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