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