A Baptism

Man what a crazy week, to start off Maria got baptized without any problems, came on time, enter the water no problem, confirmation no problem.. was minimal stress so it was a fantastic week for her and for us.. a nice little boost of energy and desire to get out and work even more then we already are.. we are dong more and more contacting in our new area and are finding golden family after golden family.. before lunch we had lunch with a member yesterday we had 30 min to spare so instead of showing up early just decided to do come contacting, and the lord blesses those that do what they should even though it would have been a lot more relaxing and enjoyable to be with the member those extra 30 min it certainly would not have been worth it..  we started contacting the building one room at a time and of course the last door we knock on its a young 24 year old man, who is legally married, has 2 kids, and gets home from work around 6 o'clock everyday taught him about the family and he invited himself to church next week... we could barely believe our ears!!! It was miracle sent from god himself not on a silver plate, but a golden plate with diamonds and rubies and all sorts or curious workmanship!! 

Also on a mission its all about schedule and repetition, go to sleep 1030 wake up 630.. its puts you into a rythm and after a time you get use it and have plenty on energy.. not for us... we go to sleep at 1030 everyday,, but one day its 630.. the next its 530, next day back to 630.. a few days later its 430.. my body is slowly dying and my sleep schedual is so messed up.. Why you might ask? ill tell you.. elder maxihno needs papers for his visa to portugal, elder dum needs papers for his passport.. so we go to one side of the city to find out the paper we need is on the other side, and we find out that the paper we already go isnt the one that they need so we have to go all around this city trying to find the one that we need.. its been like this for the last 2 transfers almost 3 days a week.. gotta love it... 

also fun little fact, here in africa its Mucua sesson.. so you know those huge trees know in the states as the tree of life.. yeah they have a fruit called Mucua, its a huge shell the size of a rugby ball and when you crack it open it sorta looks like a dried brain, and theres little white cubes inside that are sort of like chalk, these are the good stuff.. you can suck on them but are very very bitter or you can make juice out of them.. and that is DANG GOOD!! Mucua juice is the best.. everyone has it nowadays so we drink it a ton and its delicious!! 

other then that nothing much.. just the usual lessons and working.. nothing to big.. always good to hear about rugby and joseph and good on mariah.. well done all around,

love 

Elder Webber

Mariah is Worth Cows--WhooHooo

They were selling a rugby ball on the street for pretty cheap and i just had to buy it, so i get to pass it around every now and again with my comp, but sounds good, i have no doubt Utah will be very good very soon.. This week was a lot of fun, and super frustrating at times as it is every week on the mission. We went contacting some more in our new area and found some really good new investigators, about out of every 16 doors we hit we get about 3 investigators, so its not a bad area at all. Elder Maxinho my son is very very very new to the mission life and how to truly teach, so in one lesson we sat down and started to teach the plan of salvation, and when it got time to teach about the fall and agency he taught some deep doctrine, like deep doctrine.. and he went on forever! so after he was done, i just bore testimony and tried to bring it back to the small and simple powerful things.. twas very interesting.. we had a little chat last night about teaching simply and hes learning and becoming a very very good missionary. Really frustrating at times and a lot of the times i have to remember hes brand new, and a RC of the church of no more then 3 years, so i have to let him teach and learn from experience, but i always make sure to bring the spirit when hes done so the investigator its too lost. 

I tried this week doing a little magic trick for the little kids in the street and even the most simple one blows their mind.. its the funniest thing, even a simple disappearing rock, when i walk by they are always calling out "Homem da magia! Homem da magia" or "magic man, magic man!". at first i thought it was just be cool to make the kids happy and have a little fun, but we soon learned that they would tell their parents and the next day their parents would be outside, so while i was doing magic tricks my companions would be going around talking to the parents for referalls or setting up appoitments to come visit.. it was pretty cool, fun little way to do some contacting. 

Now its time for business, Elder Dlimini "the elder from swaziland" was telling me about swaziland this week and it honestly sounds like a fantasy land.. they have a king, and he has balls one for his birthday and another for the country birthday, they have all sorts of crazy stuff, certainly a place i want to visit, but he made a very interesting offer, he saw a photo of mariah and said that he would pay 30 of his best cows for her hand in marriage..   mom dad.. thats 30 of the best milk and beef cows.. we could be rich.. just think about it and let me know what you think.. (and yes they still do that in swaziland, you have to pay the father of your wife cows..) 

also the split of our branch was super nice, we went church yesterday and it was always packed in the little room that we meet in, usually filled with about 140 members, but yesterday we only had about 40 member.. oh it was nice to actually have some room, and we kept all of our favorite investigators and members so the division wasn't bad for us at all. just some motivation that we need to grow this branch it only having 40 members and all

Love, 

Elder Webber

Area has been split

While you guys were off having the time of your life down in the good ole home land i was sweating my face off walking miles in this sand filled, ruleless country.. but it was all so worth it as we found a ton of new investigators and a ton of our investigators started to progress this last week which is awesome. Jon the hair stylist finally got work off to come to church so that was great to finally see him there, also maridia an older lady we found last week and the daughter of a member maria.. they all came for the first time! but the frustrating part was that so many people came to church all of our investigators sat in the overflow.. which is just a kitchen because the church building is an hot house, so we sat in the back in a kitchen without air and on some plastic yard chairs trying to listen to the speakers.... super frustrating but its a really good frustrating since it means the church is really growing here. and it wont happen next week since the branch was split yesterday.. 

With the split of the branch our areas were split, so we lost a large chunk of our HUGE area and received a smaller area but this smaller area is filled with huge apartment buildings, we went to go contacting there and the majority of the bildings we can get in no problem but some have huge locked metal doors and a security guard with an AK usually sleeping just outside the door, sometimes we can sneak by if the door is cracked open and get some great contacts done, other times we have to try to sweet talk this guy into letting us in, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesnt.. but the area is awesome and we found a ton new investigators.. which is really nice, because the area we usually work in after 3 transfers we have almost knocked everydoor so its nice to get a new area thats closer and the contacting is a lot cooler and easy.. 

With Maria we have her marked up for the 24th and it looks like nothing is going to stop her from getting baptized.. she learns more and more every visit and she always keeps her commitments.. ohh its awesome, her mom is always so nice, we went over to their house three times this week, everytime it was either a drink, or food or something given to us, same with the canteens boys, we cant pass by there without being offered something to eat or drink.. its no wonder ive gained weight here.. i look at some old photos of me and im amazed.. putting on that weight here in africa.. who would have thought.. 

Love, 

elder Webber