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Pretty good week.

See you Wednesday

Love, Elder Webster 😬

Cecilia and Felipe

Golden Gate Bridge

Melara Family

T Minus 9 Days

Hey family. I'm about to go to Golden Gate Bridge. Not to brag or anything....

But I don't have much time for emailing today unfortunately.

Big stuff:

My 2 year mark was last week. I've officially been a missionary for 2 years and 2 days.

Our President challenged us to read the Book of Mormon in 90 days as a mission. Sooo... I've started to read the book of mormon while focusing on Christlike attributes. I'm on day 4 right now.

Veronica Zepeda (a less active lady) was debating switching churches one day in the passed week, and even though we've met her a couple times with little progress... we felt inspired to visit her one day. THE SAME day. and she accepted our visit as an answer that she should come back to church. and she did! :) it was awesome.

Any ways

Yep, I miss you all! -especially the family! :) Super excited to see you in a couple weeks!!!! I promise I will try not to be weird. haha

I've Got Like Zero Time To Write This

This last weekend was the GAY PRIDE PARADE! So.. serving in downtown San Francisco as a mormon missionary was a little hectic. I saw more body parts than I would have liked to. President just told us to stay inside as much as we could, but we had so many appointments, we were still basically outside all day.

I baptized somebody on Saturday! It was super last second. He wasn't one of our investigators or anything, but I was asked to give his baptismal interview on Thursday and we just sorta hit it off together. We went to his baptism on Saturday and the person that WAS going to baptism him couldn't make it, so he asked me to do it instead! :)

On Wednesday, I'm pretty sure we walked a total of about 15-20 miles. I've been super sun burnt all week long.

I went to my LAST Porque Yo Creo on Sunday and they asked all the departing missionaries to bear their testimonies, so I got up and bore my testimony on the fly. And a couple of my converts spoke as well! They just told their conversion stories. It was Yera (from Oakland) and Felipe (From San Francisco).

Love you all! See you in a few weeks, sorry for the short email, but I'll tell you more when I get home. haha

PEACE! <3 o:p="">

Elder Broman fighting against bedbugs.

Remember when I had bed bugs back in the day? hahaha too bad.

My President Letter

Some of you will think this story is cooler than others of you based on how familiar you are with missionary culture... Here's a copy of the letter I just wrote to my President:

We have this investigator that has been taught all of the lessons, and has been to church consistently for a few months. Her 13 year old son just got baptized a couple weeks ago, but she has declined each baptismal commitment we've left with her.

This upcoming Saturday, the Sisters in our ward are having a baptism for one of their investigators.

Last Friday, during our weekly planning session, Elder Broman and I looked at her situation and decided to set the faithful goal of 1 baptism this next week. If we could somehow get this investigator to commit to baptism, we could do a joint baptism with the other sisters on the same day. We texted her on Saturday and said "In preparation for our lesson tomorrow (Sunday), we would like for you to read from the book of mormon and pay attention to how it makes you feel. Please pray about it and ask Heavenly Father if it is true. We will see you tomorrow!"

Elder Broman and I decided to have a companionship fast in preparation for our lesson for us to be in tune with the spirit as we challenge her to be baptized the following weekend.

I have never felt the spirit so consistently. Typically in my mission, I have truly felt the spirit for a few minutes at a time a couple times a day. But the moment we set those plans in motion, I felt the spirit. I felt it all weekend long. Most strongly during our lesson on Sunday afternoon.

She was in tears. Her brother was in tears. It was a powerful lesson.

And no, she didn't accept the date. But I now have a very strong testimony of how setting faithful goals that make us stretch will help us to work more effectively and more by the spirit.

Elder Runco (One of my best mission friends) came back to visit the mission last week and we ran into him at Betty's house!

Me and my district hanging out at Pier 39 last pday

Bus Surfing

Elder Broman and I decided to try out a finding idea that I'm pretty sure is crazy. But it worked out great, and was a lot of fun! Usually, the biggest downside to working in San Francisco is the travel time. On bus, sometimes it can take an hour and a half to get to some appointments... BUT, this week, we set aside two hours JUST to travel. We had NO destination in mind.

we just Jumped on a bus, sat by two different people, and started to teach them whatever we could. When they got off the bus, or it was clear they weren't interested, we would get off the bus and get on the next one! It was super fun, almost like a game. AND we got like 3 or 4 new potentials out of it, including an 18 year old Columbian that Elder Broman found. He's looking pretty promising. We'll probably keep doing that for a while.

Also, Felipe got Confirmed a member of the church yesterday! The Young Men's President confirmed him, and it was super powerful.

We challenged him mom to be baptized, and she said she would be too scared to change from what she grew up with (Catholicism). which is totally natural. Her brother converted to the church a few years ago, and he talked about how hard it was for him to make the change as well. Actually, he was kicked out of him home when his parents found out he had been taking discussions. He prayed and asked to know what the right path for him was and he received a clear answer that the LDS church was the route he should take and that the Lord would provide a way for all those that follow Him. IT. WAS. AWESOME. He is such a great support for her. We think she'll be baptized once she prays about it sincerely. We're not rushing her, it's gotta come from the heart for it to have any impact on her, but we think she'll be baptized in the next month or so. Pray for her! #CeciliaCruz

YUP. Love you all.

ps. I found out there are a lot of members in my mission that read my blog. haha shout out to you!

Thanks for everything!

Elder Webster

List of Miracles

This week was great! Here are a couple cool miracles this week:

1. We had a second appointment with a new investigator, Jorge, and we had challenged him to read the Restoration Pamphlet. When we went back this last Saturday, he told us that he's been in an overly happy mood all week long, and it has something to do with us. He said he read the whole pamphlet (even though we only challenged him to read 2 pages) because he liked the feeling it gave him. We explained that he was beginning to recognize the Holy Ghost, and explained that the Holy Ghost helps us find spiritual truth. He opened up his pamphlet and had answered all of the "Additional Study" questions in the back of the pamphlet, and asked if we could give him the Book of Mormon. He said if a small pamphlet could help him feel like spirit so strong, he wants to read the Book of Mormon.

He's totally in the House of Israel. (That's not funny to anyone but me... sorry.)

2. We were waiting for a bus, and when it came, it was just us and the bus driver. He turned around and asked us what we can do to fix a broken heart. He had been through a lot of rough life changes lately. His Girlfriend cheated on him, he has health problems, his family is falling apart... etc. He told us it was no coincidence that we showed up on his bus at that time. We said we wouldn't be able to teach him on the bus, but we know how to help with a broken heart, and that if he would give us some contact information, we would send missionaries to his house to teach him. He said he had been praying for some sort of sign, and we were the answer.

(background information, we only got on that bus because Elder Broman and I felt prompted to visit a member that brought us close to his bus route. We had no reason to visit that member, but both decided to check up on him for whatever reason. Traveling to his house brought us to that bus driver. We were way far from where we had planned to go... But that's where we were needed.)

3. We had a baptism yesterday! It was the first baptism in this area for 3 years. We have two more coming up this month. The rest of our mission calls San Francisco "Sodom and Gomorrah" because it's know for being ridiculous, but we've seen nothing but miracles for weeks.

Love you all

Betty's cute puppy!

This Week

Temple day was splendid this week. I took my study topic to the temple and ended up with more questions than I had at the beginning, but I did have a lot of cool things stand out to me that I didn't know before! :)

The Cruz family came to church again, and then drove all the way up to Oakland with us to go to the Visitors center and watch Porque Yo Creo, at which one of my converts and Oakland was asked to bare testimony. So we got to see the Carrada's family share the stories of how they got baptized and what there testimonies are. WHICH WAS INCREDIBLE! Their lives have completely changed from the time they got baptized till now. People claim that happens, and I think we typically just write it off as not a big deal, but I was there every step of the way with the Carrada family, and I saw them pre-baptism, mid-baptism, and post-gift of the holy ghost, and there is actually quite a big difference. They were just a normal family filled with bickering and disagreements and disunity, but now, they are always smiling and seem to be happier with and around each other. Must be one of those "had-to-be-there" things, but for me personally, I now have a strong testimony of the gift of the holy ghost and the fact that living the gospel blesses families.

In Other news, this is the last week of this transfer, so if I get a new companion I'll know by next week. so... I'll keep you posted.

That's pretty much all the stuffs for this time.

Not too eventful this week, lots of meetings within the mission. We're putting a big focus on member work.

in other other news, rule change says that we're aloud to wear sunglasses now. (about time) just kidding :) but seriously.

So, a few months ago, Elder Struve and I put a big focus on finding FAMILIES. We works with the Primary, we visited formers that had children listed, we tracted in areas that would hold families, we've been praying for families, and I might have mentioned this already, but I'm really happy to report that our teaching pool is now full of families. :)

One family in particular has not only "agreed" to baptism, but has "COMMITTED" to baptism. They've been studying on their own, praying to be ready by their date, asking great questions, and this last week they even came to Stake conference at 9am in an unfamiliar chapel. and LOVED it.

The odd part is that this was clearly an answer to our prayers... But didn't come from any of our actions. They just showed up out of nowhere pre-prepared. This was a testimony to me that this is the Lord's work, not our work. It is THEIR time to BE BAPTIZED. Not OUR time to GET A BAPTISM.

A little picture I drew on my window in front of my study desk.

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