Finding!

This week was a little bit discouraging, but we're trying not to be

discouraged by it. :) We have really been trying to find people to

teach. it's an eternal struggle as a missionary... But this whole

week, we planned in finding activities like visiting former

investigators and seeing how they're doing and how they felt about the

old missionaries that taught them and stuff... and the whole time we

were in the car, I was on the phone calling people... We also did

stuff like visit active members and taught them basic principles and

invited them to try to think of people who would benefit from that

information... Which all had potential to give us some new names and

faces of people who may be interested... BUT! unfortunately, even

though we've been working like crazy, none of those plans resulted in

any new investigators... :(

We did however talk to this guy in the street, Charles, who asked us

to play a prank on his pregnant wife, Marisol! So we stopped by their

house and we were going to "guess" the name of her new baby (Jacob)

and freak her out. It sounded a little immature for missionaries to be

doing that, but we showed up anyway..  He answered the door and said

he already explained it to her and the prank was off (thank goodness).

But they invited us in and were super fun and really nice. We

explained who we were and they invited us back this week to explain

the Plan of Salvation. All is going well with them, and we're hoping

to add them as our solid investigators soon!

Jerry is a beast. He's our 10 year old investigator, and we're going

to baptize him this Saturday. We almost had to cancel it this weekend

though, which was kind of a scare.

We dropped by yesterday to ask him all the details of the program,

like who he wants to baptize him and say the prayers and the talks...

and we asked if Saturday at 3 would still work... His mom was part of

this conversation and jumped in by saying that maybe next months would

be better, or the month after. Obviously that's not preferable.. But

he can't get baptized without her approval and she is the mother, so

whatever she says is final. We asked if there was any specific reason

for moving the date and we assured her that Jerry is all set and he's

ready whenever she is. Her big concern was money.. Jerry doesn't

really have any nice clothes, and she can't afford to bring anything

to the after party... :( super sad. It was kind of a touchy subject

obviously, so we tried not to be too pushy. Cuz she just wanted to

wait for a paycheck. But Elder Wride and I decided to buy him a shirt,

and give him some of our ties to wear. And we told her that the

after-party is just a gift from the branch to the family, so she

doesn't have to bring anything. It was so sad to see something like

that be the reason to post-pone a baptism. :( We just love that

family, and we want to help them.

Anywho, by the end of our meeting we arranged for the baptism to be on

this Saturday as long as we can meet with Jerry a couple more times

this week. But keep him in your prayers!

Sounds like you had a nice week with the family in town! Hope Jace's

homecoming went well, sorry about Murphy... :(

Love you all!

Elder Webster

Flaming Cockroaches of Death!!

So this header is meant to a drum roll, so I'll get to that story toward the end. :)

Basically, Jerry's family all got baptized when Jerry was like 4, so Jerry was too young at the time, and since then, his family went completely inactive. He was found recently by some sisters who were visiting a list of Less Active members. Jerry (despite the indifference of his parents) decided that he wants to be baptized! Unfortunately, these sisters hadn't started teaching him any of the discussions. Elder Wride and I just took over the area and helped him begin his journey toward baptism! We got super creative with our lesson plans this week. Jerry is a 9 years old with the energy of an energizer bunny. So our usual method of teaching needed some altering if we were going to teach to his needs. Elder Wride is a big goof, so it's been a great experience teaching with him! :) This week we pondered up some great object lessons to help teach the Restoration and the Plan of Salvation. Jerry has shown excellent comprehension and progression since we've met him. He's is well on his way to be baptized on the 27th this month.

Awkward story of the week:

We were visiting our beloved less active member this past Saturday and she invited us back to eat dinner on Sunday night. We asked if it would be alright if we could bring a man, because we aren't allowed to enter a house if it's a single woman. She said it was fine with her, so we made that a plan and were going to bring a man at 5:00 and have ourselves a good ol' Latino dinner. So on Sunday, we made arrangements to pick up our guy, and arrive to our dinner appointment. And we show up and knock and there is no answer... So we knock again, and there's still no answer... :( We felt awkward for bringing this guy along with us to a flake, so we gave her a call. She answered the phone and told us she was right down stairs and that we should just come down and talk to her.

A few minutes later, we find her out by the apartment complex pool. She's wearing a bikini and a towel, and completely confused as to why we were there. She completely forgot about us. :( After talking for a second she realized that we were there for our set dinner appointment, but I was all set to just cancel it and try again some other day, but she felt so guilty that she insisted that we stay and eat. Obviously she was unprepared. I felt bad staying and making her cook something, but she dragged us along and made us eat her left over lunch... which was tostados on dirty plates. And we just sat quietly in her kitchen as she walked through the house changing her clothes. Most. Awkward. Meal. Ever.

So as far as the flaming cockroaches of death goes:

I had to sit inside for like half the week because of my surgery last week. So I was in Recuperation mode until Thursday. But since we were home and had a lot of time, we started doing some deep cleaning of our apartment, which led to us finding a whole mess of cockroaches. They all got stuck to some duct-tape that was laying out, and so we decided to exterminate them!

... Long story short, the FLAME THROWER we made didn't work very well. And I ended up burning my finger SUPER bad.

On the plus side, I have been studying the book of mormon so much more recently, and I'm really starting to get the story line behind it all. It's a super good book! My favorite story is still Abinadi in the book of Mosiah, but Nephi's big Brass-plate heist is a solid one as well.

Love you all! Thanks for the support!

I'm doing well! :)

Elder Webster

Flight of the CONCORD

So I'm already in love with my new area! :)

Elder Wride is SO fun. He's from North Ogden Utah, and he is such a goofball, but in the best possible way. :) He's been out since February, so he just got done being trained (by my old companion, Elder Ah Hoy). We are both new to our area, but in the past week, we've set up 2 baptismal dates for late June. We are like... the same person. hahaha I'll definitely be visiting him after the mission.

So some basic updates about the Sistrict: I cover 4 sisters- Sister Zundel (Idaho), Sister Espinal (Honduras), Sister Averett (Utah), and Sister Myers (Utah). It's such a huge change from my last district. I used to be the youngest one because I covered some Zone Leaders and my junior companion was older than me... but in this new one, 4 out of the 6 members in my district have been out less than 6 months. They are still straightening out some of the technicalities of mission life, but who isn't? :)

I'm serving in the Concord 4th Branch in the Walnut Creek Stake. I'm living in a previously sister-owned apartment at 1530 Ellis Concord. It's a pretty nice apartment.

I got to give another baptismal interview this week to a lady named Irma Felix. Her story is incredible. She doesn't even live here! She was only visiting America for a few months, and then she was off the Mexico again, but while she was here, she found the missionaries, took the discussions, and got baptized this Sunday! And then the following Tuesday (Today) she flew back to Mexico and is going to get connected with the church down there. Isn't that incredible? Doing interviews for ordinances as special as baptism makes you feel a whole new closeness to people. You share the spirit so strongly, and they pour out their testimony and life story so beautifully, and she is going to be such a strong member in Mexico. Congrats Irma!

On Thursday night, I locked the keys in the back of our car... :( So we were stranded for a while, but we said a prayer and then soon after, we finally got Elder Jepperson to pick up his phone. We had to hitch a ride with our zone leaders back to our house that night, but the next day, Elder Jepperson (Senior missionary) drove up from Oakland and gave us a brand new Chevy Cruze. It's a pretty nice car, and probably my favorite one I've driven on my mission.... But unfortunately... That very night... I got in a car crash!!! BAUM BAUM BAUUUUUMMMMM.

Nothing to worry about. I just turned into our new parking stall too sharp and put a nice scrape in the side. I felt so bad... :( But we're probably going to have to get it replaced pretty soon... Again... sigh...

Lastly, on Monday morning, I got my wisdom teeth pulled! They put me to sleep, and my goofball companion decided to film me afterwards on my camera. They are probably the most hilarious videos I've ever seen in my life. :D But the rest of the day, I was on painkillers that made me super drowsy, and today I'm still in a bit of pain, but I should be good to go back to work tomorrow. I think I'm recovering pretty quickly, because all of mine were already visible, so they didn't have to do too much digging. Should be maybe one more day!! But for now, my diet is cottage cheese, horchata, yogurt and pudding. (courtesy of the sisters in my district.)

Sorry this email has been so long, there's been a lot of updates! My current investigators that you should prayer for are Jerry and Bianca. :) They're getting dunked on June 27th if all goes well.

Welcome Home Jace!!

Love you All!

Love,

The one and only Elder Webster

Jordan forwarded these from another missionary with no explanation. So we get to make up our own stories about these pictures...

Last Week In Richmond

So I end up sending this email to a lot of people, so I'm sorry if some of this doesn't apply to you specifically...

But JACE! No puedo creer que ya terminaste tu mision! espero que puedas encontrar una esposa ;) pero, deveras, felicidades. yo estoy muy orgolloso de ti. buen hecho. digame como te pasa la experiencia!!

HAILEY! You have a cool job. So props. Make sure you learn how to play the Uke super fast. My request is House of Gold by 21pilots.

DEVON! Congrats on the mission call!!!! you're going to LOVE it there. I have family in that mission, and my companion's girlfriend served there and he says she loved it. :)

JAXON! I sent home a package this week, and it's pretty boring and lame, but you have first dibs on the stuff if any of it fits you.

Moving on. Sorry about that.

So this week was CRAZY. But not eventful. I went to the dentist's office on Wednesday because my wisdom teeth have been super painful lately, and it turns out my gums are swollen and the teeth are all coming in straight and normal, but it just pushed my gums aside and now I don't have enough room for everything... Soooo I need to get them pulled!

And Elder Green... I love the guy. But this week he thought he felt some Diarrhea coming on, so before it hit, he took some medicine that would plug him up. Later, he realized that he didn't have diarrhea, but the medicine still kicked in and made him super constipated. So on top of that, he decided to take some high power laxatives. long story short,  he got MESSED UP. His stomach was basically a paradox. He couldn't go for more than an hour without really bad stomach pains and a necessary bathroom break. So the Nurse told us to stay close to a bathroom for a few days. Soooo... basically I didn't leave the apartment at all this week.

Thanks Elder Green. hahaha

This morning I was driving on a fairly wide road, but a cop pulled around the corner behind me with his sirens on. and so I pulled over to the side to let him pass, but as I pulled over, we saw this black guy jump out of the bushes and cross the busy street right in front of our car. We were 3 feet from a hot pursuit. It was pretty crazy.

Sorry there is a lack of spiritual stories this week. It's the result of sitting inside every day.

Transfer calls came in on Saturday though!

I've been called to transfer to the Concord area! :) I'm still a District Leader, but Elder Ah Hoy (former companion) is currently serving over there, and he just finished his mission this week. So I'm basically taking his spot. My new Companion is Elder Wride, but I don't know much about him other than He's from Utah. I'll have more to report about that next week. But I'm super excited! Apparently my whole new district is JUST sister missionaries. So it'll be weird going from an "all-der" district to a "Sis-trict"... If you know what I mean... :)

Thanks for everything you do! :)

Love you all! :)

Elder Webster