A Fitting Conclusion... And He's on His Way HOME...

What a crazy week, but I´ll have time to talk about that later. Thank you for all the birthday wishes as well.

Really I just want to share my testimony that I know the church is true. It was restored by Joseph Smith, a true prophet called of God. He translated the Book of Mormon by the power of God and the priesthood is real and governs the church today on the earth. I know there is power in prayer and that our Heavenly Father loves us and wants each one of us to return to live with him and his son Jesus Christ, who died to save us all. We can become clean through his atoning sacrifice. 

I loved being a missionary for these two years, I´m happy with what I´ve done, who I am and what I have to do now and in the future. I not only have the truth and know the truth, but I really love the truth. 

Thank you everybody for helping me and supporting me in these two years. 

Love you all, see you soon,

Elder Webber

Old Area Visit...

Thanks for the emails and the advice, and sorry for not writting yesterday. 
Lemme tell ya what happened. So one of our last two p-days we are allowed to travel anywhere within two hours of our area to visit prior areas or other things. So I decided to go back to El Pinar. Where I started the mission. About an hour and fifteen away. Ughhh. That was pretty hard. Obviously I was excited and happy to see all the members and converts there, but I was pretty sad that I was only there to say goodbye... I was surprised that everybody still remembered me, even some old investigators I visited. I´ll have to show you all the photos and explain stuff in a a week or so. Its too much to write into one email. I´m just really grateful for that oppurtunity to visit them and to see how they´re all doing. Mirta, the first person I baptized is still going really strong. She´s such a saint. I also recieved news that Felix, an old man I baptized in Bella Italia died this last week. That kind of put a damper on everything, but we all know where he is, he was a champion. Also, Santiago, an investigator I was teaching in Bella Italia got baptized and the missionaries there sent me a photo. That was nice. This week was pretty rough, lots of rain, pretty cold and Luana´s family is against her getting baptized. Soooo that is more than likely going to have to wait a while. Which is a bummer. But I hope to get some news over email or something like that saying that she was baptized. All in the Lords time. Well that´s about all for now. 

Love,

Elder Webber

photos of Mirta, and last p-day when a member invited us to go play tennis with them. 

Time's Winding Down But Zach's not...

ahh what schmeags england. haha oh well. Sounds like a fun trip. I haven´t heard too much about the world cup this week. With so much stuff to do this week we had hardly any time to do anything really. This wednesday we got up early and headed off to montevideo for the leadership council. My last one... so all the missionaries who are going home this change gave thier "testimonio del valiente" just our last testimony to the zone leaders and sister trainer leaders. That was pretty rough.  We only had thursday to prepare all of the information and plans for zone conference so that was a pretty busy day. Zone conference was good, the zone is great, of course we have a few problems or difficulties but that´s normal. This whole week I was just anxious for general conference. Just recieving revelation like a mad man. ahhh so nice. I wish I could just summerize all the stuff I learned but that would take too  long. We also helped a drunkard man who crashed his motorbike outside the stake center. He was pretty crazy, we all got a good laugh out of that. Luana showed up with a friend, its just a race against time here. Her mom has the baptismal form and just needs to sign it and that´s basically it. We´ll just dunk her in the water. Luana is feeling pretty good with what we are teaching her. We had a REALLY spiritual lesson with her this week. Lemme tell ya. We started the lesson like normal and started to review the restauration of the gospel because we figured she could use some strengthening in her testimony of Jose Smith. But we felt something wasn´t right, "descerning" her thoughts and observing that she wasn´t ok we asked what´s up. she said she was fine, but we knew she wasn´t. So we asked again and she broke down. She hadn´t been living the commandments as well as she knew she should have, especially after we had taught her them. Specifically she was having trouble with the law of chastity. Now its gets tricky as missionaries because we want to help them according to their needs, but we cannot have people confessing their sins to us. That´s not our job. So we got the information we needed including how she felt and what she understood about repentance and we reviewed the atonement of Jesus Christ and baptism. I can say that it was the most spiritual talk about the law of chastity I have ever seen. We´ll see what her mom says about baptism and then we´ll do everything we can to get her dunked before I go. 

This week was crazy, too much zone leader junk. Sometimes I wish I could just leave all that and just work. Luckily, these next couple weeks dont have too much to keep us out of our area. that´s about it for now. I think.

love,

Elder Webber

zone photo. 

Gettin' "Swoll"...

Even the Uruguayos are watching alittle bit of the world cup down here. So every once in a while I´ll get an update. Even if they dont know anything and their info is totally wrong. Like New Zealand losing to Japan. I hope that´s not true. haha. I think it was australia or south africa who lost? I dont know. That just shows the quality of info that I´m getting. ughhh. oh well. Sounds all good at home. I remember when I was going to BYU for josh and I had that astronomy class the teacher talked about the eclipse, and I remember thinking, hmmm yeah I´m not going to be here for that. long time ago. 

Anyways. This week was pretty normal. Nothing new really. We´re just teaching Luana all of the lessons, this week we covered tithing and the word of wisdom. No problems there. If she keeps progressing like she is she´ll be baptized mid-october. After general conference. The only thing that could stop that would be her family. Ignacio is doing well. He wants to get married and baptized just his wife doesnt want to. Ugh so complicated. So she fasted this last week and had an interview with the bishop. She said she dreamed a dream, or in other words saw a vision (1 nefi 8 haha) that she was married. Well of course! what do you think? that God is going to tell you to keep living in sin? duhhhh. We already knew that she would get an answer so now is the time to strike. This week we´re going in strong and getting them started. 

It rained most of this week, which made things hard, and I ended up getting sick on thursday just in time for divisions that we had with one of our district leaders. Ugh. Just a sore throat. Its just bothersome, because I can still work, but can´t speak. Sooooo I feel like just dead weight, spending my time and energy just walking around acompanying my companion. But I got my voice back sunday so I´m back in the game baby! 

During the sacrement the bishop sent his messanger to tell me to give a talk in the meeting. Ive actually been secretly hoping that they would surprise call on me. Ive been reading and thinking about that talk I have for my homecoming talk and it was a good practice run, even though it was in spanish. Good stuff. A member gave us that home made bar bell weight last week, a rebar with two blocks of cement on it, to work out. Getting big. Some of the perks of being in the richest city in uruguay is that we have most of the first-world comforts. Dry cleaners, fast food, and we recently discovered a small gym in our area. 50 pesos for a day pass. That´s about a dollar fity. So guess who´s going to get swoll today after we clean our house. 

That´s about it for now, this next week is going to be pretty hectic. But thats better. Keeps my mind focused. 

Love,

Elder Webber

Walked 12 miles...

sounds like bunches of good stuff going on back home. This week was pretty hectic. Preparation for the multi-zone conference on thursday started early tuesday morning. We knew we would be walking allllll over the city of Maldonado buying stuff and making orders, so we grabbed my ipod that mom sent, that has an application on it called nike-plus. Its supposed to track how much you walk, like your steps then it takes your height and calculates how far you walk. So we turned it on and put in my pocket and went out. We didn´t sit down once the whole day, except for lunch. Ugh it was tough one physically. We took out half of the money, about 7000 pesos because there is a daily limit on the machines here. So we were able to buy all the stuff that we needed to before hand. At the end of the day, we take out the ipod and it says that we had walked 12 miles. I dont know how accurate that is. I hope its over, because that´s pretty ridiculous. haha. Thursday morning rolls around and we are making our way into the center of maldonado for some last minute prep for the conference. We still had about 6000 pesos in my account to take out. So we go and try and the machine goes all wonky and says "take your money" but no money comes out and then the screen tells us that it cant process our request. Well..... there goes 6000 pesos.... we still have about 3000 left over from the other day but we still need about 6000 more for the burgers. This is where it got interesting, I have been keeping a really tight budget for the last year and half and I´ve managed to save up about 7000 pesos that I was planning on spending on pizza and junk food my last couple months. So I grab that dough from the house and payed for the burgers with that. I´m sure the offices will pay me back. I hope so. In the end, big success. Everybody was happy, and we even had to get some gluten free junk for some missionaries who like to complicate things. Other than the conference we had a few lessons with Luana. She´s progressing pretty nicely. We talked to her about having a lesson with her mom to see if we can get her involved as well. We taught the ten commandments this week with a focus on the sabbath day and the law of chastity. she´s inteligent so that lesson was pretty easy. Ignacio still isn´t going anywhere with his marriage. We told them to fast this weekend and that we would be fasting with them. They came to church fasting and so did we, so we´ll have a lesson with them maybe tomorrow to see how things are. That´s about it for now. Maldonado is all good. 

Love,

Elder Webber

VERY Busy...

Ah well we just have so much planned for these weeks its pretty ridiculous. This week we had changes, it was good, like always. Get to see all the elders from my group, see what´s good. President like always, shared an inspired message. Its really just a testimony that he´s called of God, the things he says are always right on the dot. Anyways, so I´m really happy I didn´t get changed out of here. Most of the  members were pretty surprised because I´ve been here a relatively long time. I´m so excited. So much to do. But the changes were on wednesday, thrusday and friday flew by. We had a lesson with Luana, the young mother, in the church. Ahhh it was so legit. We weren´t too sure about her because she has been falling through on coming to our appointments but we went and she had read all of 2 nephi 31 and had so many GOOD questions. Then she expressed some concerns about some things and starting spitting out quoted scriptures from the bible. Este.... como era? But in the end it was pretty good. We got through all of the plan of salvation which is one of the longer lessons. I´m pretty confident that she´ll be baptized before the end of this transfer. The only thing I could see stopping her would be her mom, because she is still a minor she needs her moms permision. We´ll see. Ignacio is "llevandola" as they say. We couldn´t have a good sit-down appointment with him this week, but we have plans to talk to him this next week. He just needs to get his marriage moving or he´ll never get married or baptized. Oh well. Saturday morning we did a service project with the stake, we all got those cool "mormon helping hands" vests and painted some fences at a local school and made some other repairs. Good fun. Really not a whole lot more happened this week, it was all just blurred into one big mush. This next week we are hosting another multi-zone conference. This will be the biggest one yet, with four zones, Maldonado (us), la costa, minas, and rocha. Looks like we´re gunna be buying lots of giant burgers again. Woohoo. These multi-zone conferences kinda stress me out. but that´s ok. Healthy stress. 

That´s about all for now. 

Love,

Elder Webber

Say hello for good ole winston for me.

Staying "Put" for his last Transfer...

Sounds like good stuff with the camping trip. good fun good fun. This week was quite possibly the fastest week of my entire life, lemme tell ya. So monday was p-day and we did that giant bbq/sausage sizzle, Im not gunna lie, there are some pretty mean sausages to sizzle down here. Then on tuesday we got up early to go to montevideo for our leadership council. That was fun, president assigned me and my companion to direct part of the council, that was fun, I always enjoy doing stuff like that. There wasnt really a whole lot to talk about, the mission did alright this last month, but we can do better, so we got alittle bit of the cane for that. We set the new goal, which was just a total of the zone goals, we got our zone goal last month, but we didnt get the mission goal because alot of zones didnt get their own goals, so we made sure that EVERY zone was committed to getting their zone goals. They all said yes.... so we will see. Anyways, we got back late tuesday night and wednesday I had to go out to a little village to do a few baptismal interviews. They lived in some pretty humble circumstances. Their house didnt have more than one room, so I couldnt find a place to be alone to do the interviews so we just used a make shift curtain to divide the room in half and that gave me enough privacy to get through the interview. I try to always make the interview a sacred experience, and that candidates feel the spirit. Its a really sacred covenant and they need to feel that in their interviews. The rest of that day was spent preparing for the zone conference which we did on friday, we had a pretty good zone conference. Get thems emotions going. Saturday we participated in the baptismal service of some elders in the zone, my companion and I were the witnesses. Sunday rolls around and I feel like we had no time. Luana showed up, which was a miracle because we didnt really have a good firm lesson with her this week, Ignacio also showed up, and another un married member and non member coulple we are working with. We had another lesson with Ignacio yesterday, we actually had lunch with him. We showed him a mormon message that has to do with procrastination. I think we got our point across, next charla, its game time, we are just going to go in strong and challenge them to go next week to start the marriage process. Monday night we got the changes, I was prepared for whatever, to leave and train or to stay and die here. Turns out that Im staying here for my last 6 weeks. Im pretty happy. I like my house, my companion, my house-mates and the ward is so legit. 

Thats about it, we had dinner with a man who is investigating, but cant be baptized because he isn{t divorced from his ex wife, and he lives with his new wife, but hes what we call a dry-member, because he knows everything but just isnt baptized. He reminds me alot of dad, just a latin version. haha. he made us a secret sauce for these hamburgers, which was pretty easy to guess what was in it, kinda like dads secret recepies. haha, we also did a service project this week, we made a roof for a house, the houses are all cement here, the roof too, so we made a cement roof on a second story house, with a bunch of buckets and shovels to get it from ground level up to the roof, It was ridiculously hard, the states are so much better with our wooden roofs.Oh well. 

Love,

Elder Webber

our bbq, l and the bretheren from the ward (the one in the red and white is our ward mission leader) 

Follow The Spirit

I swear these weeks just go faster and faster. I don't know what´s up, but someone is cutting hours out of my days. This week we worked all week, no interruptions or anything of the sort, just good ole hard work. Tuesday we did a ward missionary activity and we invited President Cook to come and talk to all the youth. My companion and I gave a workshop about how to recognize the spirit. It was good, president was impressed. This week we talked to Ignacio and his family again, he really wants to get married, but his member "wife" doesnt look to keen. But we´re going to be working on that. The lesson that we had with them was legit, and what we call "drop cane". We just pulled out a good ole copy of "the family, a proclamation to the world" and let um have it. There were some parts that we could tell that they were feeling pretty uncomfortable, and their kids too. But the spirit will make you feel uncomfortable when you´re not doing what you´re supposed to, we have to really use these moments to our advantage, when they feel the spirit testifying that they need to change. Spirit doesn´t lie, even when the truth hurts. That´s that. We invited them to pray, we´ll do some follow-up this week. See if we can get this process moving. 

We haven´t had too much contact with Luana, the young mother. I guess she has a pretty complicated schedule. we could only contact her through brief phone calls. We invited her to the stake conference we had and said we would meet her at the church and she didnt give us a very firm answer. So we figured she wasnt coming. Sunday morning, feeling good, saying my prayers, and I feel like I need to go to the church.... Nahh I´m just being crazy.... taking a shower, and I feel the same thing. Nahhh dont be stupid...but I feel it again.. nahhh. So we just went to the stake center and not to our church. 

Have I not learned to just obey the spirit the first time it prompts me?

 I guess not, but I learned my lesson, and luckily God still loves us and decided to throw us a bone. Luana ended up going to our church and waiting for us, luckily some member girls, about Luana´s age went by the church because "they felt like they had to". ahhhhhh knife to the heart. ok ok ok. I learned my lesson, no more being stupid. Anyways, Luana came to stake conference, listened to elder Cook and Elder Hales via satelite. Technically, if we could teach her all the lessons she doesnt have this week, she could be baptized this saturday, buuuuuuuttttt that´ll be pretty hard, so we think probably in a week or two. But changes are next week, we´ll see if I stay or not. oh well.

That´s about it for now, we just got done doing a big zone asado, or bbq. Sooooooo much meat. About 16 pounds of meat. We still have alot of leftovers in the fridge. It was a celebration kinda deal because our zone is the best zone in the whole mission, no doubt, no doubt my mind. haha. Its been a good change with Elder Udy. We´ll see what miracles are waiting for us this week. 

Love, 

Elder Webber. 

ooh I almost forgot, tell London Lazerson that I know a certain missionary here who has the name of Elder Valenzuela. From chile, I guess he was london´s ward mission leader over there of something. Good guy. 

Working Hard...

Looks like ben is having a good time in the mtc. Aint no thing but a chicken wing. This week went by so fast. I thought for sure that it would be a longer week because we didn´t have any traveling or conferences planned, but nope. It flew by. I just want more time to work in my area, I feel like we dont have time to teach anybody. Ugh. Well anyways, I did another intercambio with Elder Parmenter this week, he´s from St. George. Such a spiritual guy, really focused too, when we verify with the assistants to the president, they usually ask us who we think could fill the new leadership spots, I said him. If I could choose my district leaders, he´d probably be number one on my list. We´ll see if I get a gift these next changes. The zone is working miracles, so I´m pretty happy. We got this goal for baptisms this month, and it looks like we got a good number for this next month in september. We got the goal relatively early, so the assistants to president called and congratulated us, and then asked if we can baptize more this month. Eeeeeeee... we´ll do our best, but we´re not gunna dunk em if they´re not ready. We had a nice lesson with Luana this week, last week we had a really rushed lesson 3, and this week we wanted to slow it down alittle, and we taught the whole restauration. She has a book of mormon now, that we gave to a member to give to her, and she´s reading it and everything, but stills feels unsecure about being baptized. She was baptized about 6 months ago in a evangelical church and is alittle worried about being condemmed for being baptized twice even though we explained the whole priesthood authority thing and that she wasn´t actually baptized. but she´s alittle stubburn. When they get like that, all you gotta do is invite them to ask God. If God tells us to do something, most people will get right on it. That´s the plan. We also had a lesson with Ignacio this week. He´s the "husband" of a member, but they´re not really married yet. So we invited him to be baptized, he accepted, it was almost too easy, I knew there had to be a catch, he´s been going to church for years, off and on, so I knew there was something stopping him. So I said all casual like, like a fish,

 "well you know what´s stopping you right?" 

and he said he didn´t know. 

"well you gotta get married first, the law of chastity" (he knows everything, so he understood chastity)

"ohhhhhhhh, well, looks like i´m getting married then, but only if my son baptizes me."

"no prob bob," 

Now that´s not an exact translation of the lesson but more or less. So we just need to help him get married now, and prepare his son so baptize his dad. He´s not too fond of the idea, I dont know why, but we´ll find out. The only problem is that the marriage process is a distaster here, so I´ll probably be loooooooonnnnnggg gone before he is married. We´ll see. Maybe I´ll come back for the marriage and baptism. That´d be legit. 

that´s about it for now. just llevandola, as they say down here. Not much more for now. 

Love,

Elder Webber

Rain!

This week was, as they say, "bastante complicada". To start out, we had a ZONE trip to the temple. So that´s the second time in two weeks, which never happens, but I´m not complaining. haha. That did, however, take away from our time to work in our area. We dont have any time! Its just falling through our fingers like sand! Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday it rained. Really really hard. The streets were filling with water and the lower areas by the streets turned into decent sized streams and rivers. It was a weekend of navigating around, trying not to get toooo wet. We went to the ghetto part of the area that we found, but on our way we had to cross a pretty big stream, I made the jump alright, but my companion lost his footing on his take up and fell into waist deep water. He managed to get out, and I managed to get it on video. He´s a good guy though, so he just laughed it off. We were already soaking wet so it didn´t matter too much. We went to the shanty town without our member-guide and we got alittle lost. We wandered around for about half an hour before we found the exit. Its pretty sketchy. I do not wanna be in there after sun-down. 

I dont remember if I told you all, but a while back I had discovered that I had some foot fungus, it was pretty ugly, I bought some foot cream, but it didn´t help much. So I soaked my feet bleach. Good news is that the foot fungus is gone, but thanks to all the rain that we´ve been getting, EVERYTHING in the house is moldy. Even my suits. Ughhhh. I dont really know what to do. Oh well. I feel like the plagues just hit Maldonado. First the foot fungus, then the floods, then the mold, then the ants in the pantry, and Elder Parmenter just found a slug in his oatmeal this morning. Its good to be in maldonado. 

Even though we had a pretty useless week, in terms of weather and time, we had two investigators in church. The young mother, Luana Cindy, and a husband of a member, who I guess isn´t really her husband because they´re married, which means he can´t get baptized. But we´re gunna see what we can do to change that this wednesday. hehe. We talked with Luana after church and invited her to be baptized the first week of september. she said she was already baptized but she accepted the invitations on the terms that if she feels like God wants her to be baptized, she will. Well dont you worry, that answer is coming your way. I´m confident that if she just does what we teach, that is, read and pray. She´ll get her answer. "vamos adelante con fé y el Señor nos ayudará" Lets go forward with faith and the lord will help us. That´s about all for this week. 

Love, 

Elder Webber

A Temple Visit...

This week was pretty hectic, like it usually is the week of zone conference. I just want more time in my area, doing weekly planning is painfull because I can look out the window and see the people walking by, arggghhhhhh. oh well.  So tuesday we got up nice and early, around 4 430 I think, and took a bus to montevideo. When we got there, we listened to President Cook and also the temple president. It was soooo good. I wish I had time to email everything they said, but that´ll have to just stay locked away in the old noggin. Then we went to the temple, it was a neat experience because we´re all the zone leaders and sister trainer leaders with president in the temple. There´s not very many of us, only about 30 in total, but that´s still a good session full. Good big hug from Pres in the celestial room. Nice. I love the temple, just recieving revelation like crazy. There weren´t any big changes, but we did talk alot about an idea that me and my companion proposed last month, which had to do with increasing the pressure in self-responsibility. Then we came back to our area and had a day to work, although we didn´t get a whole lot done because most of it was spent preparing for our zone conference. A normal thursday and friday we had the zone conference. There was so much information that we had to share and we only about 2 and a half hours. Uhhhhggg. I felt like we were talking way too fast, but we shared a really spiritual message at the end and the sisters cried. (that´s how you know its good haha just kidding). Sunday we didn´t have the success we were hoping for, we didn´t really deserve a whole lot, because we were traveling or doing conferences for half this week, but still. We had a young woman show up. Very young, with a toddler. Waaaaaayyyy too young to have a kid. That´s all I´ll say. We asked if we could go visit her with her family and she gave us an address I didn´t recognize. Which is strange because I´ve been here a while now, we asked our ward mission leader and he took us there last night. Ohhhhhh my goodness. Cantegril. The only way I can describe it is like the favelas in brazil, but urugay version. If we weren´t with our local guide, we would have been swallowed up and spat out by that place. Just crazy. Really humble people, so we´re going to be spending alot more time over there. Basicaly all of our time. My companion is legit, super focused, which helps me alot, also he´s open to some new ideas of mine, (an open air sermon that we´re going to try out in the cantegril) I´m excited. Tomorrow we´re going to the temple again, but this time as a zone. 

Thanks,

Elder Webber

A New Companion...

This week flew by. Tuesday my ex companion said goodbye to all of the people here and we woke up early to go to changes in montevideo. This change was good. A good six weeks with great missionaries in the zone. 
At the meeting at changes we talked alot about the things we lost when the mission changed about six months ago. The biggest lost factor would be urgency. We watched this movie called "a new day for the book of mormon" the book is so true. Its ridiculous. If you can find the movie online or something I would invite you all to watch it. its only like 45 minutes long. That might be the thing I really learned these last six weeks during my personal study. How really true the book it. I cant even describe it. 
Well I found my companion, he´s a young gun, just got about a year. That´s pretty young for a zone leader here in uruguay. But he is wise for his age. From Idaho, he loves potatoes, eats them almost everyday. We get along great, today in the morning we did an "asado" which is like a urugay bbq. It turned out really good. I´m excited to get to train another zone leader and to stay here. 
We basically dropped all of our investigators except for a few, because they weren´t progressing. This sunday it rained, which didn´t help at all, if even one little drop falls from the sky half of the ward doesn´t show up. (we had 164 in church last week and this week we had 86) So we decided we are going to be spending ALOT of time up in the little town called hipodromo. We think that is where the Lord wants us to go now. Not a whole lot more happened this week. This next week is going to fly by. 
Lots to do, actually, these next 6 weeks are jam packed with activities, conferences, councils, and trips. I´m really excited. That´s about all I got for now. More a week of logistics and junk, and this next week will be like that too, but we will have more time to work in our area at least. 

But thanks, love you all,

Elder Webber

Ben's in MTC, Zach still serving...

Woohoo, benji is finally getting going. That´s pretty exciting. I´ll have to write him, to his new missionary email woohoo. 

Really there´s not a whole lot to say this week. It was a pretty hard week, basically just working in the streets, because we had to drop Virginia. She´s not progressing and we dont have time for that. Like good ole presidente Vilches said more than a year ago when I was in the city Minas, when you close one door, three more open. Well I sure hope so. We have a lot of potencial investigators, but they have the same problem that everybody else does, lazyness. Uruguay is just there. Not really doing anything, Just a grey area. Its frustrating some time to get the people to get up and change, get out of their routine and come to church. Working in the streets is the last thing we really want to be doing right now, wintertime there isn´t a whole lot of people outside and it gets dark early so that complicates things, so we´re trying to work with our new ward mission leader. Hes such a boss. We´re getting loads of refferals from him and the families and we´re trying to work more that way. Which is the way it should be. We went to a little town that belongs to our area, called hipodromo. whcih means, horse track. There´s no horses, and there´s no track. I dont know why its called that. But its what the members call a "virgin area" because the missionaries hardly ever go out there. So we figured we would go out to visit one of the only members who lives out there. We went to his house and he was just getting home from work and he was in his suit and everything, perfect to come out with us. But he didn´t feel like it, when suddenly, behind me and my companion he say the two 50 peso bills that he had that same morning. Its not much money, about 5 dollars, but for the uruguayos, that´s a good sum. So he took it as a sign, a "tender mercy" and took us to visit ALL of his neighbors, we now have about 11 or 12 new investigators out in the town. That´s what I´m talking about. Another one of the "tender mercies" that we had this week was when we were waliking in the street, having a pretty hard day and I looked behind me and say a lady and a 3 year old walking about 50 meters behind us. We didn´t have anywhere to go, so made an awkward U-turn to go and talk to them. They were members, quack,less acitves, but the 3 year old ran towards us and gave us big hugs.  called  Nahaieli and told us that she was praying that the "elders" would turn around to give her a hug. Just the little things. 

We got the changes yesterday, I´m staying here, and my companion is leaving to Minas. I´m getting a companion from Idaho I think. I dont know him, but they say that he´s pretty legit. We´ll take a look. I´m pretty happy, I was in this house with 3 peru missionaries, now there are 3 americans and one latino. I can speak english again! yess. 

That´s probably all for now. I´ll see tomorrow if those cards with the money came. 

Thanks,

Elder Webber

A "Pretty Normal" Week....

This week was pretty normal. Not a whole lot going on. The members are really getting on board, thanks to the Ward Mission Leader. I dont know why, but when he asks them for friends to visit they just start pulling out lists of their best friends, but nooooo we gotta use a pry-bar to try to get a name or two out of em. Oh well, but now we´re getting lots of referrals from the members and we´re really excited for this week. This week we were invited to sing in a missionary choir in one of the wards, which was a fun experience. Really, the highlight of this week was when a member asked us to go to the hospital to bless her son who was in an accident on his motorbike. Got hit by a bus. This is what went down, we got to the hospital and we had to go through a kind of security check with ID and everything, escorted by a doctor, then we had to take off our bags and our jackets and watches and rings, wash our hands up past the wrists, put on this surgical bibs, masks, and gloves and then they let us into the south american version of "intensive care". It was like steppìng into some horror film. Maybe 6 or 7 pacients all in one big room, all of them groaning from pain and twitching in thier beds. We made our way to the back corner and into a smaller room. The mother told us that he was "getting better". If he´s better now, I dont even want to know how he was before. To use the medical term, I would say he is indeed a "vegetable". But he could still feel pain, because he was groaning and crying and sweating alot. We weren´t allowed to touch anything so we were walking around with our hands in the air like doctors. My companion on one side of the bed and I was on the other, and we gave him a blessing. It was a very spiritual experience. Even though he couldn´t talk or express his feelings, we could feel the peace and comfort that it brought to him in his hour of need. Then we did the whole process in reverse, undress, throw the gloves, the mask, and the bib away, wash our hands and through security again. We´ve been struggling with Virginia, this week she told us that she thought that she cant keep the sabath day holy. Ugh.... We´re thinking about dropping her as an investigator. We dont have a whole lot of time to waste. 

Anyways, this is the last week of the change, then next week I´ll probably have a new companion. 

Well, good luck to the benji, I´ll have to send him a tie to africa when I get back. THE TIE. That was given to me by josh which was given to him by aaron, which he got from a long line of missionaries in brazil. 

Love,

Elder Webber

We made Zone T-shirts. I didnt bring my camera but I´ll send some photos next week of what we did today for our zone activity. Cerro del Toro. Hill of the Bull. Its s spring/fountain that is a giant bull and if you drink from its mouth its supposed to be good luck.

A "Noche Blanca"

This week went by pretty fast, with our new ward mission leader here things are really picking up. Pablo Sanchez. He´s just got a contagious energy about him, "the tsunami is coming, tsunami of baptisms" haha that´s what he is always saying. This week me and my companion set some goals to try to be more spiritual and listen to the promptings of the spirit more. We found some pretty legit pass along cards in the church the other day and we´re just going crazy with them, they have a big painting of Jesus on the front, so we do our contact and we usually get denied but then we pull out the cards with Jesus and the people feel bad denying a card with Jesus so they have to stop and listen, and that´s when we strike. We really just spent this week talking to EVERYBODY we possibly could; stopping people on bikes, the people on the streets, the people hanging up their laundry outside (ok, those ones really didn´t want anything). Its been a good week. One night we were pressed for time and so we couldn´t talk to everybody and we walked passed a lady and her kid and the kid was singing some evangical song about Jesus, we walked maybe thirty steps down the road and then, almost simulteaniously we turned and said "we need to talk to them" She didn´t want anything, but her sister did! haha Oh the spirit is good like that. We fasted as a missionary force this week to find more people to teach and that those who we had would progress. Oh the power of prayer and fasting. Let me try to explain. First off, Virginia finally did her first day without smoking, we almost doubled the amount of progressing investigators in the zone, reached the goal of total attendence in the sacrement meeting, and we are retaining almost double the percentage of the mission average right now when it comes to recent converts. The mission is pretty legit. If Virginia stays strong we are thinking of baptizing her not this sunday, but the next one. We are planning on doing a "noche Blanca" where we all plan the baptisms for the same day. Its going to be good. I think that´s about all for now.

Love, 

Elder Webber 

Feel The Spirit...

Well so much is going on I dont really know where to start. This week was all pretty normal and Virginia is still smoking one or two cigarretes a day. Its frustrating because she has come so far and now she is stuck on just one or two a day. We´ll see if she gets better this week. I got to do some divisions with one of the elders in our zone this week, really I´m not sure if it was this week or last week, but whatever. I went with an elder Brumble from Salt Lake. Hard core Utah fan, trying to convince me to switch to Utah. He´s got some good points, but it takes more than a young buck elder to trick ole Elder Webber. haha. This friday we woke up at about 330 to go to the mission leadership council in Carrasco. Its always so good to go and see the other zone leaders, most of my group from the MTC are there and its good to see how they are doing. This months council we had Elder Cabrera from the 7th Quorom of the seventy. He is an inspired man. So is president. He always give us council and that always ends up being exactly the thing we need during the following month. It was good to be there with Elder Cabrera, he participated in almost all the aspects of the council including setting goals and giving report of the last month. Sooo much revelation and knowledge that we would have to give to our zone. This sunday we also got a new ward mission leader because the last one didn´t really know what to do and is kinda old and cant really come out and work with us. Soo we got a brand new returned missionary, and he told us that we had better be doing our excersizes because we´re gunna need some strong arms to stand all the baptizing that this ward is gunna be doing. hahahaah oh....I am doing my excersizes. Yesterday we had a big multi zone activity and so that´s why I´m writing tuesday. And today we had the zone conference. Mayber I was feeling alittle selfish, but it has been ages since I have given a good hands-on training with my missionaries so I decided to take a half an hour or so to do what we call "workshops" where I basically get alittle time to talk to my zone about what I feel like they need. I love doing meetings and conferences. I just get to pray, and get revelation and I always end up feeling the spirit. I decided to talk about giving report and responsiblity. I felt like that is what we needed. We´ll see how things go. 

I got into a routine here with my companion for these last couple weeks, just working and I think we started to loose the real reason and start to just go through the motions. Luckily we caught on, really I realized this week, EVERYTHING has to be done with love and the spirit. The people know, the spirit knows, when we are doing something without real intentions, you gotta find the way to really love them. President told me about the "as if" principle. He said, if you feel the spirit but you´re not sure that your companion is just keep teaching "as if" he did. I put that to practice this week and really saw the difference. It was a marking moment in my mission for sure.

I got the patches! already traded them with the scout. Some of them. And the leaves came too!  Already sent those out to some of "my" converts. So thanks.

I also got an email from the ward, some ward activity. So you´ll have thank the person who sent those scans of the letters and that participated. 

Thanks, that´s all for now.

Love,

elder Webber

Multi-Zone Conference....

 This week was pretty normal, I wasn´t really taking any mental notes of things to write home about so I dont have a whole lot to say. This week we did have a multi-zone conference here with our zone (Maldonado), rocha, and Minas. So I got to see my son again. That was nice. It was the conference where everything almost went wrong. From the beggining. no offense, but my companion is pretty dumb when it comes to logistics and organization so that didn´t help. 
Because we were hosting the conference here in our zone we were in charge of a few things, the main being lunches for everybody. The offices sent 9600 pesos to my account, about 500 dollars, to buy lunches. So we did the giant burgers called tortugones again. good stuff. We also had to invite 10 members to come and participate, to be practice investigators for us. President was pretty clear that it had to be 10. The conference was friday and we woke up early to go set up chairs and tables and put up signs and everything. We went to the store and bought a bunch of drinks, bananana, plastic cups and all that good junk. About 10 minutes before the conference starts, president gets there and the microphone stops working, great, so I´m trying to figure that out and we got it going just in time to start on time. The 10 members were supposed to arrive at 1030, an hour after the conference started, we went to go see how many members were waiting in our designated waiting room about 15 minutes before 1030, and there were two. But right as we were about to start the practices the other eight showed up. yessssss. Then lunch time and the burgers still hadn´t come, right on time the burger guy shows up but he only has half of the burgers, so he drops off those and heads back to go get the other burgers. The line of missionaries comes through and they all grab their burgers and right when we ran out of burgers, the burger guy shows up again. Nice, and what did he have? Extra burgers, for the members who stayed, (they weren´t supposed to stay but they did anyways) in the end, everything turned out perfect. It was really stressful but successful. 
President was pleased and he said that it was the most punctual multi-zone conference that he had been too. Woohooo. We spent the week worrying about that really. 
But we did see something pretty special. There is a member here who´s son got in a motorbike crash and the doctors said he was basically going to die. He´s getting alot better, but now they say that they will probably have to cut off his leg. Anyways, the member (the mom of the accident man) was praying and asking what God wanted her to do, she said that while she was praying she got the impression that she needed to work more in missionary work, well the next thing we know she is in church with her friend and her grandson and they were all crying in our gospel principles class that my companion and I teach. Why can´t all the members be like that? Its so much easier. That´s what we´re trying to get them all to do now. 

I think that´s it for now. 

Love 

Elder Webber

Busy, Busy...

pero paaaaa. 

haha yeah sorry about last week, I was traveling all day p-day and we didn´t have time to come in to do emails. Well I got two weeks to email about so lemme get started. 

So yeah, last week was change week, I´m staying here with my companion. I was kinda hoping for someone new but whatever. But Elder Leavitt, a missionary from Orem was leaving this change, so he wanted to go back and visit one of his area, Bella Italia, and he invited me to go with him because his companion didn´t want to go and I had served there before. OK! Even though when I said goodbye to that place I was pretty sure that I would never come back. But we went back and saw some of the people that he baptized and some of mine too. OHhhh it was nice to see some of those members again. It seems like it was just yesterday I was there training my son. I still knew all the streets and everything. Weird experience, really made me think how fast the time goes by. So that´s where I all last p-day so I couldn´t write home. The next day was changes, its always good to see the old companions and what not. It was an especially sad meeting because Elder England and Elder Ashcraft both finished their missions. Two really good friends and companions of mine. Not a whole lot changed here in the zone. We have two new district leaders here, so we´re looking forward to training them in their duties, but we are really excited and so far the zone is working really well together. During this week I got a call from the ward secretary asking if I could give a talk next sunday, so I was pretty excited but then when I got to church he asked me if I could change it to that same day. Uhhhhhh yeah I only have half of a talk but ok. so I got home and I´m not gunna lie, probably my best one yet, I didn´t stutter with any of the spanish words and got my message accross pretty well. Mission prep. The bishop came up and said thanks and said that´s how a talk should be given. Made me feel pretty good about myself. Virginia came to church, she is doing so well with her cigarretes. From two packets to two cigarretes but it looks like she´s getting stuck on that number. We´ve tried preisthood blessings and plans and replacements. We´re almost out of Ideas. She has a super testimony of the book of mormon, "can´t put it down" she always says. She also shares the gospel a ton with her neighbors, and thanks to her we found a great new investigator to teach. We went and visited her friend who said she wanted to come to church with Virginia and we were talking about eternal families because about 3 months ago her husband died. Ahh the spirit was so strong. She started crying and then we sang, Asombro me da. orrrr I think its called I stand all amazed. And she cried some more. Accepted a baptismal date and everything. 

Some other stories from this week, we were doing some visits with the new elders quorom pres. in his car, one of the few members who has a car, and we pull up to a less actives car and accidently his the less active´s dog, the less active saw it and everything, so the elders quorom pres says, "Did we just hit that dog? Well we´re out of here." and sped off and parked around the corner and walked to teach the less active so he wouldn´t know it was us. hahaha. The dog was ok. 

There is sister in the ward who loves missionaries because he son is serving in chile right now and so she always gives us food. One day, I dont know what was going on, but alllll the members were giving us food. and then she invited us to go over and have some soup because it was freezing cold. As we walked into her house I told my comanion in english that I was already full but I had to eat. So I ate. Then she brought out a banana smoothy. I had to eat it, its been too long since I had a banana smoothy. I ate so much I was feeling really sick, so sick that I asked to be excused and went outside and threw up. ahhhhh and they all saw me. I felt really bad because the sister lives in really humble circumstances and really sacrifices alot to give us food. So the next day I made her some snickerdoodles and took them over with a little note saying sorry from vomiting your food. It was really delicious. 

That´s about it for now. I dont know if there were any questions that I missed or anything like that. But thanks for money! 

Love,

Elder Webber

photos of the fingers! 

and this is sister Mari. The sister whos food I threw up. 

Fun at the Beach :-)

Its starting to get pretty cold here, not as cold as it was this time last year. 
Benji all graduated and junk, sounds good haha. This week was good, nothing really exciting. 
We are still teaching Virginia and re activating her son. He is without his rights for now but we talked with the bishop and he said that her son should be able to baptize her in about two weeks if he keeps on progressing. Which is perfect, the end of the change. So we will re activate him and baptize his mom. They both came to church this sunday which was fantastic, this is by far the biggest ward that I have ever seen in Uruguay. We had 150 members in church yesterday. Well really 156 because we are the ones who count the attendence. But that´s huge, compared to 33 or Bella Italia where we were struggling to get 30 or 40. 
This week I also did some divisions with one of our District Leaders, Elder Cervanted from Peru. So many elders from Peru. But he´s good, his district is struggling alittle so we had a little talk to see what we could do to help them out. The mission president is asking that we work more with the ward and stake leaders, which is easier said than done. In orem yeah you can walk to stake presidents house in about half an hour from anywhere in the stake, we can´t even get to the bishops house in half an hour. The stake president lives in Minas, I worked there a while back, (about a year) and its about an hours drive away. But we have to, we´ll probably go this thursday, stay the night in Minas and then go to the leadership council the next day in Montevideo. We´ve been trying to focus on working more with the members, but its hard. We´re seeing results yeah, but it´s slow work. It will result in better baptisms and better converts, but sometimes its frustrating to see how slow the members work with us. Ah I almost forgot, saturday night the young mens president invited us to share a message about the restauracion to the gurises (kids) but he said to make it "different" try to get the kids excited to go and serve a mission. We couldn´t really think of anythin really new but suddenly, bling, like a light bulb, a new idea--fun how that happens... 

I bought some foot cream this week too. paaaaaaaa expensive. haha but oh well.

Yesh, I would like thems leaves, maybe if you can, send some scouting patches too. 

thanks

Elder Webber

Heres a photos of most of the elders in the zone last week at the beach. These are our karate poses. 

Finding Success and Having Fun!

Ba what a crazy week. I had it all written down in my agenda but I forgot that in the house, because its p-day and we just got back from a legit zone activity. I´ll try to remember all that happened this week.

Really, nothing really special happened this week, but we are really started to see the fruits of our labors here. Law of the harvest, you reap what you sow and we´ve been sowing for a while now. Working with the members with this new initiative has been pretty hard. The members are either our best friends or our biggest obstacles. I guess you just gotta treat them like investigators, give them commitments, if they dont do their commitments then they arent progressing and we have to drop them. 

This week we were fighting against all the fleas that we have in our house. My companion said that they´ve been their for a few weeks before I got there. That´s not cool. Crawling around and doing flea stuff. Then I got this weird foot fungus. Yeah, my companion had that a few weeks before I got here too. haha. Well. That´s just the way it is. 

So we were walking in the street one day, and we hear a woman yelling at us and telling us to follow her. So we turned around and followed her home. She took us in and presented us to her son, who is like 40 years old and he is a member and wants to come back. Nice. He has a bunch of old photos from when he was a boy scout. The scouts havent been a program down here for almost 20 years. He said he had so many good friendships and memories with the church and with his young mens group that he wanted to come back. He started his rempentance process this week and in a month or so he´ll be back to having all of his rights! Annnnnd the best part, his mom isn´t a member and is listening. Then we were in the street and we see a guy with a bunch of tattoos and peirces but he´s walking on sunshine, super happy and he´s got a bible in this hand. So we talked to him, just got out of jail and wants to change his life, follow Jesus. Ok, well come with us. He was on his way to the Universal Church. Ask aaron, I´m sure he knows it. haha. Well him and the woman we found both came to church. Sadly he (his name is frederico) wanted to change so much that he left his girlfriend and his friends and now has no place to live. Talk about taking a step of faith. Hes such an awesome guy. 

We have a lot of members who are super excited to work with us and are inviting all their friends to church. We are getting referals like crazy. I think this next week, we´re really gunna see the whole ward working together. I´m so excited. 

Today we went to this place called la barra. Its a beach down by punta del este. Because its wintertime down here nobody is at the beaches except for missionaries. We had a zone activity and we did all sorts of games and races. We took some really nice photos that I dont have with me right now, but I will send those some time. 

Thanks for the card, I´ll let  you know when that gets here. Luckily the letters go straight tot he offices unlike the packages that get caught up in customs. 

I think that´s everything. If I forgot something I´ll probably just write it in the next email. 

Love,

Elder Webber

Zone Conference...

That´s pretty crazy at nationals. Good fun. Good ole rugby, we are teaching a girl who plays rugby here, well we are starting to teaching her, we´ll see if she progresses or not. 

Well, this week was prety hectic. I guess most of the weeks down here are pretty busy, but this one more than usual. We had to get everything ready for the conference we had with president this thursday. We had to get the projector and the screen ready, set up the "workshops" and the where we would eat lunch. Get the schedule ready for the zone and all that good stuff. The financers sent us a budget of 4400 pesos. About 200 dolars to feed the 20 people who would be at the conference. We spent about 3000 on these GIANT burgers here that are called Tortugones. Big turtles. The meat itself weighs about a Kilo (2.2 pounds) They were shared between companionships. President was pretty impressed. The extra 1400 pesos was spent on drinks, fruit, napkins, cups, and cookies. Of course, my companion, being latin, wanted to buy 50 dolars worth of chocolate with the budget. Hmmm no. The conference went well, and we all had interviews with president while the assistants gave their "workshops". While one companion is being interviewed by president his companion is with presidents wife being interviewed and they should switch every 7 minutes. So every 7 minutes we had to knock on presidents door to let him know that it was nearing time to switch. Sooo my copmanion and I didn´t really get to participate very much in the "workshops". oh well. 

We did divisions with the assistants afterwards. I went with Elder Gallergher from California. Super spiritual missionary. I learned alot. The rest of the week was pretty normal, not a whole lot to say. We dont really have a whole lot of potential now in the area, that was really depressing when I get here, but we´ve been trying this "new iniciative" that gets the members more involved. They seem excited about it. We´ll see if there is any real success this week and next week.

If you could, maybe the next time you go up to temple square, grab a bunch of the leaves, laminate them and mail them to me. Like 20 or 30 at least. That would be helpful.

Elder Webber

Getting Transferred..

I should be skyping you guys next Sunday in the afternoon sometime. I´m not really sure when because we haven't organized that yet. But we will be getting on it. My companions dad is also bishop in his ward and my comp is going home in about 6 weeks and just got his topic for his homecoming talk so he can give a good talk and not just wing it. That´s a good idea, just when I start getting closer I would like to know so I can get preparing for that too. 

This week we had the mission leadership council and it was.... boring. Usually they are pretty intense and we have some big announcements to bring back to the zone but this time... was boring. from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. basically talking about... nothing. Oh well, it was still spiritual and helpful. We came back on the overnight but and we just happened to see Daniel and Stella on the same bus as us, crazy coincadink. We didnt have much time, a few hours spread throughout the next day, to prepare for our zone conference. We made some big changes in our zone because obviously the zone isnt capable of having so much freedom and still be spiritual and obedient. Sooooo with the permission of president and his assistants of course we changed:

Music, nothing other than mormon tabernacle choir and hymns on the piano.

Calls, all phone calls out side of the district have to recieve permission first. 

Soccer. No more soccer allowed in the zone. FINALLY! The latinos didnt like that one, but oh well. 

Language, we ONLY speak in usted, which is formal tense in spanish. Way too much slang. 

Thats just a few. Of course we had a few complaints but we just invite them to pray about it and sure enough we stopped recieving phone calls after that. The zone needed to change and somebody had to do it. Like it says in the missionary handbook, our loyalty is first to the Lord and then the mission president and then our companions (or in our case, missionaries in the zone). amen. Well that basically summed up the week. 

The changes came in last night and I found out Im going to a zone called Maldonado. It is really beautiful. Really touristic as well. Thats where "los dedos" are. you should look them up. I´ll probably actually send a photo of them soon anyways. My new companion will be Elder Delgado from Peru. I like peru, so far all my peru companions have been pretty good. I mean I did spend 6 months with elder Rodriguez. I´ll still be senior comp zone leader there. Im really looking forward to it. We had a good time here elder Ashcraft and I. We learned alot. He shall be missed. 

I think that's about it for now. Ill find out the skype schedule and find a ways to communicate our plans with you before sunday hopefully. 

Thanks,

Elder Webber

Working VERY Hard...

 got my scripture covers! they´re super legit. There is a guy here who makes leather scripture covers too, but I didn´t get any and these ones are way better than the ones he makes ohhhh yeah. 
We also had our run in with two 70´s down here. 
This week was pretty crazy. So tuesday we got on a bus as a zone and went down to montevideo, but the other mission side of montevideo to have our conference with Elder Oaks, Elder Viñas and an area 70. Pretty powerful conference. Elder Oaks talked to us about how to be an instrument in the lords hands. He´s an inspired man. After the conference I got on a different but because I would be doing an intercambio with one of our district leaders who is working in Lascano. So we took a bus from montevideo to Rocha, which is like 7 hours, then from Rocha to Chuy which was like 3 hours. We got to chuy around midnight and slept until 5 and caught a bus from Chuy to Lascano which is like 2 more hours. So I pretty tired, but we had work to do and I had to do a baptismal interview. So we worked that day and we couldn´t find the guy to do his interview. He didn´t show up to the church for his interview so we went to where he lives. He is like 70 something, so he lives in an old folks home. He wasn´t there. So we said a prayer and sure enough, we found him in the street about a half an hour later. We did his interview and went back home. 
When we got to the house, we found that the water had been shut off. Oh well, that was ok because I was supposed to be traveling towards my home in the morning anyways. But we got a call at 5 in the morning from my companion saying that they missed the bus. Ugh. 
Ok, so I´ll stay the whole day thursday until about 6 working until they got there. I didn´t have a change of clothes or socks and hadn´t showered since tuesday morning. So we took advantage of the time and filled up the baptismal font for that afternoons baptism. My companion showed up finally and we went back home. We got home just in time to verify with the district leaders and sleep. 
It was a long couple of days. Not much more happened this week, but this next week we have the leadership council in montevideo so we will have to get up early tomorrow morning to leave for that. I´m pretty excited, the mission is struggling and president is going to have a lot of changes for us. 

That´s about it for now, 

Elder Webber

Flat Stanley Visits

 This week was pretty interesting. We are still teaching Diego because he is having trouble getting to church sundays. We are trying to do lessions in the church so that he gets used to just coming but that´s hard too. This last week his uncle died. I dont know if I told you guys but his aunt died last week too. So two family deaths and they were totally unrelated. Kinda crazy. The family is really close down here, uncles and aunts and all that all live relativly close to eachother, so when one dies, everybody gets pretty sad. But we´ll be working with him this week to see if we can help him some more. 
This week we did some intercambios with one of our district leaders, elder Concepcion. From peru. I went with him to his area. We´ve been having troubles with him and his companion and the elders who live in the same house. But of course everybody is on their best behavior when we´re around. Ughhh. So I just let him know that we trust him and that he needs to be an example to his companion who he is training and all that. He said not to worry and that we could trust him. I guess president is pretty concerned about them as well because we got a call from the assistants saying that they wanted us to go over early morning and see if they woke up on time at 630. Well we did. We got up alittle before 6, got the shirt and tie on and walked half an hour to get to their house. The new missionary who is being trained opened the door for us and the house was still dark. 635 and we decided to sit and wait. 640....645.... well that gives them 15 minutes so they cant use the "oh I was just praying" excuse. The lights come on and the cane came down. There´s just no room for disobedience. Of course we use the pattern in DnC 121: 43-46 so that they dont esteem us to be their enemies. Its always alittle awkward having to do stuff like that, nobody likes it but we have to, especially when we are specifically asked to. 
Anyways, this week we also threw a big activity in the church. A few weeks ago we got a copy of "meet the mormons" from president to use in activities. only 10 copies in all of Uruguay! haha so we did a big premier with a theater-like set up and projector and everything. It was legit. We had maybe 100 or so people show up, it was pretty cool. Hopefully we see some references or something from that. Anyways, thats about it for now. Thanks for the packages and stuff. The offices are just lazy. oh well. 

Watching Conference in English...

Angels landing, that´s pretty cool. I heard that was a pretty legit hike. good ole scropuff doing well then. 
Ah its hard to remember all the things that happened during the week. I need to write down the specific things that happen so that I can write better letters. Last tuesday we did an intercambio with some of the elders in our zone. I stayed in my area with Elder Wilson. I actually knew him before when I was in Bella Italia, he is legit. He is from georgia and he is from GEORGIA. Like they just took him out of that duck dynasty and plopped him in the mission. His prefered type of meat is squirrel covered in maple syrup and flour and deep fried. That about sums it up. That describes him perfectly. But we had alot of fun. A really sincere guy, we´re just worried about their house, because it isn´t exactly the most obedient group of missionaries. So we are trying to drop alittle cane on that. 
This friday we went by Diegos house, one of our investigators, and his aunt died so that was pretty hard on him, but we used it as a teaching point and it came out alright. We also met this mom and her kid, she is called silvia and her kid is alex. They are family of Stella who just got baptized a while back. They came to church and everything so if they keep progressing like they are they should be baptized before the end of the change. I´m pretty nervous about that actually, we have a bunch of potential investigators who could and should be baptized before the end of the change but everything has to go perfectly. I´ve been in this area for a while now and I dont think they´ll be taking my companion out because he only has two changes left in his mission. Well, we will see how that all goes in three weeks. 
Ah the changes are just flying by. Creeps me out. We live with an elder who has alittle bit less time than I do, I dont know what´s going on but his district leader told us that he wants to go home, he asked for an interview with president. Its pretty sad, he seems pretty happy and good in the house, something must be going on with his family or something that we dont know. We dont really want him to go, so we are trying to help him out, of course we told president that he wanted an interview, but we will see how all that goes. 
The mission is really struggling with all these changes, the last couple of months have been pretty critical and productivity has gone waaaaayyyyy down. Missionaries just aren´t able to things by themselves, its sad but most of them need someone telling them what do to always. Brings to mind a certain doctrine and covenants section, something about a lazy servant? haha.. but really. Of course the changes are for the better, but some missionaries just use it as an excuse to not work. Oh well. I guess that´s all for this week, we have Elder Oaks coming down to talk to us the 21st. So we are all really excited for that. 

I got an email from the offices today asking me what airport I would be flying into. I said salt lake city. I was thinking about provo, but then I thought maybe not. So you should be getting an email from the mission offices pretty soon within the next couple of months. 

I shall await the package! yeah!

Elder Webber

photo of all the americans in 33 at general conference. Watching it in english!

STILL working hard,... And having fun

Thanks for all the advice and such. It is indeed well needed. This week was good. I´m trying to remember, this week so much happened. This last monday night we woke up at 2 in the morning to catch the bus to montevideo like we do every beginning of the month for the leadership council. It was good,lots of good information, but no big changes in the mission or plans. The changes that were made in past councils have really put a heavy load on the mission. 
All of the zones are fighting to even reach half of the number of converts that were getting last year. President and his assistants had alot to say about consecration. It will always be a big topic in the mission feild. Missionaries who just go through the motions or even actively rebelious to leaders and mission plans. We know that we are blessed for obedience, so why dont we all do it? ugh. So we got back and worked until friday which is when we had our zone conference. This whole semana santa was pretty difficult. All the shops close down, the busses too, makes missionary work fairly hard. We had our zone conference and focused mostly on exact obedience and consecration. I feel like the missionaries really needed and need that right now. The problem is that as missionaries we get so spiritual in meeting and then we walk out the door and return to our old ways. 
So we tried mixing it up alittle bit. Applying an idea that we had, "give trouble responsibility" So we assigned different companionships to give workshops on different topics that the zone is struggling with. In the end we read the account of the anti-nephi-lehi people and we had printed off and taped to the bottom of their chairs little tiny swords. We gave them all a few minutes to write down on the swords what their "weapon of war" was and then we all went outside to go burry the swords in a small whole we had dug the day before. It was pretty funny and we all enjoyed it, but after the laughs we had to talk seriously. Changes had to be made and promises kept. I feel like it was pretty changing, hopefully we will see a difference. 
Conference was fantastic, of course there were a few problems with some chapels getting the feed, and for some reason everybody thinks that me and my companion are tech guys. Uhhhhh yeah, just call your bishop. was the usual answer. 
But we all enjoyed conference. We got a text message from president asking about some elders in particular and his concern for them, we are really just trying to hold it all together here and get the best we can. We held a little mini testimony meeting after the sunday sessions to try to really apply what we´ve learned in the conference. I hope things get better in the zone. But me and my companion are doing great, we get along great, like the same things and are both focused and have the same ideas of how the work should be done. I
´m really enjoying being here with elder Ashcraft. He´s really inteligent and has some really good ideas. His grandpa is a seventy so we got to see him on the t.v. and everything. Good fun, good fun. good easter. 

Well that´s about it for now. I´ll let you know if that package comes, but thanks!!

Elder Webber

Working hard....

Sounds all good at home with rugby and highschool. This week went by really fast, we said goodbye to everybody here tuesday night and then we went to changes. Elder Rodriguez was really ok until we got to the chapel there in montevideo. He got pretty lost, there´s a whole ruitine that we always do when get there, but now that he wasn´t zone leader he just kinda had to sit around and wait for someone to tell him what to do. I found my new companion, he´s a boss. 

Elder Ashcraft from idaho, nampa I think. I´ll have to ask him his address I´m not sure what it is. We get along pretty well and we started working straight away. We work well together, of course it takes a few days to get the wrinkles out but now we are running smooth like a well oiled gospel-preaching machine. oh yeah. We went to go visit that woman we found a few weeks ago and who we gave a blessing too because her feet were super nasty, all covered with nasty sores and scabs. Its actually a pretty comon disease down here, even our bishop has it. You get from walking around without your shoes on in the mud and some weird fungus grows on you and makes these big sores. I told you a while back how she was doing alot better and walking around but now she is almost totaly healed, which is fantastic and she recognizes it as a miracle. So we are pretty sure that she will be getting baptized in the next coming month or so. 

This friday night my companion got really really sick. Vomited almost the whole night with a serious case of the runs. Saturday he was still really sick so we had to stay inside. Ughhh its the worst staying in that house for so long. Clean the kitchen, clean my room, read some scriptures, update the area book.... that´s a good two hours and then we had like 8 more to just wait. So we listened to like 50 general conference talks and talked about doctrine. 

This week is called Semana Santa, holy week, and nobody works and they go on vacation. Its already getting pretty bad here, but I´m really looking forward to general conference. Because we have been asigned as ward secrataries we get to look over the ward list. 

We were looking and we discovered that there is a Seventy that lives in our area. So yeah, we went and found him yesterday. It was pretty sad, he came out, and told us he was never thinking about coming back to the church and that it was just his decision and his way of life. An inactive seventy. The calling seventy was a stake calling, I guess, a long time ago. We´ll see what we can do. Tomorrow we have to travel to montevideo again to go to the council and we were told that an apostle is going to come and speak to us this month, but they didn´t tell us which one. I´m pretty excited, we´re all praying for holland or Uchtdorf. haha no we´ll be happy with any general authority.

I think that´s about it for now. Thanks!

Elder Webber