A Swollen Face...

What a week. Again, I just have no idea where to start. I guess tuesday was the only really normal day we had to work. I feel like there isn´t enough time to get the stuff done in my own area anymore. Wednesday was pretty hectic because we had the elders coming down from Chuy to stay in our house and we had to find something for them do while they waiting here. We just assigned them to work in the struggling areas around here. Wednesday night we had 12 elders sleeping in a four elder house. Yes, we do have two extra mattresses for when missionaries who are traveling have to make a stop in our house, but we still were missing ten. Looks like we kinda had to bend the rule that says,

 ¨companions should sleep in the same room, but NOT the same bed.¨ ehhh. 

We didn´t sleep too much, the elders arrived around midnight because they got lost and of course its the zone leaders fault, so we have to go find them. We got to bed around 1 in the morning and woke up at 4 to get everybody showered and ready for the bus that would take us to the multi zone conference. Very little sleep and a full day of conference after that gave me some pretty bad bags under the eyes. Or so I thought. The next day I woke up and the left half of my face was swollen and my eye was hard to open. I don´t know what happened, but we had to do divisions with the assistants to the president that day so I didn´t have time. The swelling went down and we did the divisions and I feel like the assistants were pretty happy with how we were working. I slept again and my face got worse. We asked a member who works in a pharmacy what was up because everybody was asking what was wrong with my face. He said it was probably just an allergic reaction. So he gave me some pills. Which did nothing. Its alot better now, this morning it was just alittle swollen. We will have to see what happens tonight. But anyways, thanks for the photos! I had some investigators that wanted to see that I went bungy jumping. yeah yeah. I´ll try to include some photos from these last couple of weeks and I´ll be thinking about things for ben to be doing to prepare. 

Bem vindo au Brazil.

Luis

Elder Webber

Went to Brazil..

This week went by so fast. So much happened, I´m going to try to remember it all. Well tuesday we had district meetings. Part of me misses being district leader because I had more of an influence on the individual missionaries and not just the zone as a whole. But oh well. I sat in on a district meeting of Elder Romero. It was good. 
Wednesday we worked and thursday we only worked a half day because the stake president came to pick us up to go tooooo... Chuy! yeah. We had a little suit case and everything all packed up and ready. The stake president is a bro. Its about a 2 hour drive to chuy. It was the best 2 hour drive of my entire mission. Air conditioning and we went through some of the coolest territory. We drove through the hills of uruguay and then into this perfectly flat feild. Think Kansas. But with hundreds of thousands of palm trees. It was cool. 
Chuy is half in uruguay and half in Brazil. There is a street that divides the two countries and you can just walk back and forth. The street is called Brazil by the Uruguayos and Uruguay by the brazilians. The stake presdent took a little detour so we could go through brazil. Yeahhh. It was weird. Just cross the street and everything is in Portugese. I was pretty amazed that it could change so dramatically just by crossing the street. We did our capacitation with the stake president to the bishop there and then slept on the floor with the elders in their house so that we could do some inter changes the next day. 
As zone leaders we have to do inter changes with all the district leaders in our zone. I went with Elder Ellet from Loa utah. Down by boulder mountain. We worked in brazil. Half of the ward is in brazil and half in Uruguay. So we put a baptismal date with a brazilera. Yeahhhhhh. Me and aaron both preaching to the brazileros. I don´t have my camera with me, but I will send some photos next week. Me and companion bought some junk in brazil and then caught a bus back to 33. We had to stop in a city called Lascano for a ¨layover¨ for about and hour. Having to do the verifying calls on the bus isn´t very fun. We got home around 11 friday night and had to work the next day. Sunday we didn´t have quite the success we were waiting for because most of our investigators our on vacation. 
Oh well, our next baptism will probably be a man called Luis. He smokes, but when we met him he was smoking something like 30 cigarretes a day and now he is down to one or two. And that was saturday. We will go by him today to make sure that he´s quit. I need to send a photo of him as well. Next week. I can´t really remember what else happened this week. I´m sure Ï will later in the day. But thanks for the photos and the family history. That´s super useful.  I spent a good lump sum of money in brazil. sooo. haha. 

Tired...

This week was busy. I don´t think I´ve been this tired since I first got here. Monday night we went to bed at 1030 like always and we had to wake up at 1130 to catch a bus. A good hour of sleep and we were off into the city to find our way to montevideo. We bought some bus tickets that were about 50 dollars a round trip. And the bus ride lasted from about 1 in the morning until 630. We got off in a shopping mall/buss terminal called Tres Cruzes. Three crosses. Its the biggest in Uruguay. Luckily, both me and my companion know Montevideo pretty well because we were there together and we knew which bus would take us to Carrasco. Good ole Carrasco my old area. I do not miss it. The mission council started at about 9 in the morning and lasted until 5 in the afternoon. With breakfast and lunch of course. But it was loooooong. Important but loooong. Just setting goals and making plans for the mission. We also got a sneak peak at the "meet the mormons" movie. Pretty neat. Then we had to find our way back to 33. We got home around midnight and got to sleep around 1 and had to wake up at 630 like normal the next day. It was rough. Especially because we had to do my first zone Conference. I really liked it. I feel like it went well. Just enough love with the right amount of cane to make sure they stay obedient and working hard. Our zone has 24 missionaries and it is really hard to keep track of how they are working especially now that we have so few numbers. We have nothing to see their progress, we just have to trust what they say and wait for them to baptize. Sacred Saturday came around, sacred because it is the day we spend the whole day going by everybody to invite them to church and making plans for that. If they don´t come to church, they dont get baptized. We had a good few in church. We have sooo many potentials in this area, with alittle time and some work me and my old working companion elder Rodriguez should have a good amount of succes. We hear a lot of portugese here. We were even with some members in a house and one offered us some cake that looked alittle funky so I asked what it was and she said something that sounded like "a bok a shee" abacayi. I think. It sounded so familiar so I tried it and sure enough. Pine apple. It sounded familiar from Tucanos. The grilled pineapple. Yup. As zone leaders we are giving the responsibility to go around with the stake president to give capatication to the bishops about the new initiative. We´ve been doing alittle traveling this week but next week we should be going up to Chuy, a city that is half uruguay and half brazil. That should be interesting. 

A New Zone and Burnng Soccer Balls?

Well so much happened this week. I don´t even remember it all. I guess tuesday was p day so I just spent the whole day packing up. We went around in the afternoon to say goodbye to a few converts and members. The change bus came around at about 7 in the morning so I had to be outside waiting at 630. Changes were crazy as always. Even more so this time because I was given the responsibility of making sure that all of the bags of changing missionaries were out of our bus and the missionaries coming to our zone had their bags put into the correct bus. Elder Rodrigues gave me a hand full of papers that he said I had to read. Including a few rosters and schedules and information about the zone. I finally managed to get everybody on the bus and a moment to read my zone leader packet which tells me how to be a zone leader and my specific responsibilites. The bus ride lasted about 4 hours into the middle of nowhere. Triente y tres. 
I got there wednesday night and thursday morning we had a mini zone conference which had to be prepared that night and the following morning. A third of zone lives too far away to come to anything that isn´t a big zone conference so we did it without them. We have a great zone and we think we will have a lot of success. The area is great, the house is dirty and the companion is the same as he was the last 2 times we were together. 
We have a few potential baptisms coming up for this weekend if we can pull it all off. One is called Luis Alberto. He is so funny. He laughs at everything and his laugh is ridiculous. He isn´t the most wealthy guy on the block so the missionaries who were here before gave him a shirt and a tie and he showed up church on sunday looking like an executive. ohhh yeah. He felt so good. The only problem is that he smokes. So we are going to do everything we can to help him quit. He has already made a lot of progress. 
I really like this area so far. I can really see myself staying for a while. Tonight we have to get up at 1 in the morning to travel to montevideo to have the mission council. Which is president his assistents and all the zone leaders from the 13 zones in the mission. I´m excited to see how this all goes down. 
Well that´s about it for now. Just burning hot, we spent a few hours today playing soccer. I cant wait until the millenium and all the soccer balls are burned. A waste of time. 

Loves,.

Elder Webber