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