Monday, October 26, 2015

Baptisms

This week was really stressful, we had a baptism so we had to make sure that it was going to go well, and it did. i baptized rochanna a 9 yr old girl and confirmed piter a 14 year old boy. pretty cool the lord really helped me out on the prayers as i didnt mess up once, and gave a short and simple blessing so that went really well. But this week we had to drop some investigators and be super straight up with others. A lot of them werent keeping the comitments and making excusses on stuff so elder conde and i had to go in and with a sweet kind tone tell them to "stop acting like little kids and start keeping your commitments go to church and follow the savior or else theres no point in us teaching you." sorta scared them straight and had to remind them of our purpose, not just to talk about christ and stuff but to work them towards their salvation. So the last couple days consisted of that which was fun. But on the bright side we found a lot more investigators that will be awesome to teach.. we found 2 guys that are aweseome Paulo and Folo we are really looking forward to this week teaching them. The cantina boys are still doing great as well.

pretty crazy experience happened yesturday.. we were walking back from a lesson at like 8 at night and we saw a guy ahead of us walking, we hear a car come zooming up behind us barely misses me cause i was on the outside but actaully clips the guy ahead of us pretty bad, so the car pulls over and the girl gets out, and i thought okay shes getting out to see if hes okay, good girl... NOPE! she gets out to fix her mirror and see if her car is okay.. then starts getting back in the car, the guy ahead of us was hammered drunk and starts yeling at her and confront her at her car, we walk by and the guy says "mormons mormons you guys wont lie.. tell her shes wrong" we didnt take anyside just had her apologize and she drove off after the drunk tried to smash her window in while driving away.. we talked with the drunk guy for a little but neither of us could understand him becuase he was speaking portuguese\english with a drunk slur, so we decided to leave but of cause not before we gave him a word of wisdom pamphlet with our number on it.. hopefully when hes sober he´ll give us a call.

sounds like some good stuff back at home, not gonna lie kinda missed home this week as zach came home and this week was especially stressful. tell zach not to get married until i get home, i wanna kick it with him before. hows the world cup? yes some american candies would be fantastic... anything would be great to have.. sounds fun sounds cool

Love you miss you


Elder Webber

after playing a little bit of soccer with the kiddies




Piter and Rochannas baptism 

Monday, October 19, 2015

Miracles

This week really flew by because of the amount of miracles the lord has sent on our mission, I can really see that the lord is in front of us and behind us protecting and guiding us as we do our work. i'll share 2 experiences with this that we had this week. The first  on Tuesday when we were planning we had 3 hours where we had no idea what to do, all our investigators couldn't meet with us or weren't picking up the phone.. so we felt that the lord wanted us to go contacting. So thats what we did, we went out and many times had no idea where to go but an impression would come where we would go. After many closed doors and no answers we finally came to a door, knocked.. and the man let us in, he said he was suppose to go back to work with his wife 10 min ago but something kept him back *cough the spirit cough* so we taught him and his wife a really powerful lesson about the Restoration, they gave us cookies, water and juice since we were their guests they treated us awesomely haha and we then saw why the lord wanted us to have those 3 hours of contacting so we could find this family. 

the other was a bit more sketchy, so we started off our day going to our first lesson we knocked and of ocurse they werent there.. classic, so we sat on the stairs of the apartment builidng thinking of what to do for like 15 min, finally we decided to heat our somewhere for some contacting.. as soon as we leave the building a car pulls up and its one of our investigators, with her dad.. she asked where we were heading and we said "your house!" so she gave us a ride to her house where we shared an awesome message with her and had some cookies. Right after that visit we were walking down the street and the 2nd councilor of the branch pulled up and asked "elders where you going?"  we had to go all across our area which is like a mile so we gave us a ride which was a life savor... After our lesson with Jose we started walking back through the dirt streets of Fobu where once again a none member of the girls roles down his window and said elders get in.. we get in and he said that his whole family is members but hes not, but knew we are men of god and wanted to help us out, he gave us a ride and even offered us dinner next week just so we can talk.. also said that the area we are working in is really dangerous at night so if we ever needed a ride just to give him a ring. We were dropped off close to our apartment right next to our short cut that we take through this ghetto farmland, right before we were about to turn into the darkness and disappear from the road a taxi driver pulls up and yelled at us to get in, said hed take us to the corner of our street free of charge, first of all that never happens here taxi drivers offering free rides, but we got in and he dropped us off and we headed home safely. I can understand the first 3 rides, the lord wanted us to meet these people, but the fourth one was super random, a second later and we would have been gone.. i think that lord sent that taxi driver just in time because there was something really bad in the farmland he didnt want to have happened to us, in which i am very thankful.. 

but missionary work is going great here, we are teaching a lot of people, Leandro and nunu, 2 kids that work at a cantina.. Voldemar and his family, which are prime, Quienta who has a ton of faith in christ just not in the right church, Arrone the miracle family, and Jose and his family, Joses is super sad cause hes been investigating the church for like 3 years but cant be baptized because hes not married to his girlfriend, (they dont have enough money and the wedding process is super bad here) they have 4 kids though and they are about the strongest family in the gospel i have ever seen, family night every week, scripture study everyday, and everything that is commanded they do.. This last week they decided since they cant be members they at least want their kids to be saved.. so we have Rochana and Piter coming this week, almost breaks my heart everytime we talk to them about is, my companion and i figured if we live off of bread for the next 4 weeks and save up as much as we can we can almost pay for it.. but its against mission rules to do that so its pretty much torture!

anyways pretty fun week

Love you miss you 


Elder Webber

Monday, October 12, 2015

Settling In....

This week was pretty nuts and oh so long, it seemed like forever. Our area is huge and we have spent most of the time trying to figure out where everything is so that means walking for miles a day. i dont keep track because i just dont want to know haha but we have found some really good investigators that are really eager to learn moer about the gospel.. and teach them we will. Im still struggling with the language but im doing a lot better, im contributing more and more to our lessons and slowly starting to understand what people are saying to me so thats a plus. Ive noticed while on my mission that the lord is really wanting this generation to be super strong in the gospel. (Like a kid named Bruno who is doing so well and wants to learn more) Most people we find are teenagers that are really interested but thier parents arent. about half the people we taught this week were people under 20 years of age, super interesting.. and frusrating because as a mission we are focusing on families so to grow the church here.. just gotta keep finding. We have a weird area.. youll be walking surronded by nice houses with pools and electric fenses and guards then BOOM suddenly youll be in the shanties teaching a family in aone room house with a tin roof and dirt floor. Both kinds of people have been prepared by the lord and we have found a lot of great invesitgators in both areas.

Angola is super interesting, the country pretty much ships everything in, so its all pretty expensive.. except for juice and bananas those are really cheap. The government doesnt like the outside world here but the people love it. You hear the backstreet boys while shopping at the super market and nobody knows what it means all they know is that its from the US and has a good beat to it. hahaha but the cool thing is they have luxury flakes here and they are pretty cheap so thats great!!

While walking around and during lessons you have a lot of time to think. esspecially when you dont know the language at all. You think about everything in your life and all youve done, you think about now and what your doing, and you really think about the future. but one thing my companion and i have been talking about this week a lot is just living in the moment, i feel thats so rare now a days, we are always looking back for memories or looking a head for the next big thing and never talking the time to enjoy the time you are in right now and who you are with. So we promised to live in the moment about looking back on my live regreting not enjoying fully where i was or who i was or who i was with. you just gotta make the place, time, and people your in right now the best and thats all that matters.. no need to worry about the past it cant be changed, and with faith the lord will prepare your future after you put the work in today.

Sounds like sweet living at home

love you miss you

Elder Webber

also sister merrill has a mission blog for the whole mission, if you could take those photos that im in and save them somewhere that would be great



P.S>  We were teaching a family and in the back ground i heard the wildkrats them song going off and my mind instantly went to joseph and my promise to him.. Sadly the area where you get to be in the wild and the country side is closed, president has focused 32 missionaries in the capital and 4 missionaries in the second biggest city Lubongo, so tell joseph i will try to get a photo of an animal while im here but it doesn't look like i will. All I've seen so far is a lizard and a bird.. which was probably eaten later that day. But hearing that song made me think of joseph and how awesome he is..

Monday, October 5, 2015

The " 'Eagle' has landed"

I havent died yet here in angola but i think i might soon.. let me better explain my situation in a parable... i am a little grain of rice, among a huge swimming pool full  of chocolate chips, and all these chocolate chips are speaking chocoguese while the grain of rice is speaking riceguese.. you know when you wear something youve never worn before to highschoool and its a bit werid and you think everyone is staring at you but they arent.. thats how i feel. everyone, i mean everyone looks at me like im an alien, the kids love high fiveing me becuase they like touching my white skin.. pretty nuts haha but there is seriously nothing you can do to prepare for angola other then just dive into what is going on. the streets here are nots, theres absolutely no rules here for the roads stop lights and cross walks dont exist. in order for us to cross a 6 lane road we find a solid place with a resting spot in the middle and when we see a gap we start walking, but dont run becuase the locals will laugh at you. while walking you hold up your arm hoping that cars will slow down or stop for you, siometimes they do, other times not so much and your left to your skills to junk and dodge these cars blazing down the road. Pretty crazy. In order to travel long distances you get packed into these tiny vans that are known to be the homes of a lot of pick pocketers and travel down these super bumpy roads to where you need to go, this place is great!! and really safe.. i mean all the guards for banks and apartments have AK-47s on them, perfect!! our apartment is actually really nice, better then my house in arizona, and im not kidding. we have a washer machine, dish washer, 2 showers with hot water, a couch. its really nice, the church got these apartments for the missionaries because they are the only safe ones around haha. but ive loved this place its been a blast so far

My companion is elder conde, hes from mozambique and can actually speak a lot of english which is super nice in learning portuguese and with everything. president decided to split the APs area in half and give our companionship half of it for a brand new area, so what that means is that both of us have no idea where anything is, one of us doesnt know the language at all and we get lost about twice a day, we got lost one day and had to cut through a sauper ghetto farm between neighborhoods, pretty sketchy haha they gave us the area with only 1 invesigator so our days consiste of a lot of finding. which is easy here because so many people here are prepared for the gospel almost everyone will give us their numbers and say to visit them again which is sweet, we found a 14 year old kid named Adilson and hes a boss, is so curious about the church and really wants his family to learn more so we are working with them on that, we found another family and currently have them on date ofr the 24th the parents arent married but they still want thier kids to be baptized so we are gonna do that for them! we also had mission conference this weekend which was good even though i couldnt understand a word but president and sister merril are awesome working with our huge mission of 36 missionaries!! its HUGE!! hahaha 

Being here in angola and seeing how these people live really makes me miss home, and makes me so grateful for having the family that i have. many times you see kids with torn up shirts and their dad is gone and mom is caring for 4 kids. you see how they live and i think back to how i was raised and how so grateful i am for a father that worked so hard to provide for us and a mother that contnually loved us and cared for us even when we were dumb in our teenage  years. many times this week ive wanted to go home and give my parents a big huge for all theyve done for me even when i wasnt the best child but i cant so that will just have to wait a few years. Its interesting seeing peoples prioraties here, they all live in tin houses and all their clothes dont fit but they also all have satalite TV hahah 

Much love, miss you


Elder Webber


All the americans and english speakers all 10 of us jammed into a back room to watch the one Saturday morning session. 



a photo of a farm land in between neighborhoods




My companion showing how africa really, gives a whole new meaning to helping your neighbor doesn't it.... 



and me doing my thang on one of the streets of our area with the little filhos playing soccer behind me.. 



heres the address for mail,  if you break down the package to 2.2 pounds its a lot easier and a whole lot better for sending stuff, letters are pretty easy. 

President Danny Merrill
condominio Arte Yetu
Bloco A Torre V Apt. 302

Talatona, Luanda, Angola