Last E-mail... :-(

Short and sweet, in the mission office, just ended my last interview.....very sad...sad stuff indeed. Not excited to come home. Before I´m realesed we need to drop by the MTC, I want to see Josh while I´ve still got my missionary badge on. 

:D got the pacakge here, everybody liking the berty botts beans :D

 

See you in a bit....

Elder *sad camper* Webber

2nd-to-last Week!

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

Focus...focus...focus...focus...focussssssssss.......

calm...calm...breathe.....ahhhh!!!!!!!!

I´m so tired....

Yeah, monday we met a dude from africa, he´s pretty cool, went to church with us on sunday, he clicks his tounge when he talks cuz he´s mixing his tribal language with portuguese. 

I convinced a family on tuesday that I´m from Rio Grande do Sul, a state in brasil... and they didn´t find out until Elder Boyne told them I was american at the end...laaaaame. 

Also, while I was on division with Elder Pires the other day in his area, we met and taught a guy and his two kids... apparently he really liked me and asked if i could baptize him this saturday, haha, SWEEEET!!   This was what I was waiting for, I only needed one more baptism to meet my goal and The Lord blesses me in the last week to  baptize a guy in another area, awesome :D

Bruno passed the sacrament for the first time Sunday, I´m so happy to see him going to church alone and being a part of the branch, he went to church with us after, so it was a party with all the branch boys. I´m gonna miss Bruno the most when I leave this area.

Yes, as a matter of fact i do have a ring collection, and each one has a story :D

Also, I´ve learned that on the mission, the best days always end up with the most paperwork in the end.

I´m getting ready to leave the front lines and come back to Babylon.... get tactical! Hoo-Rah!

I saw the numbers for the whole zone today, a zone that includes 3 cities and 24 missionaries....I´m working with a bunch of slackers! I'm doing more work that any of the other leaders, including the assisstants and blowing the normal companionships out of the water... and I thought that this week wasn´t very productive in my area.... my my, I´d be ashamed of myself if I were any of the other missionaries here. Except one other companionship, they´re doing pretty good :D  *THIS AINT NO KINDERGARDENERS IN THE SANDBOX!!*

*Do you think the phillips screwdriver was named after a guy named Phillip? Dude, that Phillip must have had a messed-up shaped head!*

-Red vs. Blue

Love you all!! see you in a bit.

Elder Webber

P.S. Some members in the Planalto area liked me so much that they sent me a going-away present :D hahahaha

A "Peachy" week

*It happened on one of them zippadee-do-da days. It´s one of those days when you can´t open your mouth without a song coming right out of it....*

We baptized again... wooo!!! We baptized Tiago sunday morning, it was a battle to help his mom decide to sign his sheet and let him baptize, but she finally signed it on friday, wooo! we could tell she really wanted too, but she just needed that extra push, just a little more help to get over her fears. we left an amazing message with her on wednesday that really got her thinking and finally got her to say yes on friday, oh yeeeeaaah. so he got baptized in the giant tub of water in the chapel, and he and Lucia both got confirmed in sacrament meeting, and Lucia even bore her testimony, good times indeed.

fotos:

1-us and Thiago

2. again

3. Reyler and Thiago 

4. another photo from last week, Lucia´s baptism :D

Well.. other news from this week, the mission changed our telephone service provider. from Vivo to Claro, and WE ALL GOT NEW CELLPHONES... oooooooh. very shway. I deleted all the games off it when i got it..... so i don´t have to keep an eye on my companion so much.

Tuesday my whole district went to Tibery to give Elder Dos Santos a hand, we just knocked doors all day, found a bunch of people for him to teach... I feel bad for him, he´s stuggling a bunch. However, last week three companionships from my district baptized, this week was two, this next week seems like 3 will baptize again, (including mine). YEAH go district Tocantins!!   So things are going quite peachy, I think we may be able to baptize every week of this month in my area... it´s been a while since this branch has had so many baptisms. Even president was blown away at how little success this branch has had. haha. booyah. We´re gonna baptize Bruno this week, we´ve helped him stop drinking, drinking coffee, and out of depression, he´s way happier now, and pumped to be baptized. :D

I´m butting heads a little bit with the local assistant cuz he´s messing with my district, leaving everybody stressed, and stepping on toes, but we´ll work it out.

Wow, I loved the emails in response to my last.  Got me thinking indeed. Though I still don´t think I´m gonna be fully prepared to come home...

Totally gonna sign up for a frequent flyer card, 

*you ever heard of Plato? Aristotle? Socrates?*

*yes*

*morons*

LOVE YOU ALL!! see ya in a bit.

ELDER WEBBER

A "COOL" Week!

So yeah.

This week was cool. Best news:  WE BAPTIZED WOO!!!! Lucia finally got baptized in between the two sessions on Sunday.   Good times.   The zone leaders and another companionship also baptized at the same time.  So nearly my whole district has baptized already, oh yeaaaah.  Started off the month pretty good indeed.  Also, our baptisms happened on the day the first rain of the rainy season came, wooo!!  Come on shoes! you can hold up a little while longer.....

Went on division with Elder Mos on Tuesday, went to his area to help him out a bit, close the deal on some of his baptisms. Not too shabby. It´s nice when I announce that something is gonna happen, like a division, and everyone just says *sure!*.  Things go along much more smoothly.

My eyes had been bothering me all last week... until I finally looked on the side of my saline bottle.. and realized it had expired in August.... that would explain alot of things, so I bought a new bottle and all is well.

photos:

1. us with lucia

2. everyone being baptized with those doing the baptisms.... and me!

3. Elder Grandy helping me out. :D

I was with Elder Pires, zone leader, this weekend so he could do a few interviews for us this weekend. Lucia´s and Brunos, Lucia passed (duh) and was baptized, but Bruno will have to wait a bit more, he´ll be baptized on the 15.  Sweet. I was dieing of nervousness running around trying to get the deat-beat members to help us out and take our investigators to the stake center to watch conference, that didn´t work out too well. grrrr! lazy lazy lazy.  But either way I LOVED general conference, I missed the priesthood session, cuz it was 8:00 in the morning (and we were busy), and threw a wrench into all our plans. so i´ll read it when the liahona comes out.  However.... during the general sessions... talk after talk after talk kept pounding the same message into my heart and spirit.... no matter what the subject was it seemed like the Spirit was trying to tell me one thing.  "Get prepared" so what do i do?  I look up at heaven and say *alright, I understand*   I had sort of the same experience while on division with Elder Mos, we were talking with a member, reading some scriptures, talking about some things... then me and Elder Mos looked at each other cuz we were both feeling the same thing: This world isn´t going to last for much longer.  The Spirit testified to us at the same time, and neither one of us could deny what we were talking about, or what we felt, I can´t really write about it here. But as we were walking back home we both talked about how important it is to us now to get our food storage in order when we get back and to ALWAYS pay our tithing, and to really listen with our spiritual ears when we listen to the prophet, like I did this weekend......I learned alot more than what he was just saying.   It was an experience I can´t really describe.... we were both speachless as we left the house.

Another member told us that when we came to his house that he knew we were coming.  Cuz he had woken up from his nap and seen an unclean spirit chillin in his house, but suddenly it perked  up and ran away as fast as possible.   And he thought: *the missionaries are coming*

Every missionary changes on the mission... but the changes I´m seeing happen during these last 2 weeks... and that I can see will yet happen... have surprised (and pleased) me.

We got a few baptisms lined up for this month, a few more district meetings to rally up the troops. I´ve called the whole district to work in Tibery on Tuesday, to help out Elder Dos Santos there, cuz its been a while since he´s baptized. LETS DO WORK!

LOVE YOU ALL! good luck Josh.

*Boys, don´t be stupid*

-Coach Smyth

Rockin' Along...

Well well, Josh has finally embarked into the great beyond, when I left the car and headed into the MTC for the first time it all seems like a blur, I don´t even remember what I said.

fotos!

1. me trying to remember what I´d learned in my guitar lessons, with Bruno.

2. Josh is going to Paris eh? well i´m already there :D

3. Me and Samuel at stake conference.

On Tuesday I went on division with Elder Dos Santos, to try and figure out what´s going wrong in his area, and to see what i could do to help him baptize finally. While I was there he took me to a family he´d been teaching for a while, but the mom and dad are reluctant to finally be baptized. So i decided to leave a message that was special to me. So I opened up the book of mormon and read Alma 22 (my favorite chapter in the Book of Mormon) and told them about my convesion story on the airplane. I dunno how they felt during the lesson...but I had one of the most spiritual experiences of my life. It was amazing. to put it in the words of John Paul Suart´s book *The Wall*: *I cried and cried and cried.... I cried so hard.. that I laughed*

The zone leaders came by on friday to interview Lucia... but she didn´t pass, she needs to wait a bit longer to show that she´s really repented of drinking coffee and smoking... oh well, now she´ll be baptized on Sunday between the general conferece sessions. Every time we go there when it´s night, she always runs off... and comes back with omlettes from the food-stand next door, haha. oh yeah, she loves us.

Sunday we had 5 investigators in church, woo!

Every once in a while when I answer the phone, I hear *oh Babylon, oh Babylon, we bid thee farewell!!!* Thanks guys... that´s helping me focus, haha. Though I think President is gonna leave me here till the end, cuz he called me last night to ask about how the district is doing, and what the problem is with the zone, he told me to fix it, that he´s trusting in me to help the zone baptize a buttload next month.... I only need 4 more to meet my goal, YOU CAN DO IT!

Lets see... what else is new here...... I decided to do a conferece call with my district this morning, make some plans for next month, see how this month went by, what´s good, what was bad, what can be better, all that good stuff. But when I asked one by one what their thoughts were they all said the same thing: *our district is awesome! We´re all united and happy, and our district leader is the best, we learn something awesome each district meeting.* by the end I just ended up saying: *guys! is there ANYTHING we can do better? any little thing that anybody isn´t happy with?? * ..........cheep cheep.....cheep cheep........ haha... well... at least everybody is liking where we are :D

Well that´s all the big news for now. nobody has been transferred. So we trudge on!

LOVE YOU ALL!

*What is the difference between a man, and a slave?

Is is money?

Power?

No, a man chooses, a slave obeys.*

ELDER WEBBER

Lots of Teaching...!

So, yup.

We´re teaching a way cool lady these days, Lucia. Found her a week and a half ago. she went to church after the first lesson, read and everything. knows it´s true. the day after she went to church some nice J-dubs passed by there and told her that she was going down the path of satan, blah blah blah, said a bunch of stuff about the chruch. she just said *no, YOU`RE wrong, I went to your church already and I didn´t feel good, but when I went to theirs I felt great, I liked it and I´m going back, thank you very much!* booyahh! Take it! our investigator is balls-to-the-wall, she chewed out some nosey pentecostal neighbor because she told her a bunch of stuff about the church. Hahaha! and now she´s telling everybody that she´s getting baptized this Saturday, oh yeaaah. She stopped smoking in one day, now she said that when she tries to smoke she feels sick and wants to throw up. We bought her a HUGE sack of oranges to help her out, but she really didn´t need it anymore. She went to stake conference yesterday with a member, and she started calling the church *our church* :D Last Tuesday we were a-chatting, and she started crying cuz she remembered that i was heading home in November. *but two months is so little time!!! you barely show up and you´ll have to leave!*

On the other hand, we´re teaching another family, and the mom told us that one of the daughters cried during the night after she found out that I couldn´t date while I'm on the mission. haha. So now she´s just shame-less when she talks to us *if i go to church and get baptized will you marry me??* *umm....no* every area I pass through.....

Note: I feel like i´m companions with a 10 year old child with ADD. Everything I say just goes in one ear and out the other... it´ll be good to be home and not have to answer the same questions on the phone: *Elder, how´s your companion? * *umm.. he´s alive* *still slacker?* *yeah* *you gotta help him out* *no duh, that´s what i´m trying to do* *how´s his study, is he getting better in his teaching?* *umm... sure, a little bit* *yeah, i´ve seen your district meetings... he just zones out the whole time* *this i know...* *does he still want to go home?* *well.... he hasn´t mentioned it lately* *we´re praying for him* *thanks* oh the joy!

I did two interviews saturday in Luizote, but only one got baptized. How sad. They managed to get an old lady baptized, it was one of the most interesting interviews I´ve done

*what is the word of wisdom?*

*baptism!*

*what do you understand about the law of chastity?*

*baptism!*

*what does the word repentance mean to you?*

*baptism!*

i think she wanted to be baptized..., or she was brainwashed.

Today is the day I start officially using my last planner of the mission...... oh wow. And all they told me is that I leave Goiania about 8 in the morning and get to Utah 10:30 on the 3rd. But I´m sure they´ll give me more info later.

We had district meeting with President this week, he passed a few new rules, a few other little things, and apparently every companionship (in Brasil or the world, I dunno) gets a portable dvd player to keep at home, to watch the church training videos, sweeeeeet! That´s a lot of trust the prophet has in the missionaries here, especially since my comp. got busted for buying a dvd player and watching movies.... I´ll have to keep an eye on him. *I`M WATCHING YOU WIZOWSKY!* I gave a top-dollar training afer, just like President asked. Feels good to just lay it out flat and show ém how it´s done. I got to see the differnce in my relationship with my district, and Elder Wengel´s relationshiop with his.... it´s nice to have the feeling of knowing that your missionaries love and respect you, and actively ask for your opinion, and aren´t just there cuz they have to be there. We´re a family.

So we have a baptism this week, 4 more planned for after general conference, and so on. Good times, good times indeed.

I met a guy named Alligator the other day, he put glass in our front door for us. *hey mr. Alligator!*

*you do know Elvis is dead right?*

*No, Elvis is not dead, he just went home*

LOVE YOU!!

ELDER WEBBER

A ... week

So, nothing really exiting here on my end this week, nothing compared to what´s going down back home eh?

We finally moved house, it´s a pretty spiffy place, the front door is missing glass and the landlord said he´ll put it in this week, and it´s only got tile on the roof, so when it starts to rain we´ll have a huge problem with leaks, but we´ll see how that goes, and if he´ll get around to actually finishing the roof soon.

I was bored the other day so i decided to draw my dream house, very nice indeed, it includes ballroom, atrium, 2 floor library, wine cellar, vinyard, observatory, grand entry hall, rugby field, and so on.

We played pool the other day with an investigator family, and i realize i´m gonn ahve to practice a bit more when i get home cuz i´ve lost my touch, im terrible at pool now, how embarassing.

I went to Luizote to interview a man for baptism, and halfway through i asked *have you commited any serious crimes?* *hmm.. yeah, a few... used drugs, sold drugs, got in fights....etc* *ah ok ok, well have you repented?* *oh yes, of course* *is there anything else?* *yeah, i´ve killed someone.* *.......well that sucks. sorry bro, you can´t be baptized.* poor dude, he was so bummed out. almost as bummed as the missionaries.

We´ve found 3 really awesome people this week who accepted to be baptized, 2 went to church on sunday, wooo! they just have to stop smoking and drinking coffee and it´s a done deal. ahhh! so excited!! It s even better knowing that one was studying with the J-dubs, then met us and totally gave the cold shoulder to them, bwahaha!

I think i have pink-eye, or something these days, but it´ll go away soon, i hope.

Ii found out I´m gonna be jumping back at about 10:30 on November 3rd. ahhhh!

Good to hear that josh´s farewell was all that and a bag of chips. though... my homecoming is gonna put it to shame! boom! i talked a bit about that during district meeting last week, about walking out of the terminal, doing the slow-walk, with music playing in the background, i even acted it out for the district, throwing your arms in the air, people screaming. and so on, and i said:

*every missionary in the world leaves on the mission thinking about one thing: what it´ll be like to come home, leaving the airplane after 2 years of dedicated service to the Lord, for 10 minutes you are THE MOST important person in the world. you go out to come home. are you gonna make it worth it? or are you going to come home a sham, a liar, a fraud?? cuz if you screw up your homecoming, you may as well just throw those two years away cuz they did nothing for you. Elder, are you gonna come home the missionary your mother thinks you are??? and you? and you? and you? and you? and you? if not, change now, or go home, cuz it doesn´t matter if you go home now or at the end, it´ll still be a let-down for you and everyone you know and love.*

I summed it here up but i think you understand how it went.

*There is a box of twinkies in this store. Not just any box of twinkies, but the last box of twinkies that anyone will ever enjoy on the face of the earth*

-Zombieland

So Josh you study scriptures

and read the lessons hard

Cuz Hell´s broke loose in France

and the Devil deals the cards

and you earn forgiveness if you baptize in the cold.

but if you lose the Devil gets your soul!

LOVE YOU ALL!

GOOD LUCK JOSH!

Elder Webber