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