September 22, 2014

YoO

Hey what's up everybody?? Real quick I want to wish Grandpa Webb good luck in his surgery this week. I'll be thinking about you tons, Grandpa! And Gradnpa Garrick sounds like he's making a good recovery which really makes me really happy. Thoughts and prayers with the both of you.

Glad to hear everything is going well at home. Things out here are going great! Loving the work and this area more and more every day. We had a good week overall. It was a little tough in some ways, but we hung in there and were able to see 7 investigators in church this week!! We were super excited about that.

We had zone conference on Tuesday with President Jordan with our zone and the other zone of Elders that are in this area. Man, it was a great meeting!! He talked to us a lot about diligence and success and hard work. He pointed out that our zones are working really hard and doing really well, but we had been declining as of late. He talked about how "the distance from where we are now compared to the success that we desire, is only a small thing", and he talked about how it's really the small and simple things that make the difference. It was a really cool conference, I felt really good about it and felt like I learned a lot.

We've got a lot of good investigators that are progressing right now! Jesus didn't get baptized this weekend, we felt it better to wait until this coming weekend so he could be a little better prepared. But he's doing really well so we're still excited for him.

Marisol, (the sister of Angelica who just got baptized a month ago), is also super excited to get baptized the 11th of October! We actually had a really cool experience with her this week. She had accepted a baptismal date about two weeks ago, I don't know if I ever mentioned that, but we realized that, being under the age of 18, she needed permission from her parents to be baptized. She lives with Abimael and Angelica, and her parents live like and hour away. But her parents are Catholic and do not want any of their kids changing religion. All of them told us how stubborn and tough they are and how they will NEVER give her permission to get baptized. But, the thing was, if she wanted to get baptized, she needed permission from her parents. So, we gave her a priesthood blessing, and did a fast, and prayed and prayed that their hearts would be softened to let her get baptized. At first, the answer from her parents was no, but, sure enough, as she kept sharing her feelings with them and what she really desired, their hearts were softened, and they gave her permission to get baptized. We were so pumped!!!! It was such a big blessing to see that this week. My testimony continues to grow about the power of faith and prayer and priesthood blessings!!

I got your package this week. Those garments and shirts were much needed. Almost as much as I needed those Peachy-O's. Thank you. :) Hope you guys have an excellent week!! Love you all to death.

Elder Webb

Sept. 15, 2014

HEEEEEEEEEyYYOOOOOOO

Wassup famm!!

Man this week was a great week. First and foremost, I'm so glad to hear everyone is doing well, and that Dad and Cam live up at the deer club now. Oh, and quick --s/o to my boy Dillon Headen "big red" for getting a taste of the deer club. I'd better be getting some sweet pics next week! Alright so now that that's out of the way.... This week was great! We got a lot of things done, and continue to see miracles daily. So many people are prepared to receive this gospel. My testimony continues to grow about that. My new companion and I are working super hard and are getting along just great. I'm absolutely loving it :) 

It has been raining a tooooon though. It always gets bad here in September. The good thing is that we're like on the side of a mountain in this area so there aren't many big puddles of water and our house is on the second floor so I'm pretty sure we're not gonna get flooded this year :)

On Tuesday this week I did divisions with and Elder Pantoja from Colombia. I learned a lot from him, he's like 26 years old and he barely got baptized like 2 years ago! He's really a humble guy and we had a good time together. We were invited by the branch president to accompany him and a few others from the branch to go and visit a member family that lives in one of the bazillion native communities outside of the city. so we traveled out to visit them because they haven't been to church in a long time. Man, I thought that being here in this city was humbling but to take a trip out to there was even more so. These people live just off the land and in super humble conditions. It was a good experience and an absolutely beautiful place to visit.

We've been working a lot with one of our investigators named Jesus to get baptized. He's ready and he's been to church a bunch of times with us, but he just needs a little more time to stay away from some addictions that he had. If he keeps clean and everything, we're hoping to be able to baptize him this week. We also had a really good experience with Marisol, Angelica's (the wife of Abimael, that just got baptized) sister this week. We taught her about the Restoration of the Gospel, and from the get go it was just a spiritual visit. As I shared Joseph Smith's first vision, the spirit was so strong. We all felt it, and in that moment, we invited her to be baptized. Without hesitation, she said yes. We were soo pumped!!!! The spirit is honestly so important in everything that we do as missionaries and members of the church. I've learned that time and time again in my mission. We should do everything possible to always have the spirit with us.

Well, Family, I love you guys so much and am so thankful for your support each and every day. Have an awesome week. ¡VIVA MEXICO! (tomorrow is Mexican Independence Day) :)

Elder Webb

September 8, 2014

Wassup Fam!

Glad to hear everyone is doin well!! And dang, Cam, I'm so pumped that you took 7th at Antigua! That's awesome!! Just gotta work on finishing strong eh? ;) And that's awesome to hear about Lindsey teaching her class. 

Things are really going well here. I am honestly, like, way excited for the direction that things are going right now. We got a surprise this week though, we had special transfers! They changed my companion out of the area and now I'm with a new companion named Elder Espino. The change was way unexpected, and Elder Hernandez was really sad to leave, but Elder Espino and I get along just great and we are really working hard here! This week, we had a lot of success in teaching and finding people to teach and preparing people for baptism. I feel like we're seeing miracles left and right here. Abimael and Angelica are doing grreeeat!! Abimael recently received the Aaronic priesthood, and yesterday he and I blessed the sacrament together. It was a really cool experience! 

One of the biggest blessings that we're seeing right now is that a lot of Abimael and Angelica's family are progressing as well! Yesterday, for example, Abimael's brother Kike, and Angelica's sister Marisol both came to church. They are both starting to get real excited about the church! Kike is a little rebellious but we're workin on it haha. We were gonna have Jesus' baptism this week but he's got just a few things we gotta work on so that he's right ready for his baptism. But he is just great. Such a sincere guy. Yesterday, he even decided that he would get up and bear his testimony! He's a great example to me of how much someone can change if they put their mind to it and if they seek the guidance of our Heavenly Father.

Like I said, we had a few really special experiences this week. I really believe that God is putting prepared people in our path. Yesterday we were leaving church and we passed by a little park bench area and this guy calls after us. I honestly thought to myself, "Oh great, probably someone else who wants to argue about doctrine or something like that. A little reluctantly, we walked over to him. He started to talk to us about how not so long ago he had met other missionaries in a different city, and that as he saw us passing by, he was really curious as to what it is that we do. He said that he is really open to religion and was very very interested when we told him about the Book of Mormon. He told us that he was definitely gonna read it, and we have an appointment this week to go back and teach him. But, the story doesn't stop there! Towards the end of our little chat we had with this guy, another guy from behind comes up and sits down next to me and he asks, seeing the Book of Mormon, "Is that the New Testament?" and so I thought to myself this time, "Alright, if this first guy didn't want to debate about religion, this guy definitely does." But he started to tell me how he was in prison for about 4 years, and that he had found the Book of Mormon and it really helped him to forgive those who did him wrong and he said that thanks to the Book of Mormon, he left the prison a better man. We also set up an appointment with him to teach him a little more about the church. :) 

Just little things like that have been happening this week but I know that when we are constantly doing our best and working our very hardest, God blesses us. I really believe that if we put forth our best effort, God will bless us, often in ways that we could not have imagined.

THanks for everything family!! You know that you're the best family in the world and I love you all. Have a great week and enjoy this pic of me with a stuffed Mexican jalapeño. Peace!

Elder Webb

September 1, 2014

HEEEEEEEY

Man, sounds like things are moving right along back home. Glad to hear Lindsey is doing well out in Mass. and that she's happy. We had a weird week this week... we just kinda felt out of rhythm the whole week! We got a lot of good things done and had some good experiences, just felt a little out of rhythm.

We did have to go to Tampico this week, which is always fun but especially where we're at right now, it's a little bit of an interruption to the work in our area. We had a meeting with all the rest of the leaders from the mission with President Jordan. It was a great meeting! Very spirit packed. Sister Jordan, President's wife, said something at the beginning of the meeting that was really interesting to me and it helped me grasp my calling as a missionary a little more. She said that we are all humble servants of God, and as humble servants of God, we don't deserve ANYTHING for ourselves. I really believe that's true, and I guess I'm trying to become a more humble servant of God. haha.

I learned a little bit better this week the importance of sticking it out until the end of every day. On Saturday we were just having one of those tough days. No one that we had planned to visit was home, not even the member family that had planned to feed us was home for our lunch appointment! haha. It was just one of those days. We had hoped to be able to find a few new investigators that day, but everything was just fallin through. But, I kept tellin myself and my companion that we were gonna be able to find a new investigator by the end of the day. So we stuck with it. We left our last planned appointment at 8:15 at night, and with no other plans, and still without having found any new investigators, we were about ready to call it a day. But we kept walking and decided to go visit a less active member that lived a couple blocks away. On our way there, my companion looked down one of the side streets and saw that the car of a former investigator named Yovani was in the driveway. Neither of us had ever met him before but we new that at one time he listened to the missionaries. So we decided, what the heck, we'll go check it out. So we show up, he was super excited to see us, and he started to tell us how his life has been missing something ever since he stopped talking to the Elders a while back. He was super receptive to the teaching and accepted a date to be baptized. I know now that many times, God waits until the 4th watch to answer our prayers. But he does answer them. Like Thomas S. Monson once said, "Bread cast upon the water returns often times only after a few days. But it does return."

I love you guys so much and I thank you for all your prayers and support!! Good luck, Cam, this week in your tournament and Dad--good luck on the elk hunt this week!!

Elder Webb