A GREAT Week.... Being Trained.

tá bom, tá bom.

So, first. yes I am pretty good friends with Elder Erickson, we´ve been together pretty much the whole mission, and now we´re actually companions, we both knew it was bound to happen sometime. He goes home in May, with Elder White ( my trainer) and Elder Pattie (my third companion, after Elder Casey) and yeah, I was pretty good friends with Elder Pattie, whenever he calls us, or we call him it´s nice to talk with him for a bit. But anyways, Elder Erickson is from Idaho, he´s completely nuts about Disney, he´s planning on working there after the mission.... and he´s half-convinced me to go there with him as well, we´ll see how that goes. You said you sent my package *there*... where is *there*? the office? my old house? i certainly hope it wasn´t to my old house.

Speaking of packages, I got one the other day. woooo!!! I got the package with buttloads of candy, and the sing-a-ma-jig. It´s the bee´s knees! so thank you, thank you, I love the package :D also.... I spent a good long while staring at the back of the pop-tarts box... cuz there were pictures/contest about winning an xbox 360 with Kinect.... oh how beautiful it was.

So Zach started every game is St. George for the U19 team? holy smackers! keep it up jimmy! i´m gonna get my butt kicked when I get back home... cuz all we do is walk.. and that don´t do too much for my Gaston physique.

There was a huge storm last night... and as we were in the street we were getting beat to death by sheets of rain, so we ran to hide inside a bar (that seems to happen a lot these days) and whiles we were chillin, the power cut out. so we were stuck in a dark, tiny, family-run bar for a bit while we waited to mother nature to calm down. But as usual, there were rivers in the streets so we didn´t have very many options for where we could go. Fun stuff, saw a few accidents.

Anyways, this last week we had a couple conferences and meetings. firstly, on Thursday we had a conference of all the zone leaders at president´s office. It was pretty awesome chilling with all the most powerful people in the mission, all obedient, all the best. I was thinking that it must be like what a stake high-council meeting feels like. President call it our *war-council in the general´s tent* and Elder Erickson calls it the *Jedi Council* either way, it was awesome. When we got there, President shook everybody´s hand and said hi, as usual, but this is how it went: *good morning Elder ... Good morning Elder... how are you? good morning... how are you?.... ELDER WEBBER!! How are you my son!?* Then he shakes my hand with both his hands and asks about how the work is going. so... I liked it :D Elder Martin said he used to do the same thing with him when he used to be zone leader, so if I´m anything like him, I´m doing pretty good.

Then Friday we had a conference with Elder Araujo, from the presidency of the area. That guy is the shiz-niz. he´s soooo funny, and he´s HUGE! He makes our president look tineyyyy. his story is in the February ensign...( i think so anyways, cuz all we get here is the Liahona, and it was there). Anyways, I learned a bunch, loved it. and then he left... until he came back and asked for a few more minutes to speak... and in short, this is what he said: *the kiss has nothing to do with a temple ordinance, so you CAN and you SHOULD kiss your girlfriend before you get married! I did, your president did (pres. said... bwaha, why of course) president monson did, so all this chatter about how you shouldn´t is FALSE DOCTRINE!* hahahaha.... oh yes, we learn alot during these meetings.

I think it´s funny you kept talking about *1-minute quick oats* and hershey´s cocoa and golden syrup.... if i were to ask for that stuff in the store here they´d tell me to go away and stop making up product names :D haha, but no worries, they have all the ingredients. so thank you for the recipe!

Elder Vitorino stayed at our house for a few days last week, cuz there was the conference and all that, he slept on the ground. *with the mice?* *with the RATS!* and I made pancakes in the morning one time, good stuff. He was gonna stay for our baptism, but it fell through cuz the mom took out her kidney stones... meh. Perfect timing. But the 12th we´re gonna have a bunch of baptisms, for sure!!

I like being zone leader tons more than district leader, cuz i don´t have to fight tooth and nail with the slacker missionaries to get them to do as they should, instead I just tell the district leaders what I want, and they get it done.... like an *easy button*.

So yeah, that´s about it for this week, fun times, good stuff, good work, good families. and this next week should be better, and the next EVEN BETTER! woo!

*why do we call our jeep a warthog?*
*i dunno, maybe cuz it has these tusk-things in the front?*
*yeah, but i think it looks more like a puma*
*He-he, oh Grif, making up animals again, obviously it looks like a chupa-thingey*
*you mean Chupacabra?*
*that´s it! Chupathingey*
*...mm yeah, no i think it looks like a panther*
*Dangit Grif, i thought i told you to stop making up animals!*
-Red vs. Blue

love, Elder Webber

A New Area!

So.....I´m writing this email from a lan-house here in Goiania, in an area called Ipiranga..... it´s in the middle of flippn´ nowhere.

And *why?* do you ask?

Because I was transferred. I got a phone-call Tuesday morning as I was a-walking in the street with surprise transfers. Always fun. So yeah. here´s the spill: Elder Black is still back in Maracana with the new district leader Elder Heymore, and they baptized Lourdes together, ´*you´re welcome Elder Heymore* and I got sent here.... to be Zone Leader with Elder Erickson. Yup. I have my own zone now. I´ve pretty much followed Elder Erickson around my whole mission, from Annapolis, to Uberaba, and now we´re finally companions here in Goiania, I guess I must be doing something right. No pressure eh? Also, Elder Pattie became the new assistant... (one of my old companions) so that´s pretty nifty.

Anyways, our area is HUGE!! It takes in a bunch of Goiania, and two other cities, one of which is 100% catholic and has the 2nd biggest cathedral in Brasil. There's a coca-cola factory were gonna take a tour of one day, there´s a district called El Dorado... in the middle of nowhere, there´s a part that looks like the city from Edward Scissor Hands.. except everything is brown.

We have to take a bus to church, and 3 buses to the center. nuts. We walked yesterday for 2 hours from one part to our house, and it wasn´t even from the furthest part of the area. sheesh. Yeah, our area may be huge, but our house is TINY!!! we only have one hallway/kitchen, bedroom/study room, and on bathroom, soooo small. we pretty mcuh roll out of bed and we´re already at the desk ready to study. Not only that, but this city is SO FREAKING HOT! and when it´s not boiling, it´s pouring rain. For example, my first day here the streets had turned to rivers and we had to cross a couple to teach a few people, our legs were completely soaked, Elder Erickson nearly got swept away, and so on.

But that´s not the coolest part....the coolest part is this... later that night we were walking in a park with our umbrellas, it was stormy and rainy, with lots of lightning... until.. the next thing i know a bolt of lighting flies in front of my face and throws me to the ground, and strikes the umbrella of Elder Erickson, he said it shocked his arm and threw the umbrella from his hand, when I looked up I see the umbrella on the ground and Elder Erickson running away, and hearing the people in the bar nearby screaming/laughing/yelling *HOLY SMOKES!!* so... that was fun. we made a pretty quick escape after that.

I was kind of bummed to leave my area without baptizing Lourdes, but it´s good she got baptized anyways. And when I got here I found out that we have 5 baptisms scheduled for this weekend.... so I´m pretty happy, woooo!! And now I realize exactly how hard of an area I had in Maracana. Here the people just walk up to you in the street and ask you to visit them at home and teach them... and they actually say hi to you when you say hi to them. It´s a pretty refreshing break after so much time in Annapolis... I had no idea how good all these other missionaries had it. Lucky ducks, now I´m gonna get a piece of this action.

Well that´s about it that happened this week, not too much eh? The members here are AMAZING!! We have so many more lessons with members here that I would have ever dreamed about in Maracana. I´m pretty sure I´ll be very happy here.... even if I do lose all my money buying buss passes.... sheesh.

Well I love you all, I´m still working good... apparently :D haha

*FOR THE HORDE!!*
Elder Webber

Another Week...

So...... this week was pretty boring... i really don´t have that much to write about.

Lourdes finally moved house, and kicked out her good-for-nothing ex-husband, so now she can be baptized this Saturday, so we´re working on getting everything set up for that, hoping and praying that another thing doesn´t pop up to stop her form getting baptized... again. so that´s pretty good, I´ve been teaching her since October, and finally it seems that it will go through, YES!
Though this Sunday, we had 16 people that promised they´d go to church with us FOR SURE, and then when we go around Sunday morning... everybody has an excuse not to go, and we ended up taking only one person with us. how sad is that? That´s pretty much the story of Annapolis, talk talk talk, no action! we can mark dates with anybody, everyone will mark with us to go to church, but when it finally comes down to it..... nothing. good times indeed

My whole district (the whole ONE companionship) baptized this week, yay! finally, some time has passed since they´ve baptized, and i was getting a bit frustrated, but i guess everything i´m doing to help them out is finally paying off, they have 2 more baptisms scheduled for these next two weeks, and looks like we´´ll have 2 or 3. President also said that he´ll get on moving another companionship to my district, but so far nothing has happened, so it´s a pretty lonely district... though looking at the rest of the zone, i wouldn´t be happy to have any of them in my responsibility, there are some pretty sad missionaries here. they said that the best companionship (that isn´t a leader) is the Elder Cruz/D Morais companionship in my district... and that´s pretty sad.
Oh yeah, it´s all coming together.

Elder Pires wants to say hi:
hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii my name is Elder Pires. Im very legal :D

yeah.... *legal* means *cool* in English, just so you know.

sooo... happy valentines day everybody, I had no idea... but thanks to Elder Black, now i know. apparently it´s very important to him. i didn´t know what day it was even when i was in America, shows how much it means to me eh? haha. Speaking of parties, carnaval is coming up pretty quick, i think it´s during march this year... and i have to be careful where i look, cuz on every tv, every poster, on everything there´s ads for carnaval... and it´s not a very *edifying* holiday. Haha I dunno if there´s news about it up there, but here it´s all over the place, and anybody who has any moral character stays WAY away from it.

The 7s tournament sounded pretty awesome, i really miss rugby, or just sitting around and watching, everytime i walk past a field here and someone has just barely mowed the grass it reminds me of rugby back home, i looooove the smell of fresh cut grass.

Sorry that this email is kind of boring, and short, but it kind of reflects how the week went by, we worked pretty well, found alot of new investigators, but not too many results, here´s hoping that we finally help Lourdes get baptized this week.


love you!
Elder Webber

This week was "Bleh"

So yeah, this week was kind of... bleh.

I headed to Goiania for a few days for another leadership conference, always fun to sit around and listen and learn, President was sick, so it was his son and the assistants that gave all the instructions. still good stuff. It´s nice to hang out a bit with the leaders. Pretty much in a nutshell what I learned: I need to pray better/more often/more fervently/with more heart, and do better cuz I´m a sinner. I liked it :D learned a lot

I also found a page from a talk given by Spencer W. Kimball...... it was about missionary work so I was surprised I hadn´t heard about it before....that is until I read it.... he gave 15 points about what makes a missionary of success and what should happen on the mission... if I had read it before the mission I would have felt VERY overwhelmed... and now that I´ve read it with under a year left.. I realize I need to step things up.... it made me feel bad about how much I´m NOT doing... so I copied it down and read it regularly. Maybe I´ll send a copy home sometime, we´ll see how it goes.

One of the points ( I can´t remember exactly what it says, and the my translation to English will make it worse) goes like this:
*if you have never cured the sick... cast out demons...seen a grown man cry because he was overwhelmed with the spirit...you have gone out and come home in vain*
or another:
*if, during the sacrament, you have never had tears well up in your eyes because of the sacredness of this ordinance... you still have the need to renew your covenants*

or.... everything can pretty much be summed up in the words of President Tobias: REPENT QUICKLY!

Anyways, my visa expired the other day.... so I´m an illegal alien in Brazil.... I don´t think they´ll complain too much. So I´m just waiting for the phone call from the secretaries telling me to go to Goiania AGAIN to take care of it. ugh, what a hassle.

And yes, Goiania was VERY hot, I didn´t like it at all, the bus is way more expensive, there´s too many people.. and so on. So it was kind of relief to come back to Anapolis with all the nut-jobs. It´s funny to think that pretty much everything I know about the mission is here in this city... I´ve only had one transfer away from it... they say that this is the hardest city to baptize in.. but I have no idea, cuz it´s all I know, give me a chance to be in a different city and maybe i can make some comparisons, but for now... I´m a guy born without thumbs... I have no idea what it feels like to lack something I´ve never had. either way, the work is getting done boldly, nobly, and independent under my mighty shoes of doom, until the Lord shall say *the work is done*

We taught a family the other day, and as usual I invited the dad to do the closing prayer, he accepted (which is rare). and it started out like this:
*oh dear Joseph Smith.....*
and so on, I was so tired that day so I just let him roll with it and said *great prayer!* after.
When we went back we were talking at first about their religious culture and so on and he said *we, here, are catholic, and as you can probably see (he points to the giant painting of Our Lady Aparecida) us Brazilians LOVE our idols, we worship statues. aint it great?*
yeeeeaaaah.
Personally, any picture Our Lady Aparecida gives me the ibby jibbys.

And yesterday, I guess I much have spent too much time with these believers here in Annapolis, cuz we taught a guy named Edgar, and he likes to do the prayers standing up, so he did the first one, and Elder Black did the last one, and all during his prayer I couldn´t stop myself from saying *AMEN brother* *mmmhmmm!* *amen* it felt like second-nature to me.... it´s gonna be interesting doing prayers again when I go home...

In closing, we lived through an electrical storm the other day, the power kept cutting out, then surging back on, lightning striking all the houses around us, it even shook my deodorant off the dresser, it woke me up during the middle of the night, or... shook me out of bed, then I curled under the covers like a little girl and went to sleep. No rain, just thunder and lighting, good times, good times.

So yeah, I love you all, until next week,

Slow down there tubby, you aint on the moon yet
Elder Webber