JAS madtown!

hola familia!

Grandma and Grandpa are on another mission!! What?! I can´t believe how
quick that came. It´s going to be a while before I see them again. I¨m so
excited and blessed to be apart of such a missionary family! Yay for
missionaries!

I wish to be a young single adult forever. But not really, that´s not part
of God´s plan, but I sure do love working with them here. I haven´t worked
so much with the JAS (Jovenes Adultos Solteros, the young single adults in
spanish) in any other area, and it´s awesome. Seriously, they are the back
bone of the ward (aside from the great leaders we have). They all love
being Mormon, and talk to all of their friends about how cool it is to be
Mormon. Do they smoke and drink? No! Do they stay out all night when their
other friends go to the club on the weekend? No! Do they come to church
every week? Yes! Do they go to the temple regularly? Yes! And now, this
Saturday Marisol and her two children Josue and Alejandra will be getting
baptized because one of the JAS, Melissa, introduced us to them. I¨m so
stinking excited! We´re going to baptize a family! This is the first family
I´ve ever baptized. I invite all JAS within the sound of my voice to follow
the example of these JAS and show the world how cool it really is to be
Mormon!

The Lord blessed us sooo much yesterday with a huge miracle. We had 8
investigators at church! One of them was a man we have been working with
named Leonardo and he stinking loved it. He also will be getting baptized,
I do not doubt. The members do a wonderful job at fellowshipping the
investigators and making sure they have friends and someone to sit with at
church. And they always ask us to go out with us to teach lessons and meet
the other people that we are teaching. I love the participation from the
ward here. When everyone does their part, things go so much more smoothly
and makes the work more FUN.

Transfers week was this week and we got a lot of new elders in the zone.
Wednesday we spent bascially all day in Murcia picking up missionaries and
dropping them off. Everyone had a really good week, the new elders that
have entered the zone are all really hard workers and there were serveral
companionships very close to the Standards of Excellence. I feel as if
we´re going to see lots of miracles in the coming months becuase of the
type of missionaries we have in the zone. The formula that Grandpa gave me
at the beggining of my mission that I have always remember is: faith +
exact ovedience + hard work = miracles. I testify that that formula is
true. And the zone is now full of hard working missionaries who are
obedient and that have faith. I¨m excited to see what we will accomplish
with the Lord in the coming months.

This week President is coming to do interviews on wednesday and Saturday is
Marisol´s baptism. It´s gonna be an interesting week, very busy for sure.
But those are always the best weeks! Elder Patterson is learning to drive
and it´s pretty entertaining. We got stuck in a round about for a good 5
minutes because he kept killing the car. I feel bad for the vehicle, it´s
probably not a fan of missionaries.

Well my dear family I love you all so much. I know that I can be annoyingly
optimistic at times, but it´s because the Lord´s blessings make me happy,
and they make me see things in another light. Let´s all take Pres. Eyring´s
counsel and look for the Lord´s hand in our lives, for His miracles, and
for His tender mercies. I promise that as you do, you will feel the spirit
of gratitude more abundantly, and will experience a similar change that I
have. I love you all so so much! Go read this talk, it makes me cry. Loves!

Elder Webb

http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2013/10/i-will-not-fail-thee-nor-forsake-thee?lang=eng

Feb. 17, 2014

Hola Familia!

Super crazy week. As I said last week, we had a lot to do. We had zone training on Tuesday, and then did two exchanges back to back. The worst part is that we didn´t have any investigators in church! Gustavo and his family went out of town for the weekend, and Maru got sick. There was one man though, his name is Angel, he is the boyfriend of Milenka. He´s the miracle investigator that I told ya´ll about a few weeks ago that came to church out of no where, remember him? Well they´ve been coming the last few weeks and are progressing nicely. They live together and he can´t be baptized until they get married, and they can´t get married until the divorce of her previous marraige is finalized, and that´s taking a while because she´s a forgeiner. *sigh* there always seems to be something. But it´s okay! Because he really likes church and so far has been really well fellowshipped by the ward. He´ll be a life long member for sure, it´s just gonna take a little longer than normal. 

The new transfer cycle starts today. Me and elder Patterson are staying together. We´re going to baptize Marisol and her family, and this other really cool family that we found on Monday, and a man named Leo, and a man named Emilio. Those are our goals for this transfer. Please continue praying for Marisol and her family, especially Gustavo. Marisol just needs the courage to be baptized to show her husband the example he needs. 

I would like to share a cool miracle that happened to me and elder Hill while we were on an exchange. The night before while I was planning I got the feeling that I should right the name of "Hector", a man I had taught about a month earlier and then never returned to visit, (he told us not to come back). I didn´t want to put his name down, but I couldn´t shake the feeling, and in all honesty I wrote it down having no intensions to pass by. Well the following evening we are in a neighboring town and ALL of our plans fail us and I literally had no idea what to do. So we did what we always do in these situations: I said a prayer with my companion. I just asked for guidance and for help to know what it was that the Lord wanted us to do. I opened my planner and seriously, even though it was full of names, there was only one name I could see: "Hector". So I said, "fine we´ll go see him", and we headed over there. I was not expecting what awaited us. There was a man on his porch, Bryan, and he called us over and started talking. He´s from Paraguay and knows the missionaries, he was going to be baptized in Paraguay but for whatever reason he had to move before his baptism. We met him, his friend, and his two neighbors (who as it turns out, are the parents of Hector!) and they all had spoken to missionaries and now want to learn more. Really cool. miracle. 

That is another testimony builder for me that the Lord has a purpose in everything. I had literally planned a perfect day. Set appointments at every hour, and EVERYTHING failed us. Once I figured out the "why" behind it, it made sense, but before then it was pretty frustrating. It took a lot of faith for me to trust the Lord, that there really was something for us to do there that night, and that He would show me what it was. I think that is a principle in life that is hard for us all to master: trusting the Lord, His ways, and His timing. If we can learn to have faith, but I´m talking about real faith, complete trust in Him, then our trials won´t be as burdensom, and we will be able to enure them better. Sometimes the Lord let´s us go down one path just a little bit so that we learn with a surety that the OTHER path is the one He wants us on, and that those are the things he wants us doing. That is what happened to me that night, but if I hadn´t excersized my faith and really trusted him, and done my part, I would have never discovered the end result and what He really actually wanted me to be doing that night. So the invitation this time is this: that we all try to trust in Him a little more, and that we grow our faith to be as great as the prophets of old, to be as big as a California Redwood (General Sherman Tree type trees). 

Okay this has been really long, I´m sorry! I¨ll leave you with this, that I know that Christ lives, and that He directs this work. I feel His influence everyday and have come to understand the importance of the Holy Spirit in all that I do, missionary or not. I understand a little better everyday the power of FAITH and the heights and depths I am able to reach when I have REAL FAITH. The Church is true, this work is real, and God lives. I love you all so so much! I hope you have a fabulous week and that your faith increases. Love love love!

Elder Webb

Wrong roads...

http://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2013-09-016-wrong-roads?category=mormon-messages/mormon-messages-2013&lang=eng

Build your faith!

http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2004/04/but-if-not?lang=eng

Faith like this tree...

Feb. 10, 2014

hola familia!

there is little time today, sorry. We had such a crazy stinking week this week. We worked so so hard and the lord blessed us like crazy. We lost a lot of time out of our area and we really truly got back to work on Friday. We started that day with 2 lessons to investigators, and very far away from the standard of excellence. We worked as hard as we could and in two and a half days we achieved them. The Lord blessed us like crazy, and I think He was trying to teach us something. I had already learned that with Him, anything is possible. But I think this time around He wanted to teach us that we are capable of doing so much more than we are doing right now. I think He wanted to show us our potential that we have, and that we haven´t been achieving. I think we as humans have trust issues and naturally hold back a little. I hadn´t honestly been giving Him all that I had, most of what I had, but not all. And this week I gave Him all, and the blessings and miracles are still surprising me. If we as humans and children of God can really learn to TRUST and have true FAITH, and really give Him all that we have, we will move mountains, and we will become the person that He wants us to be. 

Gustavo and Marisol are FORSURE getting baptized. Well Gustavo not so much, but the rest of the family yes. And Marisol keeps asking us to work hard on Gustavo because he´s not quite there. But he hasn´t been reading the BofM, and if he doesn´t keep his commitments, there´s only so much we can do. The Spirit is so much more affective than any of my words or brownies that I bring, and the BofM is one of the best ways to bring the Spirit. Preach My Gospel says that "the Book of Mormon combined with the Spirit is [my] best tool for conversion." And it´s true! I was converted because of the BofM and my conversion continues to deepen the more I read it. So if anyone is feeling a little down, or lacking in the testimony department, I invite you to read the BofM. Ipromise that the fire of your testimony that you have been lacking will come back! 

Speaking of invitations, I met the most Catholic man in my life yesterday. He told me and my companion that we were confused and that the Catholic church was correct. At the end of the discussion he literally extended us a commitment, as if he were the missionary and not us! He said "I invite you to look at this video, and to repent of your erronous ways, and to discover the good that comes from the Virgin and the Saints." It was quite interesting. 

The best part of the week happened at church. We had 6 investigators at church! And it was fast and testimony meeting and the Spirit was so strong. Marisol afterwards told me that she was going to get up and bear testimony! But the time ran out. So stinking cool! But that wasn´t even the best part. The best part was David. The two year old son of Maru, another investigator. He was with the bishops wife and two year old son playing, and drawing on papers when suddenly, and literally out of nowhere, he begins to vomit ALL OVER THE CHAPEL AND THE BISHOPS WIFE!! I couldn´t believe my eyes! Me and a couple more brethren jumped up to grab the mop and the poor boy just continued throwing up, leaving a trail behind him. No one said a thing, everything continued as normal, as if nothing had happened. Afterwards, David came back and he too appeared to not even realize what had happened. It made for a pretty entertaining sacrament meeting. 

This week will be interesting as well. It´s the last week of transfers (I¨m 99% positive that I am staying in Molina) and we need to have 2 exchanges. Zone meeting is tomorrow as well, where we train the zone on what President taught us in concilio. The zone did really well last month and so we´ve decided to do something nice for them and cook them breakfast tomorrow. Don´t tell them anything though, it´s a surprise! 

Last thing I want to share is something I learned in personal study. I´ve been studying obedience a lot, trying to change my attitude so that it´s a QUEST and not a nausance. I feel that we as children of God in general, we fear man more than God, and that causes us to be rebelous and disobedient. I read in the book of Ecclesiastes 12:13 a scripture I like: "Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: ^aFear God, and ^bkeep his commandments: for this is the whole ^cduty of man." It is our duty, and we owe it to Him for everything He has given us. Let us all commit to be more obedient, to fear God and not man. He has promised more power, more blessings, and more happiness if we do so. But in order to do so, we first must rid ourselves of any pride, and TRUST Him. Obedience is cool. I feel like a cheerleader for the D.A.R.E campaign, but instead of kids and drugs, it´s missionaries and obedience. But you know what? I´ll shout this song all day, every day if I have too because it´s cool to be Mormon, it´s cool to obey and get blessings, and all these things make me happy. 

Sorry for the long winded letter. I love you all so much! I hope you have a good week, and that you are obedient! Love love love!

Elder Webb