later that night during the varifications that I have to do one of the sisters told me that the meeting was truely inspired because they found a miracle investigator who talked to them about those principles and especially the diligence he saw in them. It was quite the compliment. 
During the week some goons on a motorbike tried to rob my companion, just driving by and tried to snatch his side satchel. Oh Bella Italia. 
We were teaching Laticia and we caught on that she has a smoking problem so we had to talk about the word of wisdom. Make it or break it. We went in and opened up with a review of the restoration just to get the spirit in there and to remind her that Jose Smith was really actually a prophet and chosen by God, then we came down with the commandments and she loved it. She made the decision to quit smoking and should be just about done this tuesday. She will be baptized the 20 of December with Santiago. Woohoo. I´m really looking forward to that, she will be a great member. 
Our other investigator, Walter, isn´t doing so hot, he is a slave to his addiction of smoking. He spent some hard years in the religion Makumba and drugs, messed with his noodle, its hard to keep his attention for too long. Really inteligent guy, but just not really competent. 
Not a whole lot more happened, its just getting really hot, and they say the first day of summer is the 21st of December. I forgot how terrible summer time is down here. 
I did get a bunch of free food this week, I don´t know what was going on, the churro vendor gave me a free churro when I only bought one and the veggie guy gave us 3 carrots for free when I wanted to buy 2. I don´t mind. 

Well that´s about it for now. 

Love,

Elder Webber

Stayin' Put

Yeah the shoes are perfect thanks. I just stacked the shoes on top of eachother, but it must have been a funky angle because the old shoe does look a lot bigger. But yesh, I am pretty happy to be staying with my oro. He´s a good guy and we had a great change together. I think, and am hoping that we´ll have a good amount of success this coming month. Changes were fun as always. My companion stayed and worked with another elder while I went to changes with the other district leader to get stuff for our district and for the leadership meeting. Got to see all the old boys, this was the first change where I knew most of the group that was going home. Sad stuff. Also, one of my companions from the MTC asked if I would extend my mission with him. About a week or two. I told him I would have to think about it. So we have a new zone leader as well, Elder Gutierez, so that means that we have to do our leadership meeting monday mornings in spanish now. haha oh well. I was pretty sad to see half of my district get changed out, they were working so well together, but the new district is pretty great as well. They changed my district up and now I have two elders who are working in an area called Barrio 14. So my district now is, Hermana Lanuza, Talbot, Denos, and Arriloga and Elders, Gordilla and morales. We´re going to have a good change. Friday we had a district meeting and it might have been my best so far. The zone leaders were in my meeting and said they were impressed. We walked by one of the borders of a red zone that we have in our area, we didn´t even go inside, and they started throwing rocks at us. Luckily, because they all play soccer, the latinos don´t have any hand eye coordination so they never even reach us. I almost forgot about thanksgiving. Good ole turkey. 

Kenny is going to Nicaragua? good luck. haha my last comp was from that place. that will be quite the experience. Of course, according to him, its the best country on the planet. So I guess we´ll see.

Well that´s about it, my companion has convinced me that I NEED a surpressor / silencer for my sig sauer. Sooooooo the papers for that take about 10 months. Just if you´re thinking about next years birthday present. haha. 

But really, thanks,

Elder Webber

photo, my comp got his first letter in the feild woohoo. 

New Shoes!

Yeah! I just got the shoe package this week! ahhh new socks and new shoes. Boy do those bad boys feel pretty good. And all the chocolates were appreciated. I would just have the box next to my desk during study hours and I would just eat a few here and there and they were gone in a couple of days.... oh well. Sounds all good at home. 
 This week was a good week. Keeps getting hotter so I keep getting sunburned. We had a double mission conference this week with Elder Christensen of the presidency of the seventy. A very learned man if I do say so myself. We really enjoyed that. He had some time after for some Q and A. Most of the questions were pretty garbage honestly, and alittle too much brown nosing. ¨how can I improve my studies¨ ok come on. But there were a few that were pretty good. This saturday we spent most of the day up in Belloni helping the zone leaders do their open house for their church. Really successful, but I was worried that spending a saturday up there would hurt our church attendance the next day. It didn´t really. We still had 5 in church. Santiago didn´t show up, lamentablemente. 3 of the other four can´t progress because they aren´t married and the last one is an investigator called Laticia who we have been working with for a good few weeks now, but every week something just mysteriously happens that made it impossible to come to church. Daughter gets sick, grandma dies, stuff like that. We were on the verge of dropping her as an investigator but we found her one more time and invited her and she showed up! woohoo. Then we invited her to be baptized again and set up another lession and it went really well. Shared the plan of salvation and she got all teary eyed and seems really excited for her baptism in two weeks. Hope it all turns out. 
Last night we spent at the zone leaders house so that we could be there when the changes came in. Change week. We didn´t think that the zone would be changed too much and we were wrong. Everything changed. Every companionship in the zone got changed except for ours. It will be a struggle these next coming weeks. We were doing so well as a zone, I don´t really understand why they would change the whole zone like that. oh well. We will just have to adapt and work harder. I think that´s about it. Not much happened this week. I´ll try to send some photos from this week too. 

Love,

Elder Webber

Happy New Year...

Yeah what a crazy week. I did get your package. I opened with my companion and zone leaders and they were all pretty confused to why I recieved a bunch of toys and stuff. But that was good so thanks. I will need to pin for my card though.... and I use the glasses straw thing, its pretty neat. Sounds like stuff is going pretty good back home. Good old jajiva. Tell the boys that the scope on my gun is loose and if they want to use it they should tighten it first. And tell ben to put my address of the mission offices on my facebook so the homies can write me. My missionary packet should be home and my address in there. 

Yes, what an awesome week, I shall start at the begining, It was a hot and humid night, as usual and I am awoken around midnight by a very large man banging his hands against the window that my bed is up against. Obviously I am startled and the man leaves the window and begins to make his way to our front door and I hear him trying to open the door! By now I am out of bed and have awoken my comp and have a broom stick as a weapon, see the light change in the kitchen, like a door or window just opened and so I look down the hall, and I see a large maybe, six foot six  dark figure standing in our kitchen. yes alittle heart attack, but it turned out to just be our laundry hanging on the line. My comp calls our neighbors and asks them to come over, once the man has left. Yes it was just the neighbor wanting to talk to us about lunch the next day. At midnight? ok. New years was fun. Food is always always sketchy. and the water, but we just eat and pray. mosquitos at night, or i think, they might be bed bugs because they dont itch, and i never see the mosquitos. Just covered in random red dots. My missionary tan is coming along quite nicely, and we had intercambios, which is where I go with a different companion for a day and a night. and I got to go with Elder Do Santos, Zone leader. He was super nice, and played rugby before the mish, learned so much because he could explain things in english, he was from argentina. We had a really fun night at an inactive members house playing this weird stacking mini chairs game. Oh and it rained this week! So I got to wear the cool sweater that I found in our appartment. And our investigators are doing well. We had almost all of them come to church this week, and one of them it was her second time coming, know what that means? Thats right, an investigator only needs to attend church twice to get baptized, so hopefully we can keep teaching her and maybe this week?! We have Pablo and Lorena, who are not married and ancient investigators, which means they just like talking to missionaries, and we have Evelyn and Ismel who we found last week, and Ricardo who is in a wheel chair, alittle weird, but he has a ton of faith, and then we have Mirta who is the one who might get baptized. And We had 4 of them come to church. woohoo. 

Package was nice, and yes, more g's, and alot of u.s. postage stamps, super glue would be nice and family photos! Email me some family photos too. 

I have a weird indent on one of my teeth, not sure what it is or where it came from but its there, I figure if my tooth falls out, dad promised I could get a silver one. so Yeah. 

Good stuff! Good to hear about ben and rugby going nicely, and joshua, aaron is still just chillin, tell aaron to make me a cd with all the best songs, like a power cd. I need good stuff. 

Much loves, 

Elder Webber

Lost on The Bus....

This week went by way too fast. Last week I asked my companion for a blessing because of the sickness and I was feeling substantially better. 
Monday was P day and we didn´t do a whole lot, just slept and cleaned the house, it was a normal week until thursday because we had the new Elder Conference in Carrasco. So we woke up early to catch a few busses to get to Carrasco in the morning. I really enjoyed that conference, especially because they had breakfast and lunch provided. I feel like my Oro learned some important things and I feel like I did a pretty good job training him so far, one more change and he´ll be ready to go. 
After the conference we had to go to Portones shopping mall to catch a bus, that´s the same place I did my emails for 12 weeks while I was in Carrasco. We went in to take a look and thought about buying some ties but we opted to not. Got alittle lost on the busses coming back home because we accidently took the wrong bus that took us to the other side of montevideo, luckily I had served there so I knew which one to take to get back on track. Then friday we had a zone conference and an intercambio so I spent that day and night in an area called Libia. They say its one of the more sketchy areas in the mission, but they don´t have anything on Bella Italia. haha. I was with Elder Cervantes from Peru for that day. Friday was aslso the same day I completed my first year in the mission! woohoo. and I just happened to get my birthday package that day! All thems candys are super good, so I have to share some with my companion, so thank you very much, and both of the singing cards functioned and I got both of Josephs letters which were pretty awesome. I will have to write some back today then.
Finally saturday we had a full day of work to invite our investigators to the church. We had a 5 investigators in church, 4 of which cannot progress because they aren´t married. Ugh. Uruguay, why do you do this to me? They´re working on getting married, but by the time they do I will be loooonnnng gone out of this area. That´s that, next wednesday is changes so we should see if I´m going anywhere, I really doubt it but thats ok. We should have the baptism of santiago this next tuesday, so like 9 days from now. We just need to find more investigators who want to progress and are married. 

Elder Webber

"Put a Date..."

Sure enough we are entering summer. And this week was HOT. I´m talking about sweat dripping down the back during lessions. Ugh. Not a whole lot happened this week with our progressing investigators. Friday we were looking good, we were expecting to have maybe 4 investigators in church on sunday and they had committed to coming and everything. 
Friday was also the first time for my companion that we had rocks thrown at us, by a full grown man and his teenage sons. I wish I could say that was my first time as well. Stay classy Bella Italia. This sunday was the voting for the new president here in Uruguay and the government uses the churches as voting houses so we had to travel to a city called Prosperidad. (prosperity) to have church. Of course that makes things complicated for the investigators and none of them ended up coming. The chapel was tiny over there and we had 3 wards there. It had one big room, about the size of the primary room, for the sacrament room, a kitchen which was the elders quorom and another room for the relief society. No air conditioning and we were in our suits. Wasn´t the best sunday of my life especially because we had no investigators in church. 
This voting this weekend killed the zone, and the mission. We have 4 more days to get the zone goal and it will be extrememly difficult. During this week, I think wednesday we had a fair amount of lessions fall through so we went to the apartment building. We said we would choose one building and one door to knock. We didn´t have much time before our next lession so we went up to the top floor, number 4 and knocked on a door. An old shirtless man answered with a ciggarette in his and and invited us in. We had a pretty solid lession and invited him to be baptized. Of course he accepted but now we are having trouble getting in contact with him again. That´s just the Uruguay lifestyle. Our zone plans are still the same, and I love them. Put a date with every ¨new¨ we find and have daily contact with them. It means we are inviting anywhere between 3 and maybe 7 people to be baptized every day. There is absolutely no reason they should not have a date to be baptized if they are willing enough to give you their address and a day to come back. So we do it and it works miracles. We have become quite the zone. 

Love,

Elder Webber

Happy Birthday "Elder Zach"

Its getting hotter here. I guess to start we had a multi zone conference on tuesday and so we had to travel back into montevideo city. It was great of course and then wednesday we had an intercambio with the zone leaders. The first intercambio of my companion. He really enjoyed it and I learned a bunch from Elder Bilson who is from Orem Utah as well. He went to Mountain View Highschool and we had some mutual friends. With the heat and the slowly progressing investigators the week got pretty long and the house needed a paint job in our room because of mold on the wall sooooooo we painted a giant american flag! Of course we weren´t given any extra time to paint it so it had to be done during our lunch hour or after we plan at night. But sure enough we worked and painted enough to have it finished for my birthday sunday. 
Saturday before my birthday we went to the market place and I bought myself a birthday treat, a half kilo of a wheel of cheese and some fruit preserve to eat on bread. It was really good. My old companion, Elder Williams, before he went home left me a package and I opened that up as well. A cool butterfly knife, my measuring spoons that I forgot in the last house and a photo of Nacho Libre. Pretty good birthday if I do say so myself. We only sang the star bangled banner a dozen times while we were painting our flag. Sadly, sunday we didn´t have any investigators come to church. Its frustrating when they seem to be making such good progress and then they let something little like visiting a friend keep them from coming to church and being baptized. Ugh. The hardest thing to get the investigators to do is get them to come to church. If they just come to church two times they´re already in the water. Right now we are working with a woman called Rusa, who is a friend of the converts here and she told us she wanted to be baptized the first lession we had with her which was with Elder Bilson. We walked away from that lession and he said ¨well that was the easiest baptismal date ever¨ but she didn´t come to church, sooooo. We have to postpone her date for the next week. We are also working with a little boy who is a child of a less active family. Our plan is to activate the family again and then baptize the kid. Completing families. 

My companion is doing great. We both love guns and we got on the topic one day in the street. He has convinced me to buy a silencer/compressor for my SIG. Its alot of paper work and about a year of waiting but I think its worth it. I don´t think much more happened this week. We are doing well, but we can do better. We have so many potentials who are just right there but have silly little things stopping them. We will see. 

20 years old! woohoo. 

Elder Webber

His New Elder has Arrived...

yesh yesh, what a week. Well my old comp packed up his stuff and we were ready to go. Tuesday we said goodbye to everybody and wednesday I had to be in Carrasco early. Dropped off my companion with some other elders with his stuff and then I headed off into the city, alone. Man was that pretty creepy. It was still dark in the morning and I had to catch a bus and find my way to the trainers training meeting. The meeting was great, more or less it was just the assistants telling to be good examples for our new companions and make sure they don´t get too stressed out and want to go home. Then the newbies came into the living room of presidents house, which is where we were. All looking pretty confused. And what to my wondering eyes do apear but 18 new missionaries who all speak english. Yesssss. I was really hoping I would get an english speaker. Then president stands up in front and calls up a trainer and has him point to a big map of Uruguay where we serve then he calls up his new companion and they hug and what not. So I point to Bella Italia and president calls up Elder Olsen as my companion. What a guy. Came straight from the MTC in provo which made me worry about his spanish skills but turns out he studdied for a good 4 years in highschool and speaks very well. Phew. His bags got lost in the miami airport so that made things easier. In terms of moving around. We got lunch and headed to changes. I had to go into a leadership meeting so my comp had to stay outside with a bunch of missionaries that he didn´t know but he did fine. Hop on the bus and we get to Bella Italia and thats quite the culture shock. Elder Olsen is from Kansas City, the Kansas side. I don´t think he was expecting something like Bella Italia. We had a good couple of days and friday we had a trip to Pando again because I had to do a baptismal interview. Sunday was hectic. We had do our confirmations for the baptisms that happened the last couple of weeks and we had to care for our investigators who came and the bishop wanted to talk to us. It was a lot to do. But we survived. I feel some what bad for my companion because he got here right after we had that baptizing spree and we´re in a dry-spell right now, I´m sure if we keep working we´ll get success. He reminds a lot of Cole Pendleton. He even looks like him from a profile view of his face. He´s a good worker and wants to do all he can, which is good, even if it is just alittle. Training is hard, and so is being district leader, and both at the same time is complicated. I´ll try to include a photo of my son. 

Love,

Elder Webber 

Training...

This week seemed longer than usual. Im not sure why, maybe because the anticipation for conference or for changes. Its starting to get hot too, hot and humid. I forgot how hot it gets here. We went to a less actives house this week to see what´s up and tell them to come church and stop being lazy and of course to get confy and gain their trust we show family photos. Almost every time they always say, oh que joven es su mama. Which is to say, oh how young is your mother. Yes yes, so there you go mom. 
There´s really not a whole lot to say about the week. I guess my distric did really really well. We ended the month with 12 baptisms. The zone had 24. My district had more baptisms than most other zones. The zone leaders were really happy. Conference came around and we didn´t have any investigators come. Of course because we have to take a bus 30 minute to the stake center. The ward doesn´t help, we had 4 preisthood holders in the preisthood session. The bishop didn´t even come. And in the sunday morning session we had 8 members from the ward. wooohoooo..... The ward is sad, there are pages and pages and pages of less active/ non active members in the ward. Its hard to work when the members dont want to go to church. Ugh.

But after the morning session sunday I recieved a call from president saying that I was going to be Trainer this change. Woohoo. I´m really exicted. Kinda a bummer that my son will have to be raised in this area, its not the best place to start off, but its good, makes him tough. So will have to leave ALONE, early tomorrow morning to pick up my new companion from montevideo. I didn´t believe the zone leaders when they told me that I had to go alone. Kinda nervous for that. 

Elder Robbins, who spoke in the conference saturday, came to speak to us here in the mission no more than 3 months ago, and Elder Gavarret who spoke in spanish saturday, Is from Minas Uruguay. That´s where I was! dont know if you guys caught that. 

Anyways, I think that´s about it. Maybe for a birthday present or a christmas present, another pair of black pants, and shoes. That would be nice. 

Loves,

Elder Webber

A Tough Week, But Good...

To start, I had double, back to back, intercambio with the zone leader elder Jorgensen from Highland Utah tuesday, then with elder Shurtz, a new missionary, he has about 4 months in the mission and he´s from Delta Utah. Good kid, still really struggling with the language, the zone leaders said I would basically be working alone that day. Sure enough. It was hard, but I really enjoyed it. Elder Shurtz is enlisted in the national guard so we had some good talks about stories from there and talking about if he gets on active duty during the mission. Friday we had a baptismal interview for a young woman called Cinthia. She´s about 21 years old and was taught by sister missionaries years ago in argentina. We found her a few weeks ago and put a fecha for this last week. She did great and turns out her little sister wanted to be baptized as well. So friday we did her interview. Sunday came around and it was hard. One of the most stressful days of my life. I keep saying, well at least it cant get much more stressful. But then the next week rolls in. Sunday morning we went to go pass by some of the less-firm investigators like we always do, of course they didn´t want to come. Oh well. We still had a good 6 investigators in the church. Including Cinthia and her sister, who are pretty weird, they didn´t want anybody to know about the baptism because they are pretty shy and just wanted it to be family event, the bishop didn´t agree and announced it in sacrement and she got mad and left right after the meeting ended and didn´t give us a chance to explain. Didn´t help that we were supposed to have 5 confirmations as well but they didn´t show up because they´re grandma was having health problems. Ugh so we went by their house after church, the baptismal font was already half way full and she said that we had lied to her by saying that there was not going to be anybody just like she wanted, and now the whole ward was going to come. Then her mom tried to curse us and put evil spirits on us with her Makumba junk. Cinthia didn´t want anything to do with the church or with us. We just said sorry and said we would wait until they were ready to continue teaching again. So we went to lunch to ponder and think about what we would do. Called the zone leaders and elder gave me a three word sermon. ¨just fix it.¨ Ughh... ok. Just then, we ran out of minutes on our cell phone and we got a text from cinthia saying sorry that she acted childly. Needless to say we sprinted out the door of lunch and down the street to put more minutes on our phone to send a text saying more or less, that we were still ready to baptize her if she wanted and we would be waiting at the church. And the rain started. Not just rain, but hail, like the size of the bigger marbles. Huge bad boys, and we were stuck outside without umbrellas in our suits. Oh well. Hop on a bus and finished filling up the font and cinthia answers us saying, ok, she will be there. Yesssss. We called a few members to have some witnesses and somebody to pray, baptized her and there it is. The mom of the two sisters showed up, who does Makumba, and she was crying after and saying that she had never felt such joy before. Yessss. What a change. The little sister couldn´t be baptized because she is still a minor and her dad didn´t want her to. Ok. But the mom promised her, in the church, that if God wants it, she will be baptized this week. Oh... God wants it... yes he does. We called the zone leaders and said we just fixed it and they were really impressed, said that there are few missionaries who can do what we just did. Ugh. I´m just happy that general conference is this week. Its a good spiritual break. Coming to the end of the change. Happy for that too. Oh... and my shoes are basically dead and gone. Sooooooo. haha. But anyways that´s about it for the week. Doing pretty good, its starting to get pretty hot now. Summer time is coming. I´m not really looking forward to that. 

Thanks and loves,

Elder Webber

Baptisms...

This was another pretty crazy week. I guess to start off we had the leadership meeting monday and the zone leaders wanted to know why we weren´t going to baptize that family of alba, angia, leonardo, mystica and andrew on sunday. Usually we don´t do baptisms on sundays, so we talked to the family and they were really excited to do it sunday, because they wanted to saturday, and so they would come in the morning to church to meet the requirements of coming to church several times and then they would be baptized in the afternoon. But we´ll get to that later.

I had my  district meeting and it went good, they´re slowly getting better I think. That same day I had an intercambio with Elder Perkins, from california. Who is also a professional Jazz Pianist. Yeah it was cool. We were in the zone leaders house and he is a district leader too, so we got to talk about the zone and more plans we had as leaders. It was fun, but all good things must come to an end, and I had to return to bella Italia. But it´s good because we had alot of work to do with preparing that family. We were in the church talking with the bishop about it and in runs this crazy brazilian dude yelling portugese, and alittle spanish and alittle english. It was hard to understand but we got enough to understand that he was from brazil and he was doing a bicyle trip from brazil through uruguay and argentina to chile. He had already been at it for a good 2 week and had crossed almost all of uruguay. He was a member and needed a place put his tent and some food. It was about 8 at night so we told him to come with us and we let him put his tent in our backyard. He was crazy. But he gave us his email and stuff so we can communicate. We cooked him some rice and gave him some milk and locked all the doors and slept with our knives because he was a sketchy dude. But it went good and he woke up at 5 and we unlocked the gate and he left, to continue his adventure. 

Friday we had all 5 baptismal interviews and the zone leader was dead by the end. a good 2 and a half hours of interviews. But it went smoothly and we spent the next couple days inviting members and people to come to the baptism, trying to find enough white clothes to baptize them all. Sunday rolled around and it was the most successful sunday I´ve ever had in my mission. We had 13 investigators in the church and 8 less actives and 4 recent converts. The total church assistance was 70 sooooooo. about 20 percent were our investigators.  That afternoon we filled up the baptistry and got all the white clothes ready and I learned how to play Venid a Mi on the piano. I dont remember what it is called in english. The family showed up at about 530 and nobody from the bishopric, or from the relief society presidency, or from the young womens presidency or from primary presidency showed up. Members.... your best friends and your worst enemies. I mean we baptized two older women, a young woman, and two kids for the primary and nobody showed up. Oh well, no me importa, the ordinance is the important part. We didn´t even have enough priesthood holders there for witnesses so I had to be one of the witnesses and a priest from the ward baptized them. Afterwards they all shared their testimonies, pretty spiritual. Sometimes you just want to rest after a big event like that, its a lot of stress. But we still have investigators who need to be baptized this coming saturday so there´s no time to stop. Woohooo. I´ll try to include a photo.

Anyways, I think that´s about it for the week. This saturday we should be baptizing a woman called cynthia. She´s been to church a few times in argentina and a few times here so we will see. She is kinda weird, really shy and doesn´t want anybody to be at her baptism. Ok, easier for us! but thanks 

Loves,

Elder Webber

A Week In Review (Busy)...

bah, where to start. I´m just going to a review of the week by day.

 So ,monday, last p-day I just spent most of the time cleaning and preparing my district meeting for tuesday. 

Tuesday we had the zone breakfast and I gave my district meeting, the district did really really good two weeks ago and this week they just needed some encouragement to keep it up. It was a solid district meeting with practices and what not. Turns out the district had a pretty bad week, number wise, even though we did have 2 more baptisms. But we´ll get to that later. 

Wednesday I had to take the 45 minute bus ride to the city called Pando again to do another baptism interview, a girl who is the daughter of a member. The member went in-active for a while but recently came back. That went well. We only had time to work for a few hours, when we were working we saw what we thought was a woman and said hello but it was not. Not a woman and not a man. It was gross, then he told us we were beautiful men and we should come by some time. hmmm nooooooooo. Take a pamphlet and come to church if you want. 

Then thursday we spent most of that day preparing for our baptism in our area. Felix. We went over the baptism interview questions and everything and he was ready to go. Had a really strong testimony in priesthood power because something like 10 years ago he  had a blessing by a member in the ward. Who now is inactive, but Felix wanted him to baptize him. So we had to talk to the bishop and the bishop okayed it. It works because I think it helped the member become alittle more active. The sister missionaries had their baptism on thursday.  And I had to travel to a ward called Properidad, to do an interview for another district leader, District Leader Kamimoto. So it was pretty busy in general. That night we went to the church to make sure things were good and the lights were on and we could feel a breeze. We walked around and there were bloody handprints on the doors and a broken window with blood everywhere. It was like something out of a horror scene because it was night time and only some of the lights were on. All the doors to the closets and the security rooms were kicked in and a bunch of the chairs were missing. Turns out somebody robbed the church the night before. The bishop already knew and he was going to come and clean it the next morning. 

Friday.Temple trip! woohoo. Which was really fun, but also really stressful because we still a lot to do back in the area and I didn´t want to loose any time. We went to the temple then had a 6 HOUR conference with president. Just our zone. Ugh. I was stressing like nobody´s business. We got back late and just invited everybody to come to the baptism, just calling and texting like crazy and visiting all the less actives and inviting them. 

Saturday we had our baptism. There is a rule that there has to be somebody in the church while the font is filling up. Usually there is a member who is willing but there was a stake activity so we stayed and filled it up and studied our scriptures, played around on the piano, set up the chairs. It took a very long time because the hot water came our very very slowly. 730 rolled around and we were ready to go. We had a few investigators show up and they were really excited for their baptism which will be in a two weeks. or it better be. If they don´t I think the zone leaders might murder me. We had our leadership meeting this morning and they are really banking on this family getting baptized to reach the zone goal. Of course I want them to be baptized too, they are a really awesome family. Really understand the doctrine and keep their commitments. 

Sunday morning and I had forgetten that I had to give a talk. Oops. But I put one together and it was looking pretty good. about the divine nature of man. How we have the potential to become like God. But SOMEBODY went over their time by like 10 minutes. My companion. He talks alot. Too much. So when I got up the bishop held up 4 fingers meaning four minutes. Ugh. Its ok. We had lunch with the elders quorum president and they all made fun of him for taking too much time. They said they liked what I said, even though it was little. 

All in all a pretty crazy week. Alot to do and not enough time. And it doesn´t stop, I still have to prepare the district meeting for tomorrow and get working more with this family. Alot of work and alot of success. Really really happy that Felix got baptized. He is just a great guy with a really strong testimony. 

My shoes are good. They should last for a good while longer. I don´t think I need anything. I got the talk this week too. It time traveled because mom put the date as september 23. woooooohooo. Thanks mom.

Elder Webber

A Crazy Week....

An interesting week. Alot happened. We are working with this family, Alba, Angie, Mistica, Leo, and Giermo. They should be baptized the 20th, they came to church yesterday and are still looking pretty strong. One of the little kids said he wants to be an Elder when he´s older. They´re a great family, Alba and angie are mother and daughter and both of their husbands left them, well their boy friends, so we don´t have to worry about getting them married. Then we have an investigor called Felix. He is the father of a member and he showed up to church by himself last week and he came this week and should be baptized this saturday if he can stay strong and not smoke. We had a lunch with him because he´s a really nice guy and they made a special lunch called an asado, which is like a bbq but with the left over parts of a cow. All the good parts go to the states. 
Earlier this week we had a family home evening with some converts and they gave us cebada, which is like a barley drink and it looks and smells alot like coffee. It´s what all the converts drink when they have to stop drinking coffee because they say it tastes the same but doesn´t have the caffiene or anything. So they gave us some and I was shaking some sugar in mine and the lid to the sugar came off and filled my cup half full with sugar. I didn´t want the member to notice so I drank it anyways. It was gross. I almost threw up later that night because we had to run home to get home on time. We ran through the streets and we could hear stuff in the piles of garbage on the sides of the road, I thought it was dogs or cats but my comp said that they´re rats. I didn´t believe him until I saw one. Oh good gravy. Those things are huge. Without its tail, the body is probably a good 10 inches. Rodents of unusual size. Just weird experiences the whole week, one of our investigators told us he doesn´t like to be in his house because they used to practice makumba there and he ¨feels things¨. Makumba is creepy, comes out of brazil. We found a woman who´s 14 year old child was killed in a car crash a few months ago and her heart was pretty hardened against God but we shared the plan of salvation with her and she was crying by the end and we thinking, yes yes, this is going good until her husband came in and said they weren´t married and we never going to and she agreed with him. ughhhh Its the worst. 
We do have a few investigators who want to get married and are working in the paper work and official stuff. That and drugs. Drugs are a tool of the devil. Really. We will find people in the street that will tell us their stories, they had families, homes, jobs and now they collect plastic bottles to get enough money to buy their next high. We call them Perdidos en la Pasta. Lost in the pasta. Which basically means they´ve just lost their marbles, zombies to the drugs. Ugh.. 
This week I also had my first two baptismal interviews as District leader. One old man called Ramon and a little girl called Augustina. My district had the only baptisms in the zone this week. woo hooo vamos arriba Bella Pando. (the name of our district because its Bella Italia, Pando A, Pando B, and Pando C.) My district is doing pretty well, we are still going to go forward with the plans that we have, which is invite every single new investigator to be baptized, have daily contact with the investigators with a date to be baptzed, and work without zeros. In spanish it´s sin ceros, which sounds like sinceros, which means sincere. So if we work without zeros we are working sincere. Woohoo. Just a crazy week, just all over the place, trying to get our area good and the district working good too. I have to do another district meeting tomorrow and I have nothing prepared, but I will look at the numbers for this week and see what we need to change and we will do practices to help us. 

I don´t think I need anything, I´m pretty good for now, my shoes are getting pretty worn in, thems calles Uruguayas aren´t too nice. I´ll try to send a photo of what we walk by everyday. 

Elder Webber

Bella Italia....

Bella Italia, beautiful italy. Its not beautiful and its not Italy.The zone is called Maroñas and the only thing I can think of that would be interesting are the horse races that they have. The rest is pretty....dreary. Really really poor. I´ve seen some bad areas but this one tops them. They say its pretty dangerous and it looks like it too. Chau Minas. Tuesday night I said goodbye to Elder Williams at 4 in the morning and then went back to sleep because he was going to go train so he had to be in Montevideo before us and he went with the zone leaders. We left at about 7 to get on ¨the change bus¨ with all our bags and stuff and I found my MTC companion Elder Taylor there. Changes was pretty normal, just swarms of missionaries all running around trying to find people or their things and where they´re going. I found my van and loaded my stuff and got all the stuff I needed for my District. I got the package too! woo hooo yeah I made some carmel popcorn the other day and I  will make some for my next district meeting. I couldn´t find my companion because he didn´t come to changes, he had to stay and work in his area with another district leaders companion. Hes... a good guy. Real hard worker. From nicaragua and got changed here for visa reasons I think, I´m not really sure because he doesn´t talk much. Our house is pretty nice though, just us two and Shakira which is a chicken, the owners of the house said that this chicken has lived in our yard for almost 10 years now and it lays eggs. One of the rules is that missionaries can´t have pets, even if they do give us eggs so I was about to get rid of it but my comp said that its approved by president. I will have to check on that... but until then, free eggs. I had my first district meeting on friday too. I was really nervous of having to speak or conduct a meeting for an hour and a half, thinking I didnt have enough material but I ended up not having enough time. I feel like it went really well. We have some district goals to work without zeros, so no zeros when we verify at the end of the night and to invite every new investigator that we find to be baptized and to put a fecha with them. Easy enough. My district is me and my comp and six sister missionaries. The old district leader left a paper in the house with the names of all the progressing investigators in the house and it was titled, Fechas, (dates) of the relief society. Ugh. Verifications are always interesting, I learned to never ever ask how they feel. Or you´ll be stuck there for a while, and then you´ll be late giving account to the zone leaders of your district. The sisters work hard. The ward is pretty sad, we went to visit the bishop my first day to introduce myself and see what the plans were and he only has one counselor because they are lacking worthy preisthood holders in the ward. I thought thats just a joke or they aren´t really looking but sure enough, there is nobody. Even our ward mission leader is in-active and we think he might be ¨studying the bible¨ with the JWs. It doesn´t help. We had about 35 members in church, thats even smaller than the BRANCH in Minas. Its going to be an interesting change. But early this morning I was in the lidership meeting with the Zone leaders and other district leaders and we all have the vision to change this zone. Its been a pretty sad zone but President has sent two zone leaders who really tend to transform zones where ever they go from sad and slow to powerhouses. Im really looking forward to it. 

Anyways, thanks for the package. We really enjoyed that. I don´t think there´s anything more. We will see what this week has in store. 

Love, 

Elder Webber

Rain! (And Moving (again))

Muchos gracias papa y mama. I havent gottten any packages yet but thats understandable because Im way out here in the boonies. A letter a week might be alittle much, maybe like one a month or something. 

The begining of this week it was hot, really hot and humid here in the hills of Minas. Reminded me of christmas, ugh. Sweating in the streats and sweating at night. But then the cold came back and the storms came too. It just rained and theres a big wind which makes the umbrellas pretty useless because the rain just comes sideways underneath it. We were hiking over this hill the other day to get to a little people who live on the other side, this dirt road that takes about 45 minutes to get up and down the other side and we got caught in this storm at the top. Mud everwhere as we ran down the hill and knocked on the nearest members house who let us in but the rain was leaking through his metal roof. It was actually a lot of fun. Just soaking wet to the bone me and comp running through the downpour. Then the next day it cleared up alittle and I found a four leaf clover, woohoo. 

Then the rains came back. Some clover huh. The rain made it hard to find people but easier to get into the houses because they felt bad for us. Works like a charm. Saturday we were supposed to have a baptism but the investigator, Nis, never showed up for his interview so his service fell through. We couldn't find him until yesterday night, said that something came up and he had to go out of town. We don't believe him, he did this before with other missionaries as well. Maybe he isnt one of the chosen and prepared ones. Sunday we had stake conference that was broadcasted from salt lake and Elder Bednar talked to us. It was super mission focused. Just telling the members that the mission work is THEIR work and the missionaries are just there to help. It should help to get some members on board  with the work. Then yes, yesterday we found our boy Nis, we just decided to go to his house one night and we found him there and he let us in, we just said we have done everything, even organized his interview and his service, now its in his hands. If he wants to be baptized he has to show his desires. Faith without works is the definition of this investigator. We offered a kneeling prayer and we wanted him to do it but he wouldn't so I ended up doing it. That was a spiritual experience, really just felt like the words were falling out of my mouth and I wasn't having to think of what to say. After the prayer he got up and said he had a surprise that he really wants to be baptized. 

Buuuuuuuutttttt I will not be here to see it, because changes came in last night and Im being moved. Back to montevideo, a city called Bella Italia. Beautiful Italy. I really wasn't expecting that. We had such a good six weeks here with elder Williams I thought for sure I would stay until he ¨dies¨ and then I thought I would stay for even a few months more. But nope. I guess Im needed in montevideo again. Ill be going in as District Leader with a companion who is being transferred from a different mission. don't know why and I don't know his name. All I know is that he is from Nicaragua. I really loved Minas and my companion Elder Williams, so I have to pack tonight and say goodbye to the members and investigators here. Give my last exhorts like Moroni before I leave.

Anyways, I dont need any stamps now, Im pretty set, I have a few strips of stamps that should last for a while. 

I dont really think I NEED anything more for now. Well thats about it for this week. Thanks!

Elder Webber

The Empty House and Cheap Pastries...

Well anyways, this week was fast, crazy fast. One of the first days of the week we were walking around doing the normal deal when a white unmarked car pulled up and two big guys got out with guns strapped to their chests with bullet proof vests and told us to stop and open our bags. Super sketchy. But they were just under cover cops looking for some guys that were dressed up like us and were pretending to sell things to get into houses and steal stuff. 

I think that same day we went to a new investigators house to see if she had read her pamphlet and to invite her to come to church. We went by and she said she had but ¨didn´t remember anything¨ thats the number one excuse we get from people who didn´t read what we gave them. So we asked what was her favorite part, just to catch them and tell them to actually read it this time. After we asked she went off on the story of Jose Smith and how he prayed and saw Jesus. So we were wrong there, but then we asked her if she had prayed to know if it was true, and she said yes, that she had and she felt ¨strange¨ like she´s never felt before. Drop that Galatians scripture. The fruits of the spirit... We went back to her house the other day and every sign of life was gone. Her whole house was empty, including the front door. Really weird, we haven´t seen her since, which is sad because she had really recieved her answer. 

As we were thinking where she might be, looking for clues or something in this empty house, another woman came up to us and really strangly gave us this address of another woman to visit and left. So we went and when an old lady opened the door she said she couldn´t talk because she was busy, so we threw out our usually, ¨oh well do you need help¨ then she started crying and said yes, spiritual help. Just a weird chain of events but hey, it all works out. Something that the mission has been wanting to change is the retention of converts and re-activation of less active members. So one night we were in the casa of some less active members, turns out the husband had a stroke a few years back and was learning to speak again, although he could write, he lost the use of his right arm and leg. He gave his notebook where he practices making sentances and phrases and while were flipping through we came across his testimony and how he understood that this is what God had in plan for him and that he could find hope and strength in Christ. Then at the end there was a prepared question for us, the missionaries. If he couldn´t use his right arm, how could he sustain his priesthood leaders? Sniff. What a guy. We just said use your other arm or lift up your right arm with your left arm. God understands. 

Well anyways, this week was good, we found a bakery that sells their old pasteries from the day before in the next morning for half price. We can buy a Kilo of pastries for around two dolla fiddy. What a steal. 

Loves

Elder Webber

A Great P-Day...

I´m way out here in the country. My shoes are showing the first signs or weakness, she´s old, but she´ll hold. I bought a new watch, looks like a real watch, cost about 10 bucks. haha yes, all the fake stuff in this country is straight from Brazil.

So this week was just crazy fast. We had multi zone conference in Maldonado on wednesday, which was good. Got to see a few of my old house mates and friends. We have an investigator Nis, maybe I already told you about him but he is prepared. He talked to the missionaries a while back but never got baptized, he knows the book is true and everything, but something is stopping him. He should be baptized this friday. I think he´s just alittle timid. Old guy like 70 years old. But he has a bridge in front of his house that crosses a little stream thing. Little concrete bridge and when me and my companion both stepped on it, it broke and fell down. When Nis discovered later that it was broken he was really sad but he didn´t know it was us. We offered to help fix it and everthing, we tried telling him that it was us who broke the bridge but he just kept thinking we were joking, now look, we stepped on your brigde and it broke, we´re sorry. Then he´d just laugh and say we were so funny. Ugh. Anyways, we cleaned the baptismal pila this week too. Roll up our pants and sleeves and dump a bunch of bleach in there. It was fun. The people out here are harder to understand than in the city, they have a whole different vocabulary. We also found this woman named Gladys, she as well talked to missionaries a long time ago, like 3 years ago, and this elder who has a sister with downsyndrome found her which was perfect becasue Gladys has a downsyndrome son. Anyways she couldn´t be baptized because she was living with a man, but he left this year and now she is alone. Soooooo she finds comfort in reading the scriptures, which include the book of mormon. ohhh yes, She has read almost the whole book and it is full of notes from cover to cover. She is so prepared she has a date to be baptized the 29th of this month. And today was the best p day ever. We had to wake up at 5 again and catch a bus to Pan to Azucar. You´ll have to google it or something to see some pictures of the hill. But we went there and hiked the hill. It was sooo cool. At the bottom there was a big kind of zoo, but it was all broken and ghetto and the animals were just roaming around free, like some carpinchos (capibaras) and emus. Then we had to climb through this thick jungle stuff, reminded me alot of New Zealand. This rocky moldy trail with this little stream coming down it with fallen trees and stuff. Then we get up onto the top which looks alot like boulder mountain kind of. But there is a huge cross on the top of the hill. Its like 13 stories tall or something and you can go inside and up the spiral staircase inside. It was really fun. I´ll try to send some photos, but I forgot my cable back in the house so we´ll see if I can find one here from one of the other elderes. Its been a good week. I like it alot here in Minas. I could spend a long time here, I hope I do. 

Yesh yesh, anyways, I think that´s about it. I´ll try to put some photos on now, If not then next week for sure. 

Elder Webber

Finding New People... And BIG goals

Just another week in the mission. During the week I usually write down note worthy things in my notebook to write home but this week just went by alittle too fast and I didn´t get much written down. We´re still working the white wash situation and we have a few really good investigators with family but only one came to church. Sometimes the uruguayos make me angry. Really this week was just focused on bringing people to church. We made sooooooo many commitments with investigators we were waiting on a solid 5 or 6 who gave a deffinite yes. The only one that came was a man from the campo, like a cowboy, who doesn´t know how to read, he´s really a nice guy and wants to follow Jesus and be baptized but hes always out in the country so it´ll be hard to teach. We had another intercambio this week, and this time I went with Elder Peterson, who now has about 3 weeks in the field. A young buck. He´s really struggling with his spanish so the whole day just consisted basically of me doing street contacts solo and he gives a brief testimony afterwards. It was hard. Our house is an english house. So all the elders in the house speak english, including elder Saavedra. So elder Peterson is not forced to speak spanish like I was. He´ll learn. While I was out with him we actually had a decent amount of sucess. Put a date or two to be baptized. We had an awkward moment in zone conference as well. We were called the night before to think of a monthly goal for august, so we talked about who we had and we prayed and decided on 4 for august. When we got to the zone conference, the zone leaders asked us to present our goals. Everybody else went first with goals like, 2....1.....2.....3...2..... and then we dropped our bomb with 4. We reckon we can do it. It´ll be hard but we will work with the members and get them baptized. We didn´t have any lunches this week so I got an opportunity to practice my culinary skills. Made some pastas with white sauces and some au gratin potatoes and onions. It was good, but I´´m getting better. Today in the morning we traveled over to Pan de Azucar. Which is interpreted to say, Bread of the Sugar, and we had a zone activity where we just played the game called Mafia and threw the football around while we ate food. It was fun. Thats about it for this week, doing good. 

I have the talks,

Profile of a prophet

The currant bush one

The one you sent me last week don´t know but its about the spirit.

I dont know just send me some good ones. pshhh 

Thanks!

Elder Webber

P.S. Pics of our P-day activity and cake I made...

Enjoying His new Area.

 This week we went out to a little farming city called Solis. Its about a 40 minute bus ride out there, its a little group of people and there are 3 active members. When we were there we walked and walked and walked out into the feilds until we finally came upon alittle house. Clapped it and he didnt want much. 
Solis is good, not very much people but the people are genuine and open. We found some new investigators and we will have to travel out there maybe twice a week from now on. We are still working it pretty hard because we were given nothing when we came in to re open this area. We still dont have a cell phone, which doesnt help but we have a few investigators with fechas to be baptized. One is called Arturo, he has a few problems with word of wisdom, but just about everyone and their dog has a problem with that down here, we are working with him and his son in law who is a member. 
The branch president is a straight boss, the branch is organizing a trip to the temple this next week and in sacrament meeting he expressed his gratitude for those who were planning on going and called the others to repentance big time. It was really straight forward, like, those of you not planning to go and can go need to repent of your sins and change so that you will go. We had about 35 members this sunday, little branch, but I like it because theres more reverance than the big wards with the Uruguayo babies running around. In one of the talks though, a member summoned the congregation to sing with him, it was weird but I guess it works. 
We had an intercambio this week and I went with Elder Saavedra, learned alot and he asked me how I think we can improve the branch and the mission work here. Hes been here for a while and I think they might have hit a slow patch. Its been a good week, we spend alot of time in the streets still, which is not ideal but it gets the new investigators which is what we need, really cold this week, there was even frost in the mornings. But they say it should be warming up pretty soon and we will be coming into spring time. 
Thats about it, Elder Peterson still wont eat meat, so hes had a few uncomfortable moments with members at lunch. yesh yesh, and I got your letters, with the talk. I like getting talks, if you want to keep sending a talk in the mail every month or so that would be nice. or some philsophosies or Ron Swanson quotes. 

Watch a sunset at least once a day- Philsophosies.

Elder Webber

A New Area

Yes the mission is pretty awesome, no doubt bout it. Yes so Indeed I did get changed to a new area. But first, I spent 12 weeks in carrasco walking the same streets and little did I know that just right outside of my area was the rugby field where I played down here two years ago. I didnt even know until the second to last day when we took a bus that we dont usually take and it drove right by it. Brings back thems rugby memories with Calvin down here. 
But yes, we got changes a day early, so sunday, because we lived with the assistants and so we went by to say goodbye to all the investigators and members. I do not like leaving very much. We said goodbye to a family we were teaching and Elias, one of sons cried and said que lastima, which is like, thats too bad. We went to changes and got on a bus that took us almost two hours outside of montevideo city to Minas! which is interpreted to say mines. Its where all the famous alfahores are made and dulce de leche. Its a little branch out here in the hills of the country. Really pretty, the country people are alittle nicer than the city folk. I love it here so far. 
Im here with Elder Williams from Colorado, hes a great guy and were are both in here as a white wash, actually we are re-opening an area that has been closed for a transfer or two. Soooooooooo that basically means its dead. We spent many a hour in the street finding new people to talk to. We looked in the area book, which is where all the investigators are supposed to be recorded with phone number and address but the book was awful with just a handful of names without information. It was hard, still is hard, but we think we will baptize. 
Elder Williams is an old chap, only has these last 2 transfers and then A LA CHUCHA, which means, to the dog house. Hes a great missionary, lots of experience and knows how it is, we live in an ok house with two other elders, Elder Saavedra and Elder Peterson. Elder Saavedra is our district leader and Elder Peterson is brand new in the mission. Just finished his first week. Doesnt eat meat, which will be really hard for him because we have pasta and meat almost every day with the members and doesn{t like fruit either. Good luck. 
Minas has been really good so far, the branch has about 40 or 50 members and we had a branch activity which was just tomando la leche. Which means drinking the milk, we just ate cake and pizza and hot chocolate and watched the primary, which are three kids, do an act or play thing. It was good to get to know the members and have them tell us where all their friends live so we can baptize them. We have two ward missionaries, which is a first, I havent had ward missionaries my whole mission and they are 16 and 17 years old. At first I was hesitant, but they are really really good. They work with us in the street and are a great help, we just have to wait until after highschool gets out to work with them.  
We say tomando la leche to describe elders who sit in the houses of members and waste time. Aint nobody got time for that. Alot has happened this last week, will I miss carrasco? oh yeah, carrasco was great, but minas is a whole nutha level. 
Really looking forward to this changes

Heres a couple fotos of my new house and me and elder Rodrigues and Elias. 

Loves, 

Elder Webber