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
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