Update... Trials...

Anyways, we baptized Breno on Saturday! WOO!! He chose me to baptize him, so Saturday night we had a few members gathered together in the chapel and he got baptized in the freeeezing water, though he said he couldn´t feel the cold anymore after he got baptized. Oh yeah. The kid is WAY cool, he´s 12 years old, and it was a mircale that we ever found him at all. A member family gave him his own set of scriprtures and scripture case, he´s an awesome kid. I was so happy that he finally got baptized. And it seems that his baptism was one of the last things I needed to do to complete my purpose in Ipiranga, to do what I needed to do there, cuz yesterday, after he got confirmed, I got a call from Pres. and he said I was transfered here to Uberlandia..... totally bummed to leave my area, I feel pretty much the same as when I left Anapolis the first time.. maybe worse. The busride wasn´t so bad, just 7 hours, but when I got here my head is hurting thinking about the new area, my spirit is tired worrying about my new companion and district, and my heart hurts cuz I left behind my recent-converts and friends back in Goiania that I love so much. There was no time to visit Nara, (recent convert) so I called her to say goodbye, as well as Jaynie ( less-active) and they both started crying. Freak, that doesn´t make it any easier on me.

But, good news: Elder Black ( the kid I trained ) is taking my place as zone leader, HOORAH! and Nara told me that her divorce finally went through, and she was wanting to throw a party with us to celebrate. Good for her :D also, President gave me permission to read *the miracle of Forgiveness* so I´ve begun to read... and I´m loving it. wooo.

During last week I did a three day division with Elder Van Zeben, I brought him to my area so I can teach him how to teach a little better and be a bit more loving... too bad I ain´t gonna be able to see the results of my work, haha. Pretty much there was a civil-war happening in our district between my companion, Elder Taylor, and everybody else, and I was trying to hold everybody together. Elder Taylor had no respect for them, and none of them liked him at all. Good luck to them, haha, and Elder Black. That´s a problem I´m not gonna miss.

I know I´m gonna have to head out and work (preferably get to know the members) soon, it´ll be the best thing to get me excited and forget about what I left behind. But wow, I really miss the people there. If this last area ends up being my *resting place* it´ll probably be the exact same thing all over again.... oh sheesh. Lord, give me strength.

Well that´s about it, way pumped for the baptism we had! woo!!! Thank you for writing. Love you dad, Mom. This week is kind of short cuz I don´t have that much time, and I´m a wreck of emotions and just want to lay down.

*the people cannot be ignorant and free*

Love, Elder Webber

ANOTHER great week!

Haha, yes, this it true. Before the mission i didnt even know what a seventy did... now I do. I imagine them now as the men the apostles send to give the slap-in-the-face when it is needed.

ahhh! I wanna go camping. Every day i look out over our area... I behold everything the light touches... I behold my kingdom... then I see the dark areas... the overgrown forest, the open savannah (yes, we have savannah here), and the low green hills... and it just gives me the urge of hopping the fence and just go walking... and walk until I reach some uncrossable river or forest then come back. fun stuff. Maybe someday.

Answering questions: first, I wanna have the experience of coming out of the airport... doing the slow-walk...posing for the cameras, hearing the cheers, kissing babies, breaking champagne bottles over ship keels, and being escorted back to assume my rightful throne as King of Town...... that´s just what passes through my head when I imagine that day.

Speaking of Singapore, when people ask me what my favorite place I´ve travelled to is, I think... passing briefly over my travels, and respond singapore... and malaysia.... I wanna go to india.

How was america day? how was Bungie Day?

On Monday, we passed by a house and the Dad asked us to give a blessing to his wife (member) then his grandkids asked to get blessings as well (not members) so I gave a blessing to the older one, I said her name and it started out all normal-like... then i stopped... it´s like something wasn´t letting me speak what I wanted to say, not a single word came out until the words came flying into my head and I let them flow out... and when the words stopped.. I stopped speaking, until they hit me again and I started speaking without wanting to. after, the family said that it was exactly what she was needing, and they were surprised that I had known exactly what to say. Awesome experience.

On Thursday we had another zone leader meeting with President. So we set up a semi-circle of chairs and tables in the chapel. it started 8 and went until 5. I feel like we´re in the dragon´s den when we do practices, cuz when the missionaries end their lesson, out comes the fire from the circling zone leaders... fun stuff :D I love these meetings, learn a lot. and get a little bit burned. ex:

Pres. *There´s a certain elder on the mission... I wont say his name........ Elder cruz...... that´s being an idiot!* and so forth.

After the meeting, we did a division with one of our district leaders, I took his companion back with me to my area. Poor guy, he´s a newbie, only 10 days in the field... soooo quiet. So we worked a few days together, and even until sunday, cuz apparently lots of missionaries had been sick the same day, Saturday, including my comp, so we couldn´t undo to division, even I got sick, for the first time on the mission I got sick and threw up during the night. I ALMOST MADE IT THROUGH! dang. So I laid down in the morning for a while, waiting for it to pass, but I couldn´t take it any longer, so i told the newbie to suit-up cuz we´re heading out, and shortly the sickness passed.

I used the time I had with the newbie to teach him how he can get a better start on the mission than many others. I told him what to study so he can learn how to pray (do you, brothers, know how to pray? i think NOT!) and so on. My my, how many things I´ve learned on the mission.

Lets see... what else... we´ve closed 2 baptisms already for this month, one for this week and one more for the 30th... so my nerves are a little better now. Just gotta help the zone baptize now.

I can´t remember much else that happened this week, we didn´t teach that many lessons, but closed a few baptisms, so it was a fair trade.

*You aint no Charles Barkley! You´re just a guy who looks like him. Be gone, wannabe, BE GONE!!*

LOVE

Elder Webber

A GREAT Week

Happy America day! Elder Lopez called me this morning to wish me a happy 4th of July. I had forgotten even though I had it written in my planner. America rocks!

So... Monday was awesome, we headed to balneario just us, Elder Watts, and Elder Fernandez. we started out the day with a prayer, so we got up on our rammeumtum, and thanked that we were all Americans and could watch the movies that day in English. Then we sat down and enjoyed a day full of Narnia 3 and Prince of Persia, WOOO!! , Wow I was so pumped for prince of Persia, I loved it :D best mission ever? I think so.

The lady that we baptized last month told us a story the other day, she said that the Friday before her son got baptized she was thinking if she really was on the right path, cuz apparently everything had been going wrong, and she thought that if she had made the right decision things would get better. So she decided to pray about it, after she prayed she sat down on her bed and a voice said to her *don´t be afraid... don't be afraid...don´t be afraid...* she said she got scared and hid under the covers. Haha, but still, how cool is that? And her cousin says that she´s progressing a buttload, and that she´s saying there´s no way she´s gonna leave the church. booyah!

And on Friday we had another conference with Elder Araújo. Coolest Seventy ever. In the morning we had a meeting with him and all the zone leaders, assistants and secretaries, and pres. In the stake high-council room. Basically he talk us some new changes, new rules, told us to shape up and baptize more. In his words:

him- *elders, what is your purpose as a missionary?*
*to invite to come unto christ*
*find the elect*
*teach with the spirit*
him- *No! your purpose is to baptize*

Then we had the real conference with everybody, it went until 3:00 woo, he roasted one missionary in front of everybody, and all that good stuff. I love listening to him teach. Carlos (president´s son) opened up his mission call in front of everybody, and he´s going to Rome Italy, he started bawling instantly, and his whole family started crying too, even pres.
I talked with pres a little bit afterwards and he´s gonna give me authorization to read the miracle of forgiveness, it´s one of the books the older missionaries are allowed to read. sweet.

That night we went to the edge of our area to teach a kid, he´s living with his aunt and cousins, who are members, and he said he wants to start going to church, he´s 12 years old. So on Sunday he actually showed up, WOO! so happy. And it was testimony meeting, so I asked him *if i go, will you go?* he said yeah, so we went up there waiting our turn, when I got up to talk first he got up too, and stood by my side, I didn´t realize it until I was well into my testimony. So I had to lean over and tell him he could sit down if he wanted. Haha, then he got up after, I waited over by the side, and he said that he read the Book of Mormon that day, that he prayed about it, and he got an answer that ít´s true. woo!! So he got down, gave me a hi-5 and we sat back down. Awesome stuff.

Just to advise everybody, July 7th is Bungie day, I advise everybody to go to Bungie.net and celebrate this glorious day with some headshots downstairs. July Rocks.

Also, big news: WE TIED FOR NUMBER ONE ZONE THIS MONTH, OH YEAAAAAH. We tied with Rio Verde with 14 baptisms, take that! wow, lots of work to pick this zone up, and we have our monthly meeting with pres tomorrow, so we´ll see how that goes. :D

*...So the red people hate the blues cuz they keep trying to make them pay money for schools and hospitals instead of cool things like nascar and shotguns... and for some reason the whole mess is being led by a fat guy from Michigan, like we said a lot of this stuff doesn´t make sense. But these times of the holidays is a chance for us to put our differences aside and hate each other on a much more personal level. And what better thing to hate than turkeys? and what better way to hate them than to eat them by the millions!*
-Red vs. Blue

Happy America (God´s country) Day!
Love, Elder Webber

More Baptisms...

Well this week was good, I almost died of a friggn heart attack on Saturday, everything was planned out that Nara and her kids would go to church early on Sunday so Lucas could be baptized then the three of them would be confirmed during church, well we found out that she had taken her kids to a ranch-place to keep them away from their nut-job dad, and she didn´t have a car to pick them up and bring them back, she said she´d only be able to get them on money (today). Well THAT was unacceptable. So we call ]ed everybody and their dog, trying to find some way to get there and get the kids back in time for Sunday morning. Nobody was available. So we ended up just calling president´s son, Cesar, telling him to come pick us up at 6 in the morning, so we can get to Santa Maria on time and get back to the church with enough time to have a baptism. Well he showed up, and we headed out... Santa Maria is a whole other city, even further than Trinity. So we come rocking up to this ranch in a hilux, and 4 dudes in suits jump out approach the house, with Nara in tow. I´m pretty sure the lady who lived there was scared out of her mind. so we grabbed the kids and bounced, came baaaack to the church, gathered everybody up (luckily we manage to talk with a guy from church to get to the chapel about 5:00 to fill up the font.. it was COOOLD) and got things started, Lucas got baptized, and all three of them got confirmed. YES!! victory!

I spent a day and a half with Elder Jensen, cuz we had a few interviews to do. He aint TOO trunky... I´ve certainly seen worse. he´s heading home on Wednesday. Though I forgive him for his trunkyness, cuz he baptized 2 people last week, and will baptize two more on Tuesday... and we went to sleep Thursday night listening to Halo Instumental :D wooo.

So here in a few days we´ll see how the zone fared against the others, I think we did pretty well, we for sure beat Anapolis, Parque amazonia and aparecida. Lets go Leadership council. Also, transfers came yesterday... almost nothing changed, we have 4 assisstants now though, so that should be fun.

Sounds like the 50-miler was awesome, I think I probably would have liked it. fo shizzle. It takes a lot of my force of will to resist the urge to just go bush-whacking into the wilderness.... green hills as far as you can see... I hear them calling to me.

I wrote a letter to Josh ( for his bday). The Lord aint gonna send missionaries out to plant seeds, what a freaking waste of time, such a boring mission... what a failure. The lord sends out missionaries to BAPTIZE! cuz who else is gonna do that? If you go out and dont baptize YOU. HAVE. FAILED. The Lord aint gonna send a missionary to baptize in an area where there´s nobody to baptize either, duuuur, why would he have missionaries in Brazil and missionaries in Europe, using the same manual, doing the same things, teaching the same way... for different reasons? There´s a picture of Jesus being baptized on the front of Preach My Gospel for a reason. I love water, why? cuz I´m waist-deep in in every month baptizing somebody. It´s not pride to say *gee wiz, there sure are lots of people in my area... I´m gonna baptize all of them.* Isn´t that what the Lord wants?

Shoot for the moon, even if you miss you´ll land among the stars. If you have a goal of 5 baptisms for this month.. you´re only gonna get 3. If you got out with a goal of 10 baptisms on your mission, you´re gonna get 5. If you go out wanting to baptize 100, you´ll baptize 50.

I baptize, therefore I am

And... because I baptize.. guess where I´m heading after this... to the Balneáio chapel to watch Narnia 3. booyah.

I have a little book that I´d like to share with the boys when I get home, a special book entitled *The Rules of The Game* that fell from the life experience of Elder Webber and Elder Lunceford into existence. Dude´s eyes only. So my advice: being serious with anybody is lame... read this book first, THEN decide what you will do.

Well, I learned this week that I LOVE testifying about the Atonement. Good stuff, thought you´d like to know.

i´m gonna blow this popsicle stand.
PEACE!!
Elder W

2 Baptisms

Soo...... big news for this week: TWO BAPTISMS! wooooo!!!! These two pretty much fell from the sky into our lap, what a miracle. It was supposed to be three, but I´m not gonna complain too much. So two weeks ago a member took his cousin and her kids to church, she liked it and accepted us to pass by her house. She lives in another city so we either have to take a busride there or hitch a ride with a member, which is much better, first lesson:
*so... Joseph smith restored the church.... wanna be baptized?*
*hmmm no thank you*
*it´s good*
*hmm.. OK!*
Exactly like that... sort of. So we continued to pass by every few days until they went to stake conference in the center this Sunday and her and her daughter got baptized. WOO!! And since it was after stake conference Pres. Prieto watched the baptism, so that was pretty groovy. Her other son was supposed to be baptized too.. But he decided to be dumb and didn´t go. Oh well. we´ll get him this next week.

Other big news... I was walking in the street the other day... daydreaming, looking in the sky, when i saw a bunch of trash just flying around in the air... in circles... i stared for a while with glossy eyes not entirely realizing the event that was taking place... then i snapped back to reality and saw a massive dust devil passing us. The next thing I know, my body has taken control and I´m sprinting down the dirt street after it trying to catch it. I cant imagine what it must have looked like to all the people watching, an American in shirt and tie sprinting after a dust devil yelling with glee. wellIi finally caught it and threw myself into it, I experienced a few seconds of awesomeness before it decided to disappear... lame.... but so worth it. :D

So now the zone has 9 baptisms for the month... not TOO bad... but still not where we wanna be, we´re shooting for 17, and with one more week in the month and a few dates in the zone waiting to be thrown in the water... we´re pretty sure we´re gonna make it... and watch pirates of the Caribbean after. haha :D I´m still waiting for the *glory-of-men-newsletter* to come in to see where our zone is the standings, I think we´re doin pretty good.

As we were leaving one of our investigators, she stopped us at the front gate and said *brothers... Jesus is telling me to give an orange to each of you, so go pick an orange* hmm.... sure! so we got our oranges and left. cool lady :D

Also, we got the chance to break a mental sweat again this week, one of our investigators had found a bunch of anti-Mormon material and printed it off and asked us to explain, at least he was really sincere, otherwise we would have just laughed in his face and left. So we did our job and explained most of it... the more *reasonable* objections while throwing out the completely ridiculous, then told him to just read the Book of Mormon and find out for himself. Good guy, I like him. Bible dictionary=missionaries best friend

hmm.. so last night I had another nightmare that I came home early.. almost started crying.

Alrighty, so I just got the email saying where josh is going.. that´s WAY COOL!! Paris France!!! wooo!!!! I´ve heard lots of things about missions in France... I´ll wait to tell Josh once he´s there... or he´ll just find out for himself. OH YEAH! that´s way cool!!! HOO RAH!

well, I love you all.
*A man has a choice... iIchose the impossible*
Elder Webber

A "Bleh" Week...

My my my, Josh is awaiting his mission call eh? Big stuff. Good luck.

Well this week was kind of *bleh* for the zone, we had one baptism in the zone, which is good, but everybody else was kind of flat, but it´s all part of the plan... sort of. Pretty much we´re just beating everybody over the heads with *just mark dates and baptize, and I don´t care what else you do* it´s kind of a gamble cuz some of the other numbers are suffering, but if they baptize, what else can we ask? The ends justify the means, what´s the point of teaching bunches of lessons if you don´t baptize? We´re in a race to be number one this month, and it´s going pretty good, I see the news every week on who is baptizing, and it´s pretty neck and neck this month. President must be pleased. Also: if every companionship baptizes this month, and we reach at least 17 baptisms, we get to watch Disney movies the next p-day. SWEET! One zone already watched Harry potter 7, and our next-door neighbor zone watched Narnia 3... oh how some missionaries are motivated now, haha.

Anyways, we´re teaching an awesome lady, her name is Nara, and she lives in the next city, Trindade (trinity). She lives alone with 3 children, her cousin took her to church 2 weeks ago, and she LOVED it, she accepted to be baptized on the 19th after stake conference, wooo! So... pretty much it was a miracle (again) the just fell into our laps and saved us for this month, cuz everybody else is too lazy to go to church.

Guess what I got this week! I got my very own J-dub bible. wooo. Haha, I´ve always wanted to buy one, along with an Ave Maria bible. so now my bible collection is nearly complete. It was for Freezle too, they just give their bibles away, so I was pumped, they said the normally accept donations after giving a bible away, but because we had taught her, and made friends, she said to take it as a gift. Oh yeah. you guys can´t read it... cuz it´s in Portuguese, but I´m diggin´it.

I got an email today from a missionary that got sent home early for being an idiot. I don´t know if it´s a bad mindset, but when I see missionaries like him I think * OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!! SEND THEM HOME! DON'T ASK QUESTIONS!!* Good thing I´m not pres. cuz if i was there´d be a butt-load of Elders heading home.

Well... I´m looking in my planner right now and I´m not seeing anything that I wrote down to tell you guys, so not much must have happened, haha. But the work is going well, we´re teaching a few good families, and we´re trudging along.

MORMONS ROCK

*why do we fall? so we can learn to pick ourselves up*

Love you all
Elder Webber

"A good ol´ week"

So, yup. this week was a good ol´ week. I spent the whole day Friday riding the buses with Elder Watts heading to the other end of the city to do 2 interviews for Elder Jensen before he had to run off to do 2 more for the sisters. Well we got there, and I finished the first interview, very snappy, then the next one. They were two sisters and the older one went last, she passed all the questions but she said at the end that she didn´t think that she was ready, so I tried helping her out, telling her how she really was ready, trying to make her understand that she should baptize and all that, and as we were talking her dad came home and met the missionaries around the table and started yelling that his kids weren´t ready blah blah blah, and the girl started crying so I wasn´t about ready to let her leave the room and enter that mess. Luckily Elder Watts got up and managed to calm the guy down. Then Saturday I got the good news that they both got baptized, and the zone had 5 baptisms for the week. Woo!! I think we came in second place this week. not too shabby.

On Tuesday, we had another conference with the zone leaders and president again. Ours was the only zone that got a *congratulations* during the whole thing. Only because we had improved a butt-load since last month, and we had tons of dates marked for this month already, so pres was pretty happy. Not too much changed though, now the mission has a rule to fast every Wednesday, and nothing much other than that. We still have the goal to baptize 300 people in one month... we´ll see how that goes. We´re getting better though. But it´s nice to know that my district from the mtc is ruling the mission with an iron first, there´s only 5 missionaries from my group and 3 are zone leaders, 1 used to be but is now a district leader, and another is district leader and training. Bow down to district 34-G, haha. :D

That´s way cool that you got to talk with Sister Sanders, it was fun to get to know them that Sunday. Fun stuff indeed.

The other day we knocked on a door, and I saw through the window a prayer altar, and I called that they were gonna be Buddhist, and I was right :D oh yeah. And I learned something interesting: it´s probably a very good thing I didn´t get called to serve in Asia, cuz if i were, I´d spend the whole two years asking a mountain of questions about the culture and religion and I wouldn´t focus on the work. which is what I did Saturday night. haha.

The work is going alright here, we have few people that are going to church but aren´t accepting a date, then we have people who accept the date but wont go to church!, aaahhh!! shoot me now!

Yes, I did open a couple of my presents, not all of them though, I left the squishy ones (sock or tshirt) wrapped up, and when we had our leadership council last Monday everybody had fun playing around with all my action figures. am I the coolest zone leader ever? I think so. And I guess my fame as ´the gamer´ had spread, because they asked my to give a speech about the story of halo. So I did 30 minutes later and everybody had their minds exploded. Good times. haha.

ANYWAYS. speaking of kayaking and all that, I miss going to deer creek, and boating to techno music, and sitting on the rocks at the lake side.

I left my planner at the house and I was too lazy to go back and get it. So I can´t really remember what´s happened this week. My planner is like my life. A missionary without a planner is useless..... I feel so naked without it. Also another thing I´ve realized is how time passes differently at different stages in the mission:
Greenie/junior: time passes the slowest cuz all you do is follow thinking about home
Senior: I dunno, never was one
District leader: Time goes by faster cuz you have to think about your area, then the areas of your district, always worried about what´s going on
Zone Leader: Time speeds by like crazy, the week is over before I realize it´s even started, having to worry about half a city keeps my mind occupied during the whole day, while trying to not let my area be neglected, and fearing to get my hide burned by President. Oh my how time passes.

Well that was my discovery for this week. I hope everybody is having fun, in the middle east, at sport camps, on the lake, and all that.

LOVE YOU ALL!!
*la la la la la...la la la la la la la...la la la la la...*
- our *party on the boat at Deer Creek* song

Elder Webber