Wearin' out His shoes...

I recieved my new companions on Wednesday Elder Dum, and Elder Maxinho who actually lives like 30 min away from our area so he actaully sees a lot of his friends in taxis and at the stores which is pretty interesting. When they got here we didnt do anything all day because President said that Elder Maxinho just got off of a 9 hour flight and would probably like to rest, but said it was up to me if we should go out and work or let him rest.. and after a tough decision we decided to stay in to let him rest and we talked about our area for a couple hours and planned that next day, which i made sure was going to show all of our area and visit our investigators and i planned it perfectly so we would have to walk a lot.. just to welcome them into our area, nice little strole around town if you know what im saying.. When we got home that night Elder Dum looked at his shoes and was shocked and said "looks like im going to have to tell my mom to send me some new pairs cause this area is going to kill my pair" Elder dum you are 100% correct.. after i transfer in this area ive already worn down my insole to almost nothing and i have a hole on my right shoe.. This area is going to kill my shoes then its going to kill me soon after.. gotta love the Nova Vida 3C area life baby!! 

But this week was really cool cause we've had to drop a lot of investigators due to them not keeping comitments but we also found a new place to contact and we did a lot of contacting there and found a lot of solid families and people which seem will be really good so we are really excited for that. Yesturday we went to my beloved Canteena boys as we do every sunday and sat down to teach our lesson.. but to my surprise that mom came and joined us!! we taught her and it seems like i might actually get to baptize these 3 kids.. YEAH!! blessing from the lord after 8 long weeks the mother is actaully starting to join in on our lessons! Then of course after our lesson they came and brought us juice and cake.. ohhh it was perfect, just what i needed after a week like this.. probably the hardest week of my life because i had to take over the area, help train, tell them all about our area and investigators in portuguese and the baptism we had for this week wasnt ready so we had to postpone that.. i thought my head was going to explode and a lot of times i just wanted to go back to our appartment curl up into a ball and sleep.. but i cant and i wont.. the work must continue and so it did.

Glad my letter finally got there, sent it off about a month ago, kind forgot what it said by im happy it made an impact. sounds like lifes killer back at home, keep me on the update on the dating life, sports life and schooling life of my  kindred 

Thanks, love you 

Elder Webber

Transfer,.. But Staying...

Transfer time!! and im staying here in my birth area still working this new area.. my comp however is leaving me and im receiving 2 new companions one named Elder Dum hes been here a while, from portugual but hes still fluent in engilsh and portuguese so that will be very nice.. very nice indeed. The other one is a brand new missionary Elder Maxino hes from right here in Luanda just waiting for his Visa to go to portugual.. so in other words im a part daddy and helping giving birth.. Itll be weird i just finished getting trained and now im helping to train another missionary.. dont know how long he will be here but regardless it will still be a lot of fun. 

This week was fun, Quienta has his baptism marked up for this satruday and hes really excited for that so its gonna be sweet to finally see some fruits for our long labors here in Nova Vida, we didnt meet with him as much as we should have but the times that we did were really good and he seems to be really prepared, we didnt get to see leandor this week which was really sad.. whenever we dont see him it feels like a huge part of our lifes is missing. But elder conde and i have been working really hard this week to find some new investigators becasue we were in need of some new ones and sure enough the lord answers our prayers and we found a ton of really good families that are really excited to learn more and to meet with us so that was really cool. The language is coming along super super fast which is a huge blessing from the lord.. elder conde yesturday told me that my teaching in lessons is really good and i can pretty much teach on my own now.. Crazy how fast you can learn a language.. super cool. 

We also had disrtict conference here in luanda.. we heard from the district president and our beloved mission president.. we also got a satalite broadcast and were taught from Elder cook, and elder Rasband.. they announced that the two 2 temples here in africa will soon be finished and the memebers here are so excited for that. Elder Rasband was sweet though, he spoke really well and is going to be an awesome appostle.. he even spoke perfect portuguesse.. just kidding there was a translator.. but it was really good to hear from them and to see all the missionaries all 36 of us and to see all the 1600 members gathered into one conference center.. pretty cool stuff..

other then that nothing much happened this week, just more work in our new area.. Elder conde says that this has been his hardest area yet, and hes even been in the provincial life.. pretty nuts.. we walk a ton, talk with few and are still getting lost.. opening areas is super hard.. but i know that in time it will all pay off.. and i cant wait for that day.. 

Elder Webber

you can send food a lot of elders send packages with food its fine.. fedex and dhl are best and send it to this address, but my name on the senders spot and presidents name in the recipient and it should be very good. 

President danny merril 

Condominio Concha, de Talatona #77

Bairro Talatona VIA AL 16

Municipio da Samba - Luanda

Angola

Baskeball, Soccer and Independance

This week was fun because it was the Independence of Angola, so what that means is that Wednesday the day before it was the pre-party people were just super drunk everywhere, Thursday the independence everything closed down and military people and police were all over the streets, and once again people were still hammered drunk, then the next day it was people super hung over had no idea what was going on. So needless to say there wasn't much contacting going on, and the few contacting we did make it was with drunk people which is always super interesting and fun to do. But this week we met more with Leandor and his uncle Manuel and his cousin Nunu, and these guys are straight bosses, we only meet them saturday and sunday, and we always look forward to the weekend just so we can meet with them. Yesterday we waiting for them to get done with the chores and they brought out french toast and drinks for us while we waited.. it was so good! after our lesson we were about to say the prayer and the mom walked in and asked if she could join.. of course you can! After the prayer we shared photos and funny story about that they saw our family photo and said your parents look so young to have so many kids. and while looking at the photo of me playing rugby they all said i look like Christiano Ronaldo... no big deal.. So these kids are awesome! and the mom is liking us more and more which is sweet her heart is being softened a lot my the lord!

I went on divisions this week with Elder Lematua, and he showed me a lot of different ways to contact instead of the usual way of just knocking doors. The main activity we did was playing basketball, and turns out i balled up against some professional basketball players here in luanda, they play for Petro luanda and Premerio de Agusto.. pretty cool!

Also i told Elder Conde about how people back home are fighitng against the prophet and arent agreeing with him, and he pretty much lost his mind he said "really.. REALLY people fighting against the prophet.. no no no..  how can they.. hes called of god, hes doing what the lord wants.. people in the church complaining against the prophet nooooo man this is really not okay..." haha man its so true, so many people here in africa love the prophet and apostles and would do anything just to see them in person, and they would never think about going against the prophet.. just thought that was pretty cool. I love having elder conde as a companion, hes great! I tell him some situations that are happening back home and in the world and he is shocked about what is happening and how people are going against the prophet.  

Love you miss you

Elder Webber

Rain Rian, Rain...

Man looking at the photos of Halloween Joseph looks nothing like joseph dressed up as a warewolf.. scary stuff! and looks like Zach is back to being is silly goofy self.. classic! 

This week was a solid week, they are starting to fly by faster and faster as the weeks go back, next thing ill know ill be at the year mark! It was really stormy this week, but storms here in angola is mostly just a slight mist which is actually really nice walking around in, except for sunday night where it was a down pour, Elder Conde and i were on the other side of our are and it starts down pouring... super bad.. we look and we have 0 kwanza so we cant take a taxi.. so it was a long long long walk back, but we made the best of it and busted out some solid missionary raps.. our album will be coming out soon! haha but it was actually a lot fun. 

We have a couple really good investigators who are on date and look like they will be baptized. Leandor is really good (the cantinna boy) and his mom loves us, we went over yesturday and she gave us cake and some drinks, leandor when we left said "i love you guys, your like the older brothers i never had" it was awesome to feel so important to someone and to brighten their day just by talking with them a couple times of week. Made me feel a lot like our savior..  the other is Paulo, a 18 yr old guy who when we met him said that he had always dreamed about being a missionary or a pastor, we taught him the first lesson and went back to teach the second and he said "elders i read the chapter and more, i have a lot of questions for you.. and i know this is the path for me to accomplish my dream!" ohhh man the boy, we were so excited. The last one is Quienta he was really frusting at first because he wasnt coming to church,  but he came yesturday and loved it, we saw him last night and he had his friend their that he wanted us to teach.. already giving us referals!! so the work has been really good this week, super exciting and the language is coming a long really well. 

Yeah the world is a terrible place. so many people losing sight of what is truly important, the adversary is doing a great work on confusing the hearts and minds of men and telling them that its okay, its acceptable and that its natural. The sad part is hes working really well with the younger generation making it hip or cool or accept it and that is truly the sad part.. we are suppose to be the chosen generation and so many are not doing what they should be doing and getting confused.. sad sad sad

Anyways, thanks for everything...

miss you love you

Elder Webber

Doin' Well....

This week was pretty, just a lot of teaching and a lot of finding as usual with our new area.. Leandor one of the cantinna boys is loving the gospel hes 17 years old and is really working hard. We can only teach him on the weekends because during the week he heads into the city for school but everytime we see him on saturday he comes with a paper full of questions and things hes learned from the book of Mormon, its awesome to see casue hes so excited about baptism. He was baptized a catholic at 6 but we told him to read Moroni 8 and to pray about it and we came back and he said elders i know i have to get re baptized and i want to join your church and we thought perfect in a couple of weeks we can do that easy.. but of course Satan always has something to say.. we had to ask his mom for permission and she said no.. its was heart breaking.. but after a long conversation she said she would pray about it. Then Sunday leandor came to church and loved it so he went back home and told his family all about it and when we visited him last night he said his mom was going to let Nunu and Manuel go to church and she might even come herself. The lord is really softening her heart and telling her that this is the way for her family to follow. So hopefully this week this positive feeling will continue.

One of the nights this week we got out of our lesson late and our next appointment was all the way across our area which is super far.. so after strapping on our bags and getting ready we sprinted for what seemed to be miles to get to our lesson with John, we finally get there just a little late and we teach him and his sister, They were super invovled in the lesson and really enjoyed what we were saying, they even accepted the invitation to be baptized! Elder conde and i were so excited and after the lesson he told us "Elders you guys are awesome, i dont want any other missionaries teaching us, i dont know how it would be" we were pumped but weren't sure if we could teach them cause they lived just outside our area.. and surely enough they do live outside our area so we had to pass them along... AHHHHHHH!!!! NOOOO!!! but John works in our area on a street that we often walk on so we get to check up on him and talk to him every now and again.. hes a profession hair cutter and one day he cut our hair for us.. turns out here in Africa they cut hair a little bit different.. they use an exacto blade and a comb to cut your hair.. pretty nuts but its probably the best hair ive ever gotten so its all good! 

I have a lot of advice for the Priests but ill share 1 that i really learned this week..  love your family, spend as much time as you can with them because you will miss them on your mission. But really Learn the real meaning of praying continually.. instead of walking with head phones in or texting, learn to say pray in your heart and have a conversion with your father in heaven, prayers are more then just morning and evening they should be continually talking to your father above through out the day and talking with him. Replace headphones, twitter, facebook, music, and tv with times to ponder about the gospel and pray to your father, really talking to him.. itll help a lot when you walk miles a day with only your thoughts to entertain you. 

Love you, Miss you

Elder Webber

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 

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