Stayin' Put

Yeah the shoes are perfect thanks. I just stacked the shoes on top of eachother, but it must have been a funky angle because the old shoe does look a lot bigger. But yesh, I am pretty happy to be staying with my oro. He´s a good guy and we had a great change together. I think, and am hoping that we´ll have a good amount of success this coming month. Changes were fun as always. My companion stayed and worked with another elder while I went to changes with the other district leader to get stuff for our district and for the leadership meeting. Got to see all the old boys, this was the first change where I knew most of the group that was going home. Sad stuff. Also, one of my companions from the MTC asked if I would extend my mission with him. About a week or two. I told him I would have to think about it. So we have a new zone leader as well, Elder Gutierez, so that means that we have to do our leadership meeting monday mornings in spanish now. haha oh well. I was pretty sad to see half of my district get changed out, they were working so well together, but the new district is pretty great as well. They changed my district up and now I have two elders who are working in an area called Barrio 14. So my district now is, Hermana Lanuza, Talbot, Denos, and Arriloga and Elders, Gordilla and morales. We´re going to have a good change. Friday we had a district meeting and it might have been my best so far. The zone leaders were in my meeting and said they were impressed. We walked by one of the borders of a red zone that we have in our area, we didn´t even go inside, and they started throwing rocks at us. Luckily, because they all play soccer, the latinos don´t have any hand eye coordination so they never even reach us. I almost forgot about thanksgiving. Good ole turkey. 

Kenny is going to Nicaragua? good luck. haha my last comp was from that place. that will be quite the experience. Of course, according to him, its the best country on the planet. So I guess we´ll see.

Well that´s about it, my companion has convinced me that I NEED a surpressor / silencer for my sig sauer. Sooooooo the papers for that take about 10 months. Just if you´re thinking about next years birthday present. haha. 

But really, thanks,

Elder Webber

photo, my comp got his first letter in the feild woohoo. 

New Shoes!

Yeah! I just got the shoe package this week! ahhh new socks and new shoes. Boy do those bad boys feel pretty good. And all the chocolates were appreciated. I would just have the box next to my desk during study hours and I would just eat a few here and there and they were gone in a couple of days.... oh well. Sounds all good at home. 
 This week was a good week. Keeps getting hotter so I keep getting sunburned. We had a double mission conference this week with Elder Christensen of the presidency of the seventy. A very learned man if I do say so myself. We really enjoyed that. He had some time after for some Q and A. Most of the questions were pretty garbage honestly, and alittle too much brown nosing. ¨how can I improve my studies¨ ok come on. But there were a few that were pretty good. This saturday we spent most of the day up in Belloni helping the zone leaders do their open house for their church. Really successful, but I was worried that spending a saturday up there would hurt our church attendance the next day. It didn´t really. We still had 5 in church. Santiago didn´t show up, lamentablemente. 3 of the other four can´t progress because they aren´t married and the last one is an investigator called Laticia who we have been working with for a good few weeks now, but every week something just mysteriously happens that made it impossible to come to church. Daughter gets sick, grandma dies, stuff like that. We were on the verge of dropping her as an investigator but we found her one more time and invited her and she showed up! woohoo. Then we invited her to be baptized again and set up another lession and it went really well. Shared the plan of salvation and she got all teary eyed and seems really excited for her baptism in two weeks. Hope it all turns out. 
Last night we spent at the zone leaders house so that we could be there when the changes came in. Change week. We didn´t think that the zone would be changed too much and we were wrong. Everything changed. Every companionship in the zone got changed except for ours. It will be a struggle these next coming weeks. We were doing so well as a zone, I don´t really understand why they would change the whole zone like that. oh well. We will just have to adapt and work harder. I think that´s about it. Not much happened this week. I´ll try to send some photos from this week too. 

Love,

Elder Webber

Happy New Year...

Yeah what a crazy week. I did get your package. I opened with my companion and zone leaders and they were all pretty confused to why I recieved a bunch of toys and stuff. But that was good so thanks. I will need to pin for my card though.... and I use the glasses straw thing, its pretty neat. Sounds like stuff is going pretty good back home. Good old jajiva. Tell the boys that the scope on my gun is loose and if they want to use it they should tighten it first. And tell ben to put my address of the mission offices on my facebook so the homies can write me. My missionary packet should be home and my address in there. 

Yes, what an awesome week, I shall start at the begining, It was a hot and humid night, as usual and I am awoken around midnight by a very large man banging his hands against the window that my bed is up against. Obviously I am startled and the man leaves the window and begins to make his way to our front door and I hear him trying to open the door! By now I am out of bed and have awoken my comp and have a broom stick as a weapon, see the light change in the kitchen, like a door or window just opened and so I look down the hall, and I see a large maybe, six foot six  dark figure standing in our kitchen. yes alittle heart attack, but it turned out to just be our laundry hanging on the line. My comp calls our neighbors and asks them to come over, once the man has left. Yes it was just the neighbor wanting to talk to us about lunch the next day. At midnight? ok. New years was fun. Food is always always sketchy. and the water, but we just eat and pray. mosquitos at night, or i think, they might be bed bugs because they dont itch, and i never see the mosquitos. Just covered in random red dots. My missionary tan is coming along quite nicely, and we had intercambios, which is where I go with a different companion for a day and a night. and I got to go with Elder Do Santos, Zone leader. He was super nice, and played rugby before the mish, learned so much because he could explain things in english, he was from argentina. We had a really fun night at an inactive members house playing this weird stacking mini chairs game. Oh and it rained this week! So I got to wear the cool sweater that I found in our appartment. And our investigators are doing well. We had almost all of them come to church this week, and one of them it was her second time coming, know what that means? Thats right, an investigator only needs to attend church twice to get baptized, so hopefully we can keep teaching her and maybe this week?! We have Pablo and Lorena, who are not married and ancient investigators, which means they just like talking to missionaries, and we have Evelyn and Ismel who we found last week, and Ricardo who is in a wheel chair, alittle weird, but he has a ton of faith, and then we have Mirta who is the one who might get baptized. And We had 4 of them come to church. woohoo. 

Package was nice, and yes, more g's, and alot of u.s. postage stamps, super glue would be nice and family photos! Email me some family photos too. 

I have a weird indent on one of my teeth, not sure what it is or where it came from but its there, I figure if my tooth falls out, dad promised I could get a silver one. so Yeah. 

Good stuff! Good to hear about ben and rugby going nicely, and joshua, aaron is still just chillin, tell aaron to make me a cd with all the best songs, like a power cd. I need good stuff. 

Much loves, 

Elder Webber

Lost on The Bus....

This week went by way too fast. Last week I asked my companion for a blessing because of the sickness and I was feeling substantially better. 
Monday was P day and we didn´t do a whole lot, just slept and cleaned the house, it was a normal week until thursday because we had the new Elder Conference in Carrasco. So we woke up early to catch a few busses to get to Carrasco in the morning. I really enjoyed that conference, especially because they had breakfast and lunch provided. I feel like my Oro learned some important things and I feel like I did a pretty good job training him so far, one more change and he´ll be ready to go. 
After the conference we had to go to Portones shopping mall to catch a bus, that´s the same place I did my emails for 12 weeks while I was in Carrasco. We went in to take a look and thought about buying some ties but we opted to not. Got alittle lost on the busses coming back home because we accidently took the wrong bus that took us to the other side of montevideo, luckily I had served there so I knew which one to take to get back on track. Then friday we had a zone conference and an intercambio so I spent that day and night in an area called Libia. They say its one of the more sketchy areas in the mission, but they don´t have anything on Bella Italia. haha. I was with Elder Cervantes from Peru for that day. Friday was aslso the same day I completed my first year in the mission! woohoo. and I just happened to get my birthday package that day! All thems candys are super good, so I have to share some with my companion, so thank you very much, and both of the singing cards functioned and I got both of Josephs letters which were pretty awesome. I will have to write some back today then.
Finally saturday we had a full day of work to invite our investigators to the church. We had a 5 investigators in church, 4 of which cannot progress because they aren´t married. Ugh. Uruguay, why do you do this to me? They´re working on getting married, but by the time they do I will be loooonnnng gone out of this area. That´s that, next wednesday is changes so we should see if I´m going anywhere, I really doubt it but thats ok. We should have the baptism of santiago this next tuesday, so like 9 days from now. We just need to find more investigators who want to progress and are married. 

Elder Webber

"Put a Date..."

Sure enough we are entering summer. And this week was HOT. I´m talking about sweat dripping down the back during lessions. Ugh. Not a whole lot happened this week with our progressing investigators. Friday we were looking good, we were expecting to have maybe 4 investigators in church on sunday and they had committed to coming and everything. 
Friday was also the first time for my companion that we had rocks thrown at us, by a full grown man and his teenage sons. I wish I could say that was my first time as well. Stay classy Bella Italia. This sunday was the voting for the new president here in Uruguay and the government uses the churches as voting houses so we had to travel to a city called Prosperidad. (prosperity) to have church. Of course that makes things complicated for the investigators and none of them ended up coming. The chapel was tiny over there and we had 3 wards there. It had one big room, about the size of the primary room, for the sacrament room, a kitchen which was the elders quorom and another room for the relief society. No air conditioning and we were in our suits. Wasn´t the best sunday of my life especially because we had no investigators in church. 
This voting this weekend killed the zone, and the mission. We have 4 more days to get the zone goal and it will be extrememly difficult. During this week, I think wednesday we had a fair amount of lessions fall through so we went to the apartment building. We said we would choose one building and one door to knock. We didn´t have much time before our next lession so we went up to the top floor, number 4 and knocked on a door. An old shirtless man answered with a ciggarette in his and and invited us in. We had a pretty solid lession and invited him to be baptized. Of course he accepted but now we are having trouble getting in contact with him again. That´s just the Uruguay lifestyle. Our zone plans are still the same, and I love them. Put a date with every ¨new¨ we find and have daily contact with them. It means we are inviting anywhere between 3 and maybe 7 people to be baptized every day. There is absolutely no reason they should not have a date to be baptized if they are willing enough to give you their address and a day to come back. So we do it and it works miracles. We have become quite the zone. 

Love,

Elder Webber

Happy Birthday "Elder Zach"

Its getting hotter here. I guess to start we had a multi zone conference on tuesday and so we had to travel back into montevideo city. It was great of course and then wednesday we had an intercambio with the zone leaders. The first intercambio of my companion. He really enjoyed it and I learned a bunch from Elder Bilson who is from Orem Utah as well. He went to Mountain View Highschool and we had some mutual friends. With the heat and the slowly progressing investigators the week got pretty long and the house needed a paint job in our room because of mold on the wall sooooooo we painted a giant american flag! Of course we weren´t given any extra time to paint it so it had to be done during our lunch hour or after we plan at night. But sure enough we worked and painted enough to have it finished for my birthday sunday. 
Saturday before my birthday we went to the market place and I bought myself a birthday treat, a half kilo of a wheel of cheese and some fruit preserve to eat on bread. It was really good. My old companion, Elder Williams, before he went home left me a package and I opened that up as well. A cool butterfly knife, my measuring spoons that I forgot in the last house and a photo of Nacho Libre. Pretty good birthday if I do say so myself. We only sang the star bangled banner a dozen times while we were painting our flag. Sadly, sunday we didn´t have any investigators come to church. Its frustrating when they seem to be making such good progress and then they let something little like visiting a friend keep them from coming to church and being baptized. Ugh. The hardest thing to get the investigators to do is get them to come to church. If they just come to church two times they´re already in the water. Right now we are working with a woman called Rusa, who is a friend of the converts here and she told us she wanted to be baptized the first lession we had with her which was with Elder Bilson. We walked away from that lession and he said ¨well that was the easiest baptismal date ever¨ but she didn´t come to church, sooooo. We have to postpone her date for the next week. We are also working with a little boy who is a child of a less active family. Our plan is to activate the family again and then baptize the kid. Completing families. 

My companion is doing great. We both love guns and we got on the topic one day in the street. He has convinced me to buy a silencer/compressor for my SIG. Its alot of paper work and about a year of waiting but I think its worth it. I don´t think much more happened this week. We are doing well, but we can do better. We have so many potentials who are just right there but have silly little things stopping them. We will see. 

20 years old! woohoo. 

Elder Webber

His New Elder has Arrived...

yesh yesh, what a week. Well my old comp packed up his stuff and we were ready to go. Tuesday we said goodbye to everybody and wednesday I had to be in Carrasco early. Dropped off my companion with some other elders with his stuff and then I headed off into the city, alone. Man was that pretty creepy. It was still dark in the morning and I had to catch a bus and find my way to the trainers training meeting. The meeting was great, more or less it was just the assistants telling to be good examples for our new companions and make sure they don´t get too stressed out and want to go home. Then the newbies came into the living room of presidents house, which is where we were. All looking pretty confused. And what to my wondering eyes do apear but 18 new missionaries who all speak english. Yesssss. I was really hoping I would get an english speaker. Then president stands up in front and calls up a trainer and has him point to a big map of Uruguay where we serve then he calls up his new companion and they hug and what not. So I point to Bella Italia and president calls up Elder Olsen as my companion. What a guy. Came straight from the MTC in provo which made me worry about his spanish skills but turns out he studdied for a good 4 years in highschool and speaks very well. Phew. His bags got lost in the miami airport so that made things easier. In terms of moving around. We got lunch and headed to changes. I had to go into a leadership meeting so my comp had to stay outside with a bunch of missionaries that he didn´t know but he did fine. Hop on the bus and we get to Bella Italia and thats quite the culture shock. Elder Olsen is from Kansas City, the Kansas side. I don´t think he was expecting something like Bella Italia. We had a good couple of days and friday we had a trip to Pando again because I had to do a baptismal interview. Sunday was hectic. We had do our confirmations for the baptisms that happened the last couple of weeks and we had to care for our investigators who came and the bishop wanted to talk to us. It was a lot to do. But we survived. I feel some what bad for my companion because he got here right after we had that baptizing spree and we´re in a dry-spell right now, I´m sure if we keep working we´ll get success. He reminds a lot of Cole Pendleton. He even looks like him from a profile view of his face. He´s a good worker and wants to do all he can, which is good, even if it is just alittle. Training is hard, and so is being district leader, and both at the same time is complicated. I´ll try to include a photo of my son. 

Love,

Elder Webber