#Bestweek

This week has been absolutely insane. Both with missionary work and just because I live in San Francisco. So. Here's some cool highlights! :)

I live on 22nd and Mission. Which just so happens to be one of the busiest locations in all of San Francisco. It's basically "the place to be" if you are a spanish speaking missionary in San Francisco. And this week, it was crazy for several reasons.

1. Giants WON the World Series on Wednesday.

It looked like NYC on New years eve. except everybody was crazy and wild. People were burning mattresses in the middle of crowds and hanging from fire escapes, and blasting music and crowd surfing, and shooting fireworks and cannons (and apparently someone actually got shot) Right outside my front door. It was absolutely chaotic.

2. Dia de los Muertos on Sunday.

You might not think a spanish holiday like day of the dead would have much impact in America... But San Francisco was all about it. There was a parade on Sunday night, and there were fire dancers in the streets, and most people were decorated in lots of authentic Day of the dead stuff. Like face paints, and skulls and skeletons and stuff. and that was pretty cool.

3. Halloween

two of the other Elders in my district had a gas leak this week, so pretty much every day, they've been sleeping at our apartment. Which sounds fun at first... but we're missionaries, so it's not like we can hang out and play video games or something. But on Halloween, we all had to come home early to do "Deep Cleaning" and we had 4 people in a tiny apartment, so we finished pretty fast, and then we had like 3 hours where we weren't aloud to leave, so Elder Kutterer taught us karate, and we listened to piano guys music, and just talked about funny stuff from back home and it was fun. :)

4. The Work was Awesome

This week was probably our most productive week for missionary work. We worked our butts off. Milton Montano, (our golden investigator) is progressing so much, and he's following all of his commitments, we saw a less active at church (Maximina Lozano) who hasn't been to church in the 12 weeks I've been here, we finally made contact with a few potentials that seem to never be home, and We've just seen countless blessings from our work this week. It's been great.

5. Transfer Calls!

I just finished my second transfer with Elder Castleberry, and I was pretty nervous about leaving San Fran because I LOVE IT HERE. But the transfer calls came in and I'm going to move to South San Francisco with Elder Curay. (He's the thug missionary I talked about a long time ago. from Peru.) So I won't be living on 22nd and mission, I'll be living on the corner of San Bruno and Silver. But I'll still cover the same ward. Just a little bit different area. I think Elder Curay and his old companion had a baptism coming up soon. So I might get to help with that a bit. :) I'm excited.

Sorry this email has been so long!! :) lots of stuff happening.

Love you all!

Year Mark/ATT/Milton

This week was Elder Castleberry's year mark!! So we went out and bought ourselves a nice frozen pizza to celebrate. That's pretty much it. We don't really have a ton of money to do cool things, and it wasn't on a p-day. So we just did the usual, and he got some packages from home and stuff. So that was cool!

My second transfer ends this Saturday, So I am OFFICIALLY out of "Training" after this week. Finally. I should know if I'm getting moved by the next pday. So I'll let you know.

Today, (Since the Giant's are currently WINNING the world series) My district went and took a tour of ATT park! Which was incredible! I'll attach pictures sometime. But that was cool! Especially since I HAPPEN to be serving in the EXACT PLACE where the Giants are IN the WORLD SERIES. It's basically the perfect timing, and everybody goes nuts.

So about the missionary work... This week, the bishop asked us to focus on the less active members in the ward, so we took a list and separated them into our mission areas, and asked the bishop to star any names that he wanted us to pay special attention to! So this entire week, we've been tracking down less actives and officially meeting them and planning appointments with them, which is great! The problem is usually something like... I don't have a car, and the subway costs too much. Or I've been busy because I work 3 jobs, or something like that, so most of them are still very religious and nice, but just can't come. I like them a lot.

Our newest investigator is Milton 2. Not to be confused with the original Milton from like 3 months ago. He is the best. He's stopped us 3 times on the street and begged us to come over and teach him ove a period of 6 weeks. And we stop by all the time, but this is the first time he's been home! And the lesson went AWESOME! He's got some potential.

Victor..... still hasn't come to an actual sacrament meeting yet. So We have to push back his baptism... grrrrrrrr..... Hopefully soon he'll come. I'm not sure he is as interested as I thought he was.:/

Last week we taught 5 lessons. But usually we get like 6 or 7. It just depends. Contacting is pretty easy here in the city, because you can stand in one spot, anywhere, and you can see like 40 people at a time. So usually, we just walk around for like an hour whenever we don't have anything planned and talk to as many people as we can. But we never go tracting. ever. We've never had to. Our bishop is really good with missionaries, he's a gringo that served in Guatemala, and he's super super helpful with all the missionaries. I usually get about 15-20 emails a week.

Can't believe Tyler's just now going! It seems like he got called just a little bit after me! He must've been waiting a long time... How was his farewell? Where is Josh serving? Nice oven thing. looks good. I think our article hasn't been published just because of all the crazy stuff happening with the Giants recently... So... Maybe eventually. If not, oh well...

Giants Go To The World Series!

So this week was pretty great. here's why:

THE GIANTS WIN!!!!! WHOOOOO!!!

The San Francisco Giants are the baseball team here, and EVERYONE IS A FAN! Everyone. and they qualified to play in the World series this last week and the city about exploded. There was riots in the streets, and people running up at down the streets with SF Flags, and blasting their music, and honking their cars for like 4 hours straight. IT. WAS. AWESOME. And I got some videos of it, but it's too big to attach or something, but seriously, it was just super cool. It's going to be even cooler when they actually WIN THE WORLD SERIES. And I think I'll still be in this same are when that happens, so I'll get to see a lot of that. :)

Investigators are alright. Victor, the one with the baptismal date for the 26th is going to be pushed back a little bit, because we haven't gone through all the lessons with him yet, and he kinda seems hesitant for some reason... but other than that, I think he's all good to go.

Betty, the awesome lady who feeds us all the time, has her daughter in town this week. She's cool, I got to meet her on Saturday and she came to church with us yesterday. Betty is awesome, she's a member, she's active, and just the most helpful person with everything, but her family, (although equally awesome) Don't usually come to church. So we're going to reactivate them.

Elder Hamula (from the quorum of the 70) came this week to talk to us!!! He's pretty good. I got to shake his hand, although I didn't get a picture with him... :( sorry. But that was really very very cool.

Love you all. Thanks for the support! :)

Elder Webster

The beach in our area

Street art

Golden Gate Bridge

Dia De Hispanidad

This week was Dia de hispanidad! it was where all the members would bring in food and decorations from all over the world! Where ever they are from. and the had a sweet mariachi band and other cool talent show type stuff. A couple of our awesome investigators came to it, and it was basically a loud, crazy, latin, mormon party. SOOO COOL.

Thanks for all the pictures! I always like getting cool nature pictures because nature doesn't really exist here... But Yeah, I really liked Meet the Mormons too! And with the interview thing.... Sorry it's not up yet. Dan called us back again and wanted to follow us around and get some pictures and do follow up questions and stuff. But it SHOULD be posted this week for sure. :/

I DID get my charger! And the beef jerkey. :) thanks a lot. I really appreciate it. and so does Elder Castleberry haha

Investigators are all doing good! Victor and Karina are moving to a different floor in their building this week, so we are helping them with that.

Unfortunately, my district is being dumb and want to play soccer and use this computer, so I have to get off. I might write more later, but if not:

Love you all! thanks for all the support and love!

Elder Webster :)