Late, Short and Sweet...

Well transfers are finally here and i'm going to be heading back to the first area that i served in here in angola. I'll be going back to Nova Vida, and will be serving with Elder Mills from Arizona as Zone Leader of the Luanda Zone. 

I'm pretty excited to be heading back and to see the progression of the area from the time that i and elder conde opened to now. 

Since the last time that i wrote you nothing happened, just a lot of good byes and finishing up my work here in the office and in Benfica. Its been real and its been great. 

Busy, Busy Stress, and a Cryptic email

Well this was probably the most stressful 2 weeks of my life, for reasons that I cannot say at the moment but will be revealed soon. Lets just say Elder Mitchell and I had some great life and marriage training these last 2 weeks, training that was once in a live time and is better than any other kind. These last two weeks we cried laughing, balded a little, fell asleep in lessons, saw things no other man wants to see. Its also been a long time since ive emailed, but it feels like a emailed yesterday because these 2 weeks have flown by. Last week we had an awesome baptism with junior! He loved it, he might be the funniest kid I have met here in Angola, and it was awesome being able to teach him with his brother Taric. We had a ton of fun teaching Junior and seeing him grow from a shyer kid to having friends and a huge testimony. Its very interesting how the gospel helps us in more ways than just spiritual. Also Taric has grown to be one of my great friends here in Angola and I will miss him dearly as I am leaving this area here in a couple of days. It makes me terribly sad to know that it has finally come but I am ready to go and be a normal missionary. I loved being in the office, I learned a ton of live long skills that will be very helpful after the mission. I have loved serving in Benfica and being in this area. I also love love love the recent converts here.. my only wish is to see them all get sealed  or go on missions, that would be amazing! It will be very heart aching to have to say goodbye to all the great members here in Benfica. I hope I have a chance here in the future to come back and visit with them all. Many have already offered places to stay, Valdemiro and Vanusa said they want me to come back with my something something “wife”.

Another reason why it was so stressful this week and why we didn’t have p-day on Monday was that a auditor from the south Africa area office came in and did an audit. That was a very stressful very tiring 4 days.. we would get to the office early and leave late. Thing was that we still tried to get some lessons in, which we tried our best, but didn’t do really well. Fernando however is progressing really well and is being interviewed today. It feels like I’m ending one of the bigger chapters in my life. I feel like i've learned more in this area and calling than I have the whole time I was in high school. Elder Mitchell I will probably miss the most however, these 2 transfers have flown by and I would have to say it is all because of him and his help and fun. Its been a really fun and exciting way to end my time here in Benfica and here in the office. Happily, I already know where i'm going and where im serving.. I am very excited, even though it will be a little bit of a déjà vu.

I have a lot to say but not a whole lot of time to say it, this will just have to be all explained when I go home or when I see you guys in a couple of weeks. Ill let you know where i'm going on Monday, I send a small email to say hello and inform you all what the transfer is. For other news theres not much, im alive, working, sad, but very excited!

A Wonderful Mother...

Not a lot happened this week, just more of the usual work. We really didnt do anything special other than junior, tarics little brother, is prepared and ready for his baptism next week. We are all pretty excited for that. Other then that i really have no other kind of news or anything cool that happened this week.. more of a ho um kind of week as we just did our usual lessons and helped our investigators we currently have work and progress better. Maybe the coolest thing that happened this week was the love of a mother we saw for one of her kids. After we visited this potnetial missionary we later started speaking to his mother who began to express her desire for him to serve the lord and go on a mission.. after almost 10 mins of her venting and telling about the problems facing this young man i started slowly seeing my own dear mother in her eyes and i could have sworn hearing moms voice.. it was pretty crazy.. it was a nice little slap to help me remember how much love mothers have for their sons and how much they wish and hope that their children do what is right. After you are on the mission for the long time you slowly start to forget more and more about your family and the feeling its like when your with them, but it seems that heavenly father every now and again puts a little reminder into our lives to help us remember that we have a loving family back at home and that i have a great mother who wants the best for me and who has taught me what to do and how to do it correctly... and for that i will be eternally grateful.. Thank you mother.

I have nothing else to report as we are finding new people, helping less actives and working great together.. im another week closer to leaving this area and its heartbreaking knowing that ill never work here again and that ill have to leave my great companion.. this last month has flown by.. All else is well here in Benfica.. all is quite and the work continues.. Also thank you for the report on honey, it was very sad to read and i almost shed a tear... almost.. 2 kittens you say? that would not have been my choice but thats just me.. i would like another dog again.. maybe when i move out ill get a nice little puppy.. hahahahah just kidding mom

Elder Webber

Interesting Supermarkets

Well this week was a quick welcome to the hot season here in Angola... every day this week was a battle against sweat and the heat. I cant believe i forgot how hot it gets here in Angola. Its all good because we but the foot to the pavement and went to work and found a lot of new investigators and the members were making it rain with referrals. We are teaching a new family, Job and Graça who are doing really well. Job is a boss and has a ton of questions, Graça is a lot more quiet but still loves to learn more. We had family night with them last week and once again family night comes in for the win! every time we passed by they asked when would be the next time for family night... it was a ton of fun esspecially because job taught us this weird african version of sorry and trouble... it was a ton of fun 10/10. We are also teaching the uncle of WIlma and Yolene. Hes a bit slowler but understands really well when he understands... its been fun teaching him and trying new ways to describe and explain confusing things. We are also teaching a man named Nelson who is also doing really well... he works for he Angolan CIA i guess you could say. Also Antonia and Junior and Ciara are all donig really well. They all came to church this week and Junior is really excited for his baptism. 

This week also was a tough one because the super markets here in angola are very very unreliable.. one week you could have everything you could ever want.. but the next week there could be absolutely nothing... last week was one of those weeks.. We had zero protein in our house and a whole lot of carbs.. zero veggies and fruit but a whole lot of milk.. so engery was 0% and health was also 0% but as always we can always find some kind of reserve energy that can get us through the day.. its always a mircale and seems to be the biggest miracle. Also this week Manual was baptized. His brother in law did the baptism and it was great, a lot of members came out to support him and it was a great day all around. He was taken out of our area after dawson came in since our area split so we only saw him on sundays, but this sunday he wanted us to participate in is confirmation which is always a great experience that i love. Not much else.. we dont have much time to write so i try my best to give you the scoop on what angola is like and what the mission life is.. 

Elder Webber

Lots of Driving...

This week was aight. Nothing new really happened. We did a whole ton of driving around again and trying to find some random electrical part for the mission office. Being angola it made it about a million times harder to find that piece. It took about 4 hours driving from store to store looking for this little thing that without it the whole mission office doesn't have energy. We would get to one store and they said that they don't have it and send us to the next one.. 5 stores later we end up wayyyyyy out in Viana, we finally buy it and head back home with just enough time for the condo handy man to come over and put it in. It was pretty sweet though, we just had a nice little chat just elder mitchell and i because we received another missionary this last week so a duo split up and one of them, Elder Dawson, is now here in benfica with elder mashalaba, so in other words.. NO MORE TRIO!!! yipee!! It was only a week and it was already making my eye twitch go out of control! 

Also Carlos and Eduarda came back from visiting their daughter in england so it was super nice to sit down with them after 15 days. They are almost done with the book of mormon and carlos yesterday just received the aaronic priesthood, so everything is going very well with them. They also had a chance to go to church there in england which was super nice for them to see how big the church can be and how nice all the chapels are. 

Other then that nothing really happened here, we had an awesome lunch saturday where we went out and bought some frangueté, its just some dang good chicken roasted in a paper sack over an oil drum with onions and other spices. We went and bought 3 whole chickens for our whole house and cooked up a ton of noodles and had a nice little feast before fast sunday.. which is the hardest day of the month.. its so brutal.. At church there was no space at the inn so elder mitchell and i just went and sat on the floor in the back of gospel doctrine, and for elders quorum we stood outside the door not hearing a single word... go ahead and ask if i learned anything this sunday.... NOPE i didn't.. but its all good cause our investigators enjoyed it a lot. Elder dawson rolled up this week on tuesday and brought with him a chess board.. so in a house with 6 missionaries you can bet it gets a little heated.. Top 3 reasons for companionship problems here in angola... #1 debate if powdered milk or boxed milk is better #2 chess #3 and beating your companion in the game at family night

all is well here in angola and benfica.. just trying to ignore the fact that my time here in benfica is winding down to a close... sad day

Elder Webber

photos of the drive... 

this is suppose to be a 3 lane road but in traffic it quickly turns to be 6

the crew  

Loving the Rain

Hahah dont you worry it was all good, honestly it wasn't anything out of the ordinary happens quick often here in angola because there are many many many drunk people.. whether it be at 3 in the after noon, 11 in the morning, or 7 at night you will always have to fend of a crazy drunk man. So its all good, just another day at the office. This week we had a lot of fun working with our new son Elder Mashalaba, its pretty funny to see him speak for the first time.. but then i quickly remembered that i was once there and that i took sooooo long to actually speak Portuguese. I really do love training, i wish i can train more on my mission. Theres nothing like helping some good fresh meat turn from rookies to men of great potential. Its been fun.. This week we had a ton of work to do.. we spent 2 whole days in the car driving around picking up bunkbeds, dropping off bunk beds, picking up missionaries dropping off missionaries because this week we received a whole lot of missionaries... thats right the angola luanda mission received 5 missionaries this week!! holy moly its crazy!! We are now sitting pretty at a nice 33, president wants to get to 40 before the end of the year so we will see how that goes.. the problem is that the visas are a pain.. but its slowly getting better. 

This week we walked all the way up to manuels house about 4 times.. and i cannot describe to you how far away this man lives.. but its all good because hes a prepared man that is doing really well in his progression, so its worth the hours of walking and the nasty tan line on my neck and sweating enough to fill a pool. We also had some nice rain come in saturday night, and the people here really don't like rain.. in fact they hate it.. they will stay indoors about 3 hours after the rain stops just to make sure that its all good, also the roads are terrible and as soon as it rains it turns into a nasty mud field.. so what i'm trying to say is that sunday at church there was almost nobody at church.. members included. So that was a bad thing, but it was fun to see the aftermath of that crazy rain storm. 

Money is not a problem here, we receive enough money from the mission to pay for everything.. plus my budgeting skills are top notch... i have never even gotten close to going over my limit on my mission. The only reason i've spent personal money here is for some nick knacks and some cool african stuff that i've bought. As it says in the white hand book.. zach is correct though there are missionaries that cant stay within their budget here and it boggles my mind on where all their money goes.. This amount is inspired and if you cant stay within your means then you need to change some habits.. As to my christmas gift, some more pairs of socks, some more deodorant.. just deodorant not antiperspirant ( i need to sweat here)  some beef jerky, nuts, and some candy would be cool. 

Share Your Bread!

This week was a ton of fun, and we had a lot of cool experiences so ill get right into it. The first one mom might want to just skip down to the next paragraph..... It all started when elder mitchell and i got done early with one of our lessons, so we tried to pass by our next but of course he wasn't there. Thinking that buying bread would be the most efficient use of our time before our next lesson we skidded on down to the bakery and bought ourselves roughly $6 of bread.. we then made our way back up to our home to drop it off and go out to our next lesson. After stepping into the elevator and pushing the button up to our floor we finally get to the fourth floor and the doors open revealing 5-6 large hammered drunk african men that look very mean having piercings, tattoos, grills and the sent of alcohol to match who are making a mess of the halls. We silently make our to our apartment trying not to draw any attention to ourselves when next thing we know one of the tallest men i have seen here came up to us asking for some of our bread... we of course being good missionaries said.... "no this is our bread, we bought it with the church's money" that turned out was not a good enough answer for this man and he grabbed the bag in my hand being very forceful. We kindly asked him to step away reminding him that he was hammered drunk, after handing me a 2000 kwanza bill i kindly gave it to one of his other buddies who were all standing nicely to the side watching what was happening. After some more gentle pushing and forceful encouragement to leave Elder Mitchell finally got the door open. "I broke the wrist and walked away" into our home, and the drunkard then turned to elder mitchell who very foolishly started playing with his glasses, after a firm push off i grabbed elder mitchell and pulled him into our apartment and locked the door. It all happened so fast that we stood there for a while trying to think of what just happened and to both of us as honey dew from heaven we remembered the words of our sweet president who said to never resist and give up anything... but let me tell you there was more than just bread on the line.. our pride was on the line!! I ain't given no-one my bread.... it was MY bread!!! 

Other then that we also taught some really cool lessons, we found a new investigator who is a brother of a member and he was pretty well prepared by the lord. He pretty much told us that after going to church for a long time he knows that its all true and that hes just waiting on us to finish up our lessons so he can be baptized.. but with that being said he will still take some time to teach this man as there have been way to many "number hungry" missionaries here who have baptized people without teaching half of the lessons.. this results in many many inactive members that turn to be a burden more than a blessings. So as president has recently stressed a lot recently and as president Merrill stressed many times is that we are to convert and baptize prepared, and spiritual and financially self sufficient people so that they can help the church grow and stay strong. Only after the church has a strong foundation will be invite all the others to come. A house with a weak foundation cant stand. Manuel though fits the category of all those things but it doesnt hurt to make sure... our job is to save people and help them stay strong, not give them enough knowledge to be condemned.

The lord is blessing us amazingly as we work hard and diligently. We have many prepared and financially and spiritually self sufficient people in our teaching pool that we are very very excited to see how they will progress. Speaking of blessings we got the transfer news last night and you got it... Im staying one more transfer with elder mitchell.... my last one here in benfica... sad... but im very excited!! Also we will be training a new missionary Elder Mashalaba from South Africa... HES GOING TO HAVE 2 GAY DADS!!!!   I hope hes as excited as we are to train him.. this transfer is going to be a blast! 

Elder Webber