Christmas in Brazil and Talkin' with Home...

ZChristmas was awesome, it was great to see and talk with everybody on skype, Everybody sounds/looks so much different. Josh looks like a scallywag with his hair, zach looks... the same, but sounds way different, Ben sounds older and looks..... strange. Mariah looks older but still sounds the same. and Joseph is the most different out of everybody.

I´m happy that everybody had a great Christmas, it certainly didn´t feel anything like Christmas here, everybody just did a churrasco and got drunk... as usual. We had apple pie and chocolate cake the night after Christmas day, so that was pretty fun. haha, and I´m happy to hear that Jared Whippy enjoyed his first American Christmas (there´s really nothing else like it in the world, America does it the best, by far, that´s why we´re #1 :-) )

While we were at Lehi´s house, Elder Black gave him some of his Sour Warheads candy.... hahaha... funniest thing I saw all week. So now he gives them out to all our other friends and investigators to see all the faces they make... nobody likes them. They all spit them out the moment they put it in their mouth. Good times, good times. Then we played a game with his *every flavor* Jelly Belly jelly beans... I had *barf flavored bean* taste in my mouth the whole rest of the day.... that wasn´t as fun.

Also, during our pancake night with André´s family, we used the maple syrup I got, and the kids hated it. haha, they preferred to just eat the pancakes plain. hahaha, the parents liked it, but the kids said it was way too strong. So I tried it to see what the problem was... and I experienced 5 seconds of heaven. In other words, the maple was fine, the kids are just weird. They´re just not used to pure-awesomeness.

Mariana and Dilmas got confirmed on Sunday, and the family is still excited to go to church, including the parents who say they´re gonna get married in January so they can get baptized, yay!! And then we marked another date with a girl we´re teaching for the 22nd. So now we have at least 4 baptisms for the next month. YES!!

I really don´t have that much more news... cuz I told about everything on skype,

We met our tipsy friends the other day, one of them was waaay too drunk, so we told him * dude, you should go home, you´re drunk* response: *who´s drunk? you are! I´m going home, I don't want to hang around you drunkards* hahaha but then another whipped out a guitar from somewhere... I don´t know where it came from, so we just finished off the night by singing songs, (some from my hymnbook that I had on me) Then we left, they told us to come by anytime, cuz they don´t like mischief-makers, and we´re people of god, and the like us. Pretty much they´re the best group of friends we have here in this part of town. All the new people that were passing by were introduced to us by our friend and now we have a group waiting for us anytime choose to pass by. haha. sweet. And it was while I was sitting there, talking and laughing with them all, that I realized how much I love Brazil. Sure some (most) of the people are half-stupid, don´t know how to drive and are religious maniacs who don´t know how to take care of their money, but the people we were hanging out that night were the best/nicest people I´ve ever met, if the world were full of them, we would have no problems (except for the lots of drinking part).

How´s Joseph liking his blue motorbike? I´m digging my legos and sweet t-shirt, I´m wearing it to our barbeque today. woo!

Well, I don´t have much more to talk about. But I hope you have a great week and a happy new year.

Love ya dad, love ya mom, love ya all you other people.

Stay thirsty my friends.
Elder Webber

This Week...

Industrial got closed because the members there are nuts, and they didn´t appreciate the missionaries while they had them, so President put them somewhere where they´ll be appreciated and actually get things done, and the members will see what it´s like to have no missionaries. Every time we pass by in that area, all the members we meet seem way excited and ask if we´re the new missionaries, and I always have to tell them no. I´m only there to baptize one guy (and hopefully his family) and then I´m done. Speaking of which, we taught him a few times this last week (many, many bus rides) and the last time we taught him we took a member family with us. The members and him used to be part of the same churches, so they just spent a good 45 minutes bashing all the other churches they used to go to. The guy told us EVERYTHING he thought was wrong about all the other churches, and how they all teach apostasy. example: *the pope is the child of the devil, there´s no other explanation*
*all these other churches are filled with people screaming and flying around, is that in the bible? NO. They´re a bunch of money-sucking, miracle mongering, sin-condemning, scripture-screaming, lunatics. is that in the bible? NO!*

yeeeeah, balln´ ! He already believed the church was true, the only trick was to get him to accept a date. Which we did, he finally decided to be baptized on the 8th of January. yay!

The zone got together the other day to practice our musical program for tonight. We´re going to the praça to sing Christmas hymns for everybody, and Globo (the news station) will be there. They chose me to read the scriptures in between each song because of my deep voice suave. oh yeah :D so that should be fun.

The ward had their Christmas dinner the other day, so we stopped by for a bit, helped out a little too. I pretty much just pigged out on the pineapple... good stuff. It made me miss the ward barbecues back home when there was like a bajillion people, and hamburgers, here there was about... 20 people. sad story.

So we´ve got 2 baptisms scheduled for this Friday, hopefully everything goes over well. It´s always a mess, trying to invite members, filing up the font, getting everything set up, making sure everybody is happy *sigh* soooo nerve-wrecking. oh well.

Elder Black still gets ticked every once in a while when the language gives him a little bit of trouble. But he´s getting better. I still have to re-teach everything he teaches cuz nobody understands him. But it´s funny that everybody things he´s Brazilian (before he talks) so when they don´t understand what I say ( cuz I tend to speak too fast sometimes :-) ) they always look to him, and he has no idea what anybody is saying, so everybody´s lost for a little while. CONFUSION!


It´s kind of weird that I´ll only have one Christmas in the field, cuz my last one was while I was stranded in the MTC. But oh well. At least I get to call home this time :D yay. And I´ll probably have a lot to talk about cuz this week seems pretty jam-packed with stuff, so that should be fun. I might try that giving-out-candy idea, and we´ll see how it goes. Though most of the kids just ask us for gum, haha.

I don´t think there´s any crazy stories this week... just normal work.
I could ask a bunch of questions, and stuff like that, but we´ll be talking on Saturday anyways. So I´ll save questions for that.

Anyways, that´s about it. TALK TO YA`LL ON SATURDAY!! 2nd to last phone-call O_o

Love you :D miss you.
till Saturday...
Elder ´The yellow dart´ Webber

Latest...

So this week all zone leaders and district leaders headed to Goiania for 3 days, so that was fun. Just sitting around and listening to president talk is always fun. Though i did have to abandon my area, what a bummer. I stayed with 3 Brazilians during our little conference, in a house that took an hour to get to/from by bus every morning and night. fun. But it was cool to chill with some Brazilians, I found out that it´s quite normal (and almost expected) that Brazilians kiss their cousins... apparently *cousin* isn´t close enough in the family to cause strangeness. Also, it was good to not hear any English, Portuguese comes a whole lot easier these days than English, and since my companion speaks English EVERY TIME he doesn´t understand something it´s really giving me a headache. He asks me to explain something in English, but I just cant, I sound like a retard cuz I´ve forgotten words and all my grammar is backwards.
But when I came back from the conference, Elder Black was working with Elder Pattie and Elder Fralick, so when we headed back to our area he said. *wow dude, we work BUTTLOADS harder than Elder Pattie, I felt like I was slacking off while I was with them.*
haha, oh yeah.

Preparation day last week we all headed to Jundiai to play basketball (volleyball was canceled cuz the ball popped) so that was fun, everybody plays for a bit then just wants to go inside and lay on the cold tile floor :D But since today was transfer day everybody is staying home so the other districts can resolve all the transfer mess. So the news about transfers: Industrial got closed, so I´m gonna have to pick up the area book and baptize the investigators they left behind, and Elder Stoddard and Elder Cruz are sticking together...again. They both sounded so depressed when I told them last night, neither one believed it. Elder Stoddard was already packing his stuff cuz he was SURE that he was gonna be leaving. He´s spent his whole mission here in Anapolis, and 6 months with the same companion, and now they´re gonna stay one more, poor guy, sounded like he was about to cry. haha. I dunno if they still have some small problems with the companionship, but if they do, they´re just gonna have to suck it up. So now the zone leaders are gonna do divisions with them to keep them excited, and I will too after a bit, just to get him happy until the end of transfer. You know it´s bad when the secretary says: *dude.... i don´t believe it.... everybody here thought he was going to get transferred for sure.....I don´t believe it.... how terrible*

But yeah, me and the bishop here aren´t the best of buddies. I mean, he´s a cool guy... just I think some of his *ideas* or *his way of doing it* are.... not good (stupid). I wont extrapolate, but suffice it to say that he´s getting in the way of our work. Just step back and let me do mah bidness!! I´ll swagger the way I was taught, thank you very much.

I held my breath for 1:40 on the bus the other day.

In church yesterday one of our investigators got up to bear her testimony, it was a very *evangelical* testimony, but it was pretty sweet anyways. Then she told everybody that she´s gonna get baptized. woo. It´s just that she lives in the same house as her ex-husband... so we´re in negotiations with President to try and get the green light to baptize her. Oh what a tangled web we weave. Downtown Anapolis is all lit up with Christmas lights and music and everything, it´s missing a bit of snow, but it still looks pretty dang sweet, the zone is going to go sing carols in the main park one of these days, and be covered by a TV station, so that should be pretty fun.

I actually felt a little bit sick for the first time on my mission today, but I popped some Imunizen, and Bio-C and pepto bismal and bye bye ickyness. woo. I say I´m doing pretty good, I´ve gone a year and a bit in a far-off land and I havn´t been attacked, eaten, sick, robbed, or anything. (watch something happen this week now) Though I´m pretty sure nobody´s gonna mess with us, cuz we´re two big Americans, and we tower over most of the Brazilians here, so anybody would have to be pretty crazy to mess with us. Bahahaha!

But yeah, I´m pretty sure that´s about it for now, This next week should be pretty interesting.

*I bet a fiddle of gold against your soul cuz i think I´m better than you...*

Love, Elder Webber