Went to the temple...

Well, I dont have a whole lot of time, usually we have more time but right now   I´m in chuy again so we gotta get goin if we want to catch the bus home to 33. This week was nutty. Even more stuff to do. Monday was normal and so was tuesday until about 3 in the afternoon when the whole zone came to our church so that we could take a bus to montevideo. I swear, sometimes trying to get 22 missionaries to show up ontime and get on the bus is like herding cats. Ugh. Well we finally showed up to the temple tuesday night at about 9 and nobody was there to greet us like we were told. So I figured, well we´ll just do it ourselves. So we went to the hotel thing that is there by the temple that is owned by the church and we checked us in for the night. More organizing and assigning room captains and stuff like that. Trying to choose the most mature of the groups to be the captains. Finally at about 10 the secretaries showed up with some sandwhiches and then we went to bed. We still didn´t know anything, except for the fact that we would have a conference that day and we would go to the temple afterwards. No idea for breakfast or what times so we just woke everybody up at 630, (we kept a copy of the keys to all the rooms) and we studied while we waited for instructions. The assistants called us and told us to go to the church where there was breakfast and where we would start the interviews with president. So there were two groups, half the zone and half the zone. The first half, lead by my companion went to the temple while my half had their interviews and the conference. I had to organize the interviews and make sure there was always somebody waiting outside presidents office to be interviewed. That wasn´t too hard but I missed a lot of the conference. Then it was our turn to go to the temple and I was the last one for the interview. Man, president is an inspired man. Some super awesome doctrine he shared and he let me know that the zone feels like their zone leaders love them. So that´s good, that makes me feel like I´m doing my job pretty well. President seemed pretty happy with how we were doing. Anyways, these last couple of weeks, president has told us to do some family history work for ourselves, so I searched and searched and searched on my tree and finally found somebody who had all the information and was ready to go to the temple. So I printed off the barcode thing and took that to the temple with me. I showed up late to the temple because I was last so I really had to run and change quickly and jump into the baptism with another elder, elder Carroll from arizona. He baptized me for my ancestor and I baptized him for his ancestors then we hopped out and confirmed eachother right there and then. Then we did all the ordinances up to sealing because we can´t do sealings as missionaries. It was so cool doing temple work for an ancestor. That was the first time I´ve actually done that for someone in my tree I think. Super cool. We sent the zone home in a bus and we went to the offices so my companion could take an english test. I think he did well, we´ll probably find out today. Then we caught a bus, but not back to 33, but to Chuy! We got in chuy at about 4 in the morning thursday. The elders had given us their keys and we gave them ours because they would be stopping in 33. So we got to their house before them and slept there until they got there. I did an interview before lunch and then we spent money, like I always do when I´m in chuy. That brazillian stuff, tempting. Anyways, we got back to 33 late thursday night and worked normal from then until sunday. We only had those couple days to work in our area, but we have new potential investigators. One is the husband of one of the firmest members here. He is straight gaucho. That´s like cowboy. He is legit. He has had all of the lessons before from other missionaries but never wanted to come to church because he is a pretty timid guy. We´ll get him. Anyways, today we had a zone activity here in chuy, it is so hot, really the zone just wanted a reason to come and see brazil. We were pretty stuborn these last 6 weeks and denied all the requests to go on P days. Finally we figured we would give them the day here, but they gotta be back working in their area before 6 in the afternoon. So that´s why I´m in a rush to write this. 

Elder Webber

A Baptism...

Wooohooo (Ben's called to Angola) Africa huh? That´s pretty crazy. Just imagine ben in the jungle, sweating like a fool hahaha. He´ll do great. I´m going to have to study how to say landmine in spanish so I can tell the members. 
This week went by so fast. So much has changed now too. I´m just gunna get going from monday. A pretty normal day and and we got to bed about 1030 and woke up at 2 to get on a bus to montevideo again for another mission leadership council. Got there at 8, breakfast, meeting, lunch, meeting and we ended at about 6 in the afternoon. Basically whats going on is this. Before president Cook got here almost a year ago, we had some pretty hard presidents. The mission and the members got into this "baptize at all costs" kind of attitude. Which produced thousands and thousands of... less actives. The retencion rates were about 20 percent. Then president cook came in and one of his assistants was an elder who left the mission as a baptizing legend. This gave president the impression that we were just about baptisms so that is what he focused on for a few months. But then things started to change and the mission as a whole changed and now our retention rates are better and improving. We might not be baptizing as much, but we are baptizing a lot better. Now we know HOW to baptize all we need to do now is do it faster. So in the council all we talked about was how we can do this. Help the missionaries really to under DC 20:37 and really apply it to their work and their investigators. So we changed the requirments to be baptized here in the mission. Now instead of coming to the SACREMENT meeting TWICE, they have to come to ALL THREE HOURS at least THRICE. Only then can the missionaries start to analize their investigators to see that they meet the requirements found in DC 20:37. Its a good change, but already we have seen a huge decrease in urgency and "fruits". So that was fun, we got on a bus at about 11 that night and headed home. Got home at 4 in the morning, slept two hours and got up to work that wednesday. Probably one of the most physically demanding days of my mission. 
From monday morning until wednesday night we had maybe a total of 6 hours of sleep. We prepared our information to present in the zone conference and I feel like the 22 missionaries took it really well. That was friday, we also had our baptismal interview for Natasha, the niece of Daniel, who just got baptized, which went well, and then we prepared everything saturday, baked a cake to share after, and had her baptism sunday afternoon. I´m not gunna lie, probably one of the most spiritual moments in my mission. 
So listen to this, the opening prayer was by Anthony (her cousin and recent convert), then I had to come up with a talk on baptism on the spot because the member didn´t show up, then a talk on the holy ghost by Stella (her aunt and recent convert) then she was baptized by Daniel (her uncle and recent convert) then we watched some inspiracional videos while they changed and she shared her testimony and started crying, so Daniel and Stella started crying, then they hugged and all the members were crying. It was great. Closing prayer by Jean or Ian (cousin and recent convert). Natasha has been waiting soooooo long to be baptized, she is 12 years old and really has a strong testimony in the church and with so many family members who are members, they are all going to stay active for the rest of their lives, I´m pretty positive. A good day. A good week. 

I think that´s about it for this week. I can´t really think of anything else that happened. Oh yeah, I got the package with the mug in it. haha That´s pretty legit. So thanks for that. I´m running out of room in my journal, I gotta find a new one. 

Elder Webber

photos of the baptism and rodriguez doing the baptism dance. 

A Great Discussion...

Well anyways, this week was up and down and everything. It didn´t start too well, last monday after I wrote you guys we got a call from the secrataries asking where we were. What do you mean? We are in 33 like we always are. Oh, because right not we are having a zone leader coucil with Elder Viñas from the quorom of the 70 here in montevideo. Ughhhhh...... Nobody told us anything. So we missed that oppurtunity to learn from a 70 in a small group of elders so that we could really get some personal interaction. I feel bad because I got alittle upset with the secretaries and they just said that it wasn´t their fault that they had nothing to do with it. So when the assistants to the president called I was pretty ready to ¨drop the cane¨ as they here in Uruguay. But they recognized that it was their fault and asked forgiveness for their lack of organization. O.K. Fine, I forgive you. We did get to have a multi-zone conference with elder Viñas the next day and he breifly reviewed more or less what they went over in the mission council. He knows his scriptures and told us basically that right now in the world we are just baptizing future less active members and apostates. We learned alot. I did an intercambio with one of the elders here in our zone, he´s been giving us some problems with the members and leaders, we had to sit down and just talk alittle. I dont enjoy doing it, but it has to be done. This friday we went in the morning to teach Susana, a woman we found a couple weeks ago and she basically taught herself.

¨What is a prophet?¨she started

so we taught her.

¨and then Jesus came right?¨

yup, so we taught her that.

¨wait what happened to this so called church he set up?¨

well if you´ll give a minute we´ll explain. so we did. 

¨so we need to see some kind of restauracion of the true church then¨

well about the year 1820....

¨can´t I just pray and find out if its true too?¨

yes you can. 

¨right now?¨

yeah I have faith. lets do it now. 

That´s the watered down version of our lesson. she started praying and didn´t even make it past ¨our dear Heavenly Father¨ before she started crying. She said she would come to church. Then saturday we went to another investigators house who has some kind of cholesterol build-up in her leg veins so she can´t really walk, well we figured we would give her a blessing, in which we said that she would be able to walk to church the next day. She said she was feeling alot better afterwards but then satan had to come in and ruin everything and send some close relatives to visit her and keep her from coming to church.

In the end we had a good 3 investigators in church. They should be getting baptized pretty soon. We´ll see how it all turns out. That´s about it for now. 

Love,

Elder Webber 

Having Fun...

Well, this week was pretty normal, not a whole lot going on. I can´t really remember what all happened this week. This thursday night we played alittle prank on one of the elders in our house. We were talking about scary stories during lunch and so we figured that after they left we would come back for five minutes and set something up. We hung a little chunk of plastic from a fishing string outside the kitchen window and wove the string through the house all the way to my bed. haha. Then when the night came and we were all in bed I would tug on this bad boy and it would sound like something banging/scratching on the window. And when he got up to see who it was he wouldn´t see anybody. Ah it was so simple, but so good. The three of us were laughing so hard afterward. We didn´t tell him until the morning and he got pretty offended. He´s still pretty grumpy about it. Friday morning we went to Chuy again, up by Brazil. We had to do an interview up there so we took advantage of the situacion and also did some divisions with the missionaries in their area up there. We have a lot of investigators with a lot of potencial and we just need to get them to come to church once more and finish teaching them the lessons, but satan is working hard. Making flat tires (bettina couldn´t come because her motorbike had a flat) and convincing our investigators to go watch Carnaval and stay out until 4 in the morning and sleep through church(luis). A pretty hard week. a pretty hot week too.

I´ll try to send some photos, last time it didn´t work. 

Thanks

Elder Webber

A Wedding and a Baptism...

To start, wednesday were the changes and we traveled to montevideo for that. A pretty normal meeting, nothing new. We got the elders and sisters that were coming to our zone and put them on the bus and left. I got to talk to elder england, and elder taylor on the way. My ex comps. Theyre doing really well, which made me happy. Thursday morning we woke up and put on our fancy clothes, yeah, because we had a wedding to attend. 10 in the morning and we left to go to the court house to be at the wedding of Daniel and Stella. In a tiny little back basement room, with the florecent light bulb, they got married. I have some photos that I will try to send. The whole deal only lasted about 20 minutes. They signed some papers and the witnesses signed some papers then they kissed and we threw rice at them. The next day was their baptism, friday the 13th. Actually one of the best days ever. In the morning they came to the church to have an interview with president and came out crying. I dont know how he does it, but hes good at it. They were really excited for their baptism so President bought us all hamburgers! yeah! The missionaries who found Daniel and Stella got to come back here from their areas to participate in the baptism. It was one of the most spiritual baptisms Ive ever participated in. They were crying, their kids were crying, the bishop was crying. It was great. They were so happy. Afterwards we had some cake and chips to celebrate and it was all good. That was friday and saturday was a normal day work. Nothing really new to report there, and sunday was good and normal too. We did have a miracle show up in church. A man just wandered in and said that his wife had died about 2 months ago and he said that needed to come to church. Well, do we have the thing for you! Really nice old man, about 70 years old. We invited him to be baptized on the spot and he accepted. We will see how that goes. We have a lesson with him tomorrow. Hopefully he makes it. Sunday we went out to the little part called Villa Sara again. We actually went on the mission map on the website and used the distance tool to see how far it is. 5.2 kilometers to our investigators house. so 10.4 total. Thats like 6 miles. One hour walking out there, 30 minute charla, and one hour walking back. Hopefully that pays off. We do have a really nice investigator out there called Bettina. 

I dont really have a whole lot more, or at least I cant remember right now. 

Love, 

Elder Webber

A "Busy Boy..."

Well this week was really eventful. 

Monday of course was p day and we didn´t do a whole lot. Just the usual, clean the house, grocery shop and laundry. We went to bed at 1030 and woke up at 1:30 to go catch our bus to montevideo. 

Tuesday morning we got to montevideo right on time, 8:50, ten minutes early for the leadership council. Breakfast and then we got started. Everything in the meeting went perfectly. There has a big thing recently about how we receive our weekly alottage of money. It used to be once a month, then they changed it to half the amount everything 15 days. O.k, that´s fine. But of course we get missionaries who complain because now they have to pay twice to take their money out. Well nobody ever said you HAVE to take it out every 15 days, you can wait a whole month if you want, or two or whatever. That ended that topic pretty quickly because everybody realized it was true. Time saved. They also changed the way we set our goals. It used to be just the number of areas that every zone has and that would be our goal. Not a whole lot of revelation involved. So we changed it back, yesssssss. The mission has been missing the urgency that we used to have and this new change brings it all back. Yes. Lunch and then we have to give a report of how our zone did, we did really well this month, so no worries. We helped everybody pack up and clean up and we were finally out of there at about 7 in the afternoon. Enough time to catch a bus to our old house in carrasco, put one baptismal fecha with a woman in the street and buy some yogurt. 

Wednesday we woke up early to go use some gym down the street. The missionaries there are teaching the owner so he let us use it for free. I figured, yeah I´m still in shape. So I picked up some weights and couldn´t walk for the rest of the day. Good stuff. Then I went out with Elder Taylor, my companion in the MTC to go work in my old area! That was so much fun! We enjoyed that so much, and I got to go see Sandra who me and Elder England baptized when I was in that area. Her son came out, saw me, and yelled to his mom, ¨mom you have no idea who is here!¨ It was so good to see her again, she is doing really bad with her health, she has parkingsons and has lost a ton of weight and shaking way worse than when we baptized her. ahh. We went home, had lunch and then went to the temple to meet MIRTA! wooohooo. She is doing super well! We went in the temple and got to be in the session with her. That was so awesome! and I got to see my trainer, elder contreras again. He goes home tomorrow. So that is kinda crazy. We caught a bus back to 33 and got home about 1 in the morning thursday. 

The weekend was great, had 8 investigators in the church, 2 that should have been baptized this week, Daniel and Stella. They needed that question 4 interview, so what did we do? we gave the assistants a 2 week heads up on that so that they can be baptized the same day as their wedding and they just called us half an hour ago to tell us that they can´t come. ughhhhh. Well their baptism was going to be this thursday and now we have to tell them they can´t be married and baptized on the same day. That will be a hard lession but I´m sure they will understand. 

Yesternight the changes came in and so we got to go to the cyber to print them off. Man I was so nervous they were going to take me out of here and away from Rodriguez. We work so well together and we are having so much fun and so much success. Thankfully when they came it said that we would be staying together and next to it in the notes section it said ¨you´re just too cute together.¨ we got a good laugh out of that. 

Well anyways, that´s about it here in 33. Looks like I´ll be ¨killing¨ elder rodriguez. Finishing what we started almost a year ago back in El Pinar (autodromo) good stuff. Thanks for the package, that will be appreciated. 

Love,

Elder Webber

Busy, Busy... And Going to the Temple...

This week was went by fast, again. Nothing special even happened, just working in our area. We didn´t even do any intercambio with the district leaders or anything. We have a little part of our area, I think I told you guys, its called Villa Sara. It takes forever to get there and there are no buses. At the very far end of this little place we have an investigator called Betina. It takes about an hour to get there, have a quick charla and then walk all the back. Its ridiculous. So that takes most of the morning usually. Worth it of course, because she came to church with her little girl who is 5 years old. At first the little girl hated us, we tried everything to make her like us, even making little oragami stuff but she would just destroy it. Finally she warmed up to us and we think they both enjoyed the church. Well we hope so. I guess we will find out when we go visit her again. Which will be thursday because this next week is going to be so busy. 
Listen to this, today is p day and tonight at about midnight we will have to leave to montevideo again and get there at about 6. We have council that whole day then we will stay in our old house in Carrasco for the night. Its funny, because me and my companion were there together and now we are going back. We will say hello to my convert and help the missionaries out there for half a day because..... I´m going to the TEMPLE with Mirta! yeah. My first convert!. She is finally going. This wednesday at 4 in the afternoon. We´re so excited. 
Anyways, the bishop decided he wanted to call me and my companion as ward secretaries so we might have that calling by next week as well. I´m looking forward to that, something new. 
This change, the last 6 weeks, went by sooooo fast. And now my companion is going to be in his last this next week. Crazy, I was with him when he hit a year in my first area. That just seems like last week. Oh well. 
We have some really great investigators called Daniel and Stella. They´ve been taught by the missionaries for about 6 months now because they had to get married. They come to church everyweek and they are basically members already. Well, they have a date to get married the 12th of February. Which is a day after changes. We hope we are both here for that. We went over the baptismal questions with them and they are all good except the wife has a problem with question number 4..... but we know how to take care of it. Testify of the atonement and of the repentance process, express our love and concern for them and assure them that we will do all we can to help them get to their baptism. and as it says in the instruction book ¨do not promise that they will be baptized.¨ I dont have any doubt that she will be baptized, but it´s just the rules. 
Just really amazing to see the power of the atonement working up close and personal with the people. She really came to know that she can be forgiven for the things she did in the past. Cool experience indeed. 
Well I think that´s about it for now. It´s going to be a pretty great week.

Love,

Elder Webbe