Last Week Of Wells

This week was CRAZY! I was actually like, beyond stressed this week. We feel like we worked SO hard this week to leave our area better than we found it. As a result, I'm exhausted, but we have a lot to show for it.

LUNES

This is usually our pday, but this last week it was only a HALF pday. we could only do our preparation things until like 1:00. (That's why I was so rushed last week.) After our half pday, Elder Wells and I had arranged to gather all of our District Leaders together to have a little "Zone Leadership Council". We talked a lot about moral authority and how important it is to set the pace and example for the district you're in charge of. It ended up being super rowdy and irreverent. We actually discussed it with our mission president and made plans of action to bring the spirit better during our Zone Training later in the week. **Jueves

MARTES

We arranged today to meet with our great Sister Trainer Leaders. (I love them) They basically are in charge of the sisters here in the zone. They can go on exchanges with them and they focus on their needs specifically more than we can, and they help us know what we can do to help meet their needs. The meeting went well!

MIERCOLES

Wednesday was our temple day! We also had a multi-zone BBQ! Both of which were super cool for obviously different reasons. :) After the BBQ, our district went to a science museum for the remainder of our pday and it was pretty cool too. But I think I preferred the BBQ. haha After our pday ended officially, we had some great lessons, including one with Rene, our investigator. He's progressing very nicely, and he should be getting baptized next month if all goes well.

JUEVES

Today, we had our Zone Training. Elder Wells and I had been thinking about this meeting for a while. Basically, our only goal was to make it a spiritual experience.. so we took a lot of precautions... We borrowed an iPod and got some nice professional prelude music going, we assigned seats in order to discreetly separate the rowdy people, we sat quietly up front before the meeting to set the example for reverence, and we even gave everyone a reminder text to come prepared to take notes and have specific personal focuses to pay attention to during the training. We really went all out. It went SO WELL! By the time we ended the meeting with departing testimonies, people were in tears. It was great. Best Zone Training meeting I've been to. Thanks spirit.

VIERNES

President Frandsen asked us to give yet another training today. We taught about the missionary purpose and how to connect Finding, Teaching, and Baptizing. We were giving the training to all the companions of the newly called trainers as their companions received their own training from the President. (Hope that make sense?) it went really well too. We had great participation. That night, I gave a baptismal interview to one of Elder Runco's investigators.

SABADO

Saturday we spent a couple hours designing and planning for our baptism on Sunday. Worked out all the details, and met with the future converts to plan out the details. That night, we met with Rene again and taught the Word of Wisdom and how obedience to the commandments relate to our life after. He accepted it all and is willing to make the change, but he didn't realize it was a commandment, so we'll have to adjust his date to accomidate his smoking habbit, but no worries. (Basically, you need to have not smoked for 3 consecutive weeks before being baptized... so we pushed it back a little bit to give him time to quit.)

DOMINGO

Rene came to church! We worked out final details for our baptism during the second hour, and then after church, WE HAD A BAPTISM! :) His name is Jared Gonzalez. (Picture attached) I may have mentioned him before, I'm not sure. He's 8 years old, his family is mostly member, we've been teaching him for a couple weeks. He was already living all the commandments and his family is reactivating, so they've been coming to church pretty regularly, so we were able to baptize him super fast. He asked me to baptize him, so this is the first time I've been in the font on my mission. All my other converts have asked their fellow shippers to baptize them. (It's better that way I think.) But I was still honored. :) Such a good turn out. We printed out 50 programs, and we were still pretty short. It was great!

Thats pretty much it for the week! We gave 4 trainings, planned and had a baptism, had a temple day and 2 half pdays. it was a great week! And it was Elder Well's last week in the mission.

Saturday night, we had our transfer calls, and they told me I'm staying in Oakland again, and my new companion is Elder WALLACE from England. :) I love him. He's one of my favorite missionaries in the whole mission. This next transfer is going to be great. But, I'll miss Elder Wells for sure.

Thanks for all the love!

Love you too!

Jared Gonzalez' baptism

Temple Day

Transfer 11 Week 4 (or something similar)

A couple of my friends have used this format before, so I'm going to steal it this week and see if I like it. SUPER LONG! (you're welcome/i'm sorry)

Welcome to Week 5!

Monday:

We are teaching some of our Recent Converts and they are not really grasping much. SO we gave them the challenge of teaching US about the gospel. :) On Monday, we taught them all the bullet points to share a missionary message about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Namely Faith, Repentance, Baptism, Holy Ghost, and Enduring to the End. and then we invite them to study it on their own and then have the kids teach us (as fake investigators) the next time. also. I designed a zone shirt for my zone. :) Pics attached.

Tuesday:

Exchanges with Elder Vawdrey. He is probably the most faithful missionary I've ever met. He lays it all on the table, he talks to every single person he sees, he praises God's power rather than his own, and you can feel the spirit whenever you're near him. He's great. We had a great day together and he taught me a ton about reliance on the Lord.

Wednesday:

We did Service at St Mary's community center and we basically run that joint now. We go there every Wednesday and they totally rely on us there. It reminds me of my old Waiter job because we mostly work in the kitchen preparing meals for homeless people. Most of our lessons fell through, but we did find a new investigating family of 4! Pocasangre family. (in english: Little Blood) They're great.

Thursday:

Exchange with Elder Ainu'u. He's a fun guy.. We had to have a talk about obedience though... He had a similar question that I used to have about obedience and receiving blessings. (I'll table that for a second. keep that in your minds though.)

Friday:

We did service in the Redwood forest up in the Oakland hills. Basically we cut down these giant Pine trees and carried them off the mountain. HOO RAH! But I ended up getting Heat stroke and having a massive head ache for the rest of the day. But that didn't stop the work! :) We had a sweet lesson that night and COOL STORY ALERT! My head was throbbing before and after the lesson, but as soon as we entered, it completely vanished. I think it was just one of those sweet tender  mercies you always hear about when other people have them... but this time it was me. He healed me for just long enough to spread the gospel, then it came back. and my head hurt until I went to bed.

Saturday:

HALLOWEEN. Remember monday? with the recent converts? well we were going to see them again to have them teach us a missionary lesson.... but the mom broke her leg. :( so... we gave her a blessing, and then rescheduled for another day because of medical complexities.... fue una lastima. After 6:00, we were stuck in the apartment for the rest of the night to CLEAN! and I gotta say... it was fun and all... but I probably won't do much of the whole "cleaning" thing back home.

Sunday:

Last minute, they asked me to teach the Gospel Principles class. And when I say last minute, I mean like.... Last second. I literally had to just open up the book and share the lesson. But about 2 minutes in I decided to just split up the class and assign them each a couple paragraphs from the book and have them become "MASTERS" of the subject and then explain it to the class. So I weaseled my way out of standing up front and talking for an hour. I think it went a lot better that way anyway. :)

Remember Thursday with the obedience Question?? (continue reading for a life lesson)

Why should we try to be obedient if we see other disobedient people receive the same blessings?

We had a long talk about that. But if you look back in my emails/blog to December or January, that's when I went through my own mini crisis with the same question. But I found the answer, and I was prepared to help this Elder when he asked!!!

Here's what I found:

"If you love me, keep my commandments." That's the request. The motivation behind following the commandments should be to show your love and respect to the all-knowing Father that gave them to you. If you are only keeping the commandments in order to "earn a blessing as payment" then you are missing the point. and most likely won't even see the blessings that follow because you did it so grudgingly. Bottom line. Just do what you're told because you want to. and If you DON'T want to, pray until you do.

*drop the mic*

Love you all!! Thanks for the Halloween stuff, and for the cookies and as always, your love! :)

Love you all!

Elder Webster

You all judged me because of my random skills on "Paint" but look at me now.

Should be made into an actual shirt sometime before the 14th.

Check me out

Rat Race

So I have some dreary news for the week. Prepare yourselves.

We had SUCH a great lesson with one of our investigators (Alcira). She told us she believes the Book of Mormon to be the word of God. Which. Is. Huge. SO! We invited her to get baptized and she said NO.

Why? Well, she has a testimony, she accepts Christ's teachings and wants to continue to read the scriptures. But She doesn't like coming to church and doesn't want to get baptized in the foreseeable future all because of the members and the "clique culture".

She has come to church several times before, and none of the members even act like she exists. She runs in to them at stores some times and no one even says hi. :( And that attitude and that clique mentality is what is keeping someone from having an eternal family and having the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost. :'( I was so sad to hear that.

I think the dream member would ask the missionaries if there are any investigators at church when they get there on Sunday and make an effort to say Hi and show them around. And at the very least, introduce yourself with a handshake to anyone you don't recognize. It could lead to someone getting baptized and could help in the conversion of generations to come. you never know, right? This is your new assignment. God Speed.

Also, our district meeting got interrupted because half way through, we saw a rat in the blinds to the window. It was just spider-manning to the wall and eaves dropping on our spiritual experiences! We stopped the whole thing and disposed of the little guy. I have a couple of pictures, but the videos are the best part, so you'll have to just watch those next year. haha That was so crazy though. #OaklandLife.

Lastly, I designed a Zone T-shirt last week after emailing. Ijust spend an hour or 2 on the computer using Paint. I think it turned out alright. But the shirt process should take a couple weeks. Finished product to-be-announced another day. :)

Thanks for all the love and support and emails and videos! Love you all!

Zone T-Shirt

Spider-rat

Emergencia

So, I don't remember how much I talked about last week, but one of our District Leaders ran away from his companion a couple weeks ago. it was kind of a big deal, because.... that just doesn't happen. I don't even think I've been out of sight of my companion in like a year and a half. So hearing that one elder ran away from his companion was ground breaking. Elder Wells and I were asked to do a rescue mission to find him like a week ago to no avail. But our President took care of the whole thing last week... and it was pretty much a done deal. RIGHT? no.

This week, our Saturday was interrupted because we were asked to "Emergency Transfer" these two Elders. along with like... half of their district. everything got changed around. It took up most of our day just because of rides and stuff... but that was exciting.

I feel like I talk too much about the missionary side of things, which is the boring side. So I'm gunna move on to my AWESOME investigators.

We seriously have the most solid set of investigators ever. They love learning, they read, they pray, some of them have testimonies already. The only thing that is preventing them to get baptized is their church attendance. We still have a few baptismal dates set pretty soon, but it's been sad lately because the ones we used to have set have all had to be pushed back or canceled. Which would usually be very upsetting, but they have made a lot of personal progression and a few of them have as much of a testimony as your run-of-the-mill member. So it's just a matter of getting work off. Which is hard in the Oakland Latino community for some reason.

Love you all!

Thanks for the videos you all sent me this week! :) I love those things. They're so fun. Keep em coming.

Have a good week!

Elder Webster

This Week Went "Well"

The subject line is a pun... but let me explain.

This was my first week with my new companion, Elder Wells! I know him a little bit better than before. He's from Nebraska, he's been out for 23 months, he like to read and spends most of his free time reading or listening to conference talks. He's also a very intelligent person, just in terms of practicality and strategy.  I feel that our week together has been a very focused and productive week! He's very non-confrontational, so I can't imagine us getting in a fight or anything. plus, we usually just tend to agree on stuff because it's the most logical thing to do anyway! :) I actually like him a lot. We're gunna kill this transfer. Plus, he likes Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, and Psych. Soooo... we tight.

I don't know what to write about. I have some bad news though.... :(  a couple weeks ago, we set like 4 baptismal dates. But none of those investigators are on track to get baptized when they said they would. SOOO... That's a little upsetting. One of them actually ran away drunk to Hayward and no one has seen him since. So... We had to drop him. It's been a bit depressing. I guess that's what you get for serving in the most liberal city in the world!

One thing Elder Wells and I trying to work on is teaching clearly and simply.

I remember one time at a "Bring-your-son/daughter-to-work-day", they did an activity where one person draws a picture. (something simple like an apple tree) and then explains to his partner how to draw that same picture. It's harder than you would think because you have to take into account much more than you'd think when you want someone to understand something the way you understand it. For instance: The color of the trunk/leaves/apples. How many apples? The placement of the apples? the size of the apples? the thickness of the trunk. The trunk/leaf ratio. The thickness of the ink you used. The placement of the tree on the paper. ETC. It can be hard to explain yourself clearly enough for someone to understand EXACTLY what you are imagining in your head. Even more so with abstract concepts like the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Elder Wells is a very smart person. We have been working on finding the balance between explaining things CLEARLY and explaining things SIMPLY. We actually used that activity^^ in one of our companionship studies. :) I guess Bring your kid to work day WAS spiritually significant. Thanks dad. haha

Anyway, that's what I got for the week. Thanks a lot for the emails!

If you want to make me a happy Elder, you would send me a video blog of a funny story or a life update. Ethan sent me one this week, and I loved it. :)

Love you all!

Conference Weekend!

So just a little bit of follow-up from last week: Operation Sabbath Jackhammer finally paid off! We had 2 investigators join us a conference this week! :) And conference was pretty good this time around. Everyone's been asking how they translated "Ponderize" into Spanish... hahaha The word they used was "Meditizar" combination of "meditar" (ponder) and "memorizar" (memorize)

I watched it in the Oakland Temple chapel this time!

I really like the 3 new apostles! They're awesome. :)

Transfer calls came in this last week! I was pretty surprised actually! Elder Castleberry goes home tomorrow... :( So I knew I'd be getting a new companion, and I had my guesses of who it might be, and I basically narrowed it down to 1 of 3 possible elders. Whoever I would get, I would have to teach them how to do Zone-Leader stuff.. My new companion is Elder Wells. I was not expecting him. He's been out for about 23 months, which means he's coming to a NEW area with a NEW companion and a NEW calling during his LAST transfer of his mission. Usually, that makes people not want to try as hard because the end is so close in sight and it feels useless to get to know all this new stuff because you're ending soon. (It's called getting "Trunky")

Honestly, I hope it's not like that. But I'm excited to get Elder Wells! He's a big goofy guy who no one could ever get made at, and he's a wiz on piano, so I'm excited.

Oh, before I forget. Look up my mission on Facebook! California Oakland San Francisco Mission. We have our own page and they post pictures and stuff. So you can add them or follow them. :)

Most of my weeks are full of meetings now-a-days. So I'll spare the details of MLC and Stake coordination meeting... But the preparation for those meetings took up a big chunk of our proselyting time this week, which is unfortunate. But it's gotta be done. :) I've found out I'm actually pretty good at using Excel! But... that's more like a post-mission skill. haha

Thanks for everything! I finally sent my mom/sisters gift home this week. I hope you like it.

Happy Birthday Grandpa! Love you!

Today, pday, we drove through a cemetery! Kind of an accident... haha

E. Castleberry, E. Webster, S. Nistler, S. Diaz, E. Runco, E. Broman

Operation Sabbath Jackhammer

This week was pretty good! We went on 3 exchanges again this week! this is the good stuff:

Wednesday - I went with Elder Pululasi into Berkeley. He's from Australia and is suuuper relaxed and cool. Everyone likes talking to him in the streets because he's got such a sweet accent. I was on bike again... humph... and we had did service with this pot smoking guy and we went into his bedroom and it was basically like a "hot topic" store. a little bit scary and overwhelming, but he's got so many collectors items and video game memorabilia, it was just sorta cool looking around! Then the guy bought us some pizza! So... good day! :)

Thursday - I went into the Chinese program with Elder Zhang. I swear, every time I go into the Chinese program, all I do is walk around and talk to people. the thing is... most of Chinese culture is Buddhist, and slightly rude to strangers. They have such a hard time finding people to teach... I was grateful to go back to my lovable Spanish area afterwards. But the Elder Zhang is just the most charitable person in the worlds. He was found, taught, baptized confirmed and retained in 48 hours while on vacation in Washington. Apparently there was a district of missionaries that tag-team-taught him all of the lessons in one single day and he got special permission to be baptized that night! Then he went back to China with his non member family and he remained active and then served a mission a year later, and he's good at it! He's the best.

Saturday - Elder Allison came to my area. He doesn't speak spanish, so I did most of the heavy lifting by myself... But we had a fairly successful day! Elder Allison is relentlessly positive..... toooo positive.... But I love the guy. He's got great taste in music, so we tight.

Operation Sabbath Jackhammer is a covert operation that we initiated this week to get our investigators to church. It has four phases. It's not meant for the public eye, and meant to be top secret... But I trust you.

Phase One: contact and invite each investigator to church on Sunday.

Phase Two: resolve any concern or problem they may have about coming. (find a ride, give the address, reminder text in the morning, etc.)

Phase Three: help investigators have a spiritual experience at church.

Phase Four: follow up with those that didn't come, even though they were invited, (consider dropping the investigator if necessary) and re-invite them to the next week.

IT. IS. FOOL-PROOF.

We unfortunately ended up dropping a few of our investigators as a result, but it's all in an effort to weed out those that are not interested or prepared to make a change in their lives. So we thought it was productive whether or not people came.

This next week will be Elder Castleberry's last week in the mission field. Pretty crazy. He had his last "Prque Yo Creo" yesterday (monthly spanish testimony meeting at the temple) and he ended up conducting it, and I translated it. It went well. I should be getting a new companion next week. Weiiiird.

Thanks for all the emails and the love!

Webster Street!

Chinese exchanges

Golf on pday

Oops

Exchange Week

OKIE DOKE!

So. I have a little more time this week, so let me fill a few of the holes I left out last week.

The sweet Zone Activity was called "The Amazing Race". And we split the zone into groups and had a big race to finish a list of objectives. You had to collect certain objects, and take pictures next to things, and do things like "Reenact Samuel the Lamanite" and we were aloud to run around anywhere in Berkeley. It was super fun because everyone got into it!! You'd be in the middle of taking a picture next to a hipster and see an opposing group taking a picture of themselves planking on random objects. It was such a blast. :)

Upcoming Baptismal dates:

Kevin Rojas - 8 year old son of a part member/less active family -October 4

Beto Nunez - Recovering meth addict, brother of our recent convert - October 17

Ricardo Rodriguez - 24 year old boyfriend of some members of our ward - October 17

Cezar Martinez -  boyfriend of our other recent convert - October 17

We're super excited but still need to help them gain the motivation to take the step!

THIS WEEK WAS EXCHANGE WEEK!

EXCHANGE 1: Elder Atkinson - Assistant Exchange

So succesful. We were doing so much. We had one lesson with a guy named Alex, and he has slight Autism, but not too bad. ANYWAY! mid lesson, he just stopped our discussion and looked at me and said: "Are you a geek or a nerd?"

hahahaha It was so funny! He explained to me the difference, and we decided that I'm a nerd! :) haha he's such a funny guy. We also taught a guy who debated with us for like 20 minutes why the word "Mormon" is bigger than "Jesus Chirst" on the front of the Book of Mormon.

EXCHANGE 2: Elder Marcello - Chinese Program

We seriously spend like 3 hours talking to people in the streets in the rain. He had to do most of the hard work, because we were in china town and I only know like 2 sentences in Chinese. But I would go up and say hi to everyone and if they didn't speak English, I'd juts be like "My friend speaks Chinese and has something to tell to!" in my gringo Chinese. haha Good times.

EXCHANGE 3: Elder Runco - My District Leader

He is such a spiritual example to me. He relies on prayer for everything, and he helped me feel the spirit even when we were doing things like exercising. Seriously, it felt like every choice we made throughout the day was directly related to helping be more effective or productive. Super good day.

Last thing:

We had Stake Conference this week and we ended up translating it for them.. I've decided that I don't get as much out of church meetings when I'm translating. I end up focusing too much on the language and not enough on the content (which is the best part). But a good meeting nonetheless!

Love you all!

Thanks for things! :)

White People Are The Worst

I just want to set the expectation that this will probably be a very short email. We planned a Zone Activity today, and it was a blast, but we finished later than we thought. SO!

1. We had exchanges this week, and I went with Elder Cuevas into the English Program in Lafayette. This was SUCH A CRAZY EXCHANGE! There was this weird old guy we taught that would not stop talking about how good looking Elder Cuevas is, and he asked to see a picture of our families, but then commented (rather crudely) about how attractive the female members of our families were.... And then fell asleep 4 times while we were teaching. Such a weirdy.

2. (Same exchanges) We ate dinner with this CRAZY family. The Dad kinda talks like the guy from blues clues mixed with the balloon animal guy from Despicable Me... he made us this dinner that was essentially 10 corn tortillas with (not melted) cheese in between each layer covered in Enchilada sauce. he put it on our plate and gave us a knife and fork and told us to dig in. I about died. It was the most flavorless thing i've ever eaten and he claimed it was mexican food, but After a year in the Spanish program and sharing the meal with a native Mexican, Elder Cuevas, I'm about 110% sure it's not authentic. Bleh.

3. This upcoming week, we have THREE consecutive exchanges. Monday night, Tuesday night, and Wednesday night, and I'm leaving the area for all three. I won't teach any of my investigators in quite a while.

4. Speaking of investigators... I have 4 baptismal dates coming up. Super stoked. :)

Thanks for all things!

Happy Birthday Hailey!

Heck Week!

This was heck week, but surprisingly went very well!! We had our "Missionary Leadership Council" on Wednesday and our (Awesome) President made a few big changes to our mission, including the banishment of future "Zone Focuses" ....you don't care about that. But for us, that's big news!

Then on Wednesday night, we actually went on splits with the mission President!! for those of you that don't know, he's the boss. He's pretty much the one that receives revelation for the mission and makes changes as directed by the spirit. In other words, sometimes it's nerve racking to be evaluated by him. BUT! Our splits was AWESOME! He didn't understand anything that was going on because he doesn't speak Spanish, but we went to 4 lessons in 3 hours, and set 2 new baptismal dates! He unknowingly witnessed a very successful night!!

We also had our stake correlation where we accounted for the efforts of our zone members, and worked with the Stake Presidency. Which was very stressful last transfer, but this time, we were much better prepared, and it went fairly well.

One exciting story happened this week was when one of our District Leaders wen missing! Like... ALL DAY LONG! He never showed up to our Tuesday morning conference call in the morning, and then no one saw him all day long, and he wasn't picking up his phone, so we called some other zone leaders to "drop into their apartment" and they WEREN'T THERE!! It was actually kinda scary. They waited in the other elders apartment until like 10:00 until they got home. (Way later than they were supposed to) and they called us and we had to handle the situation... I felt like a worried/frustrated father waiting for his kids to get home after curfew. (Side Note: it makes me think about how God must feel when He watches us delay our obedience.) All in all, it was an unnecessary headache.... Silly Elders.

Last story- Elder Ah Hoy (One of my former companions, who is home now) visited the mission field on Friday, and called us out of nowhere and invited us to lunch! That was fun! :)

That's pretty much it for the week. Keep in mind Kevin Rojas, Ricardo Rodriguez, and Gisel Olivera. They're getting baptized soon if all goes according to plan. Thanks again!

Love you!

Elder Webster

This is Elder Castleberry and I in our pillow fort watching Meet the Mormons after a long day. (pretty much the only movie we can watch in our mission.)

Elder Ah Hoy!!

 Our odometer is my birthday!

Getting some planning done at Subway.

 Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Awwww. Pugs.

Save The Best For First

This was just a typical normal week for us... EXCEPT FOR IT WASN'T AT ALL! As the first week of transfers, we had to help out a lot of missionaries with travel details and figure a lot of things out for this next six weeks.

But aside from all of that, we had such a productive week this week! We actually beat our record for most number of lessons taught together, and we've decided to focus all of our studies on "Preach My Gospel" which has really had a positive effect on our teaching skills. Each day, we choose a couple pages from PMG to study during our comp study and I've decided that it's one of my favorite study materials. It's got the most basic and plain explanations to EVERYTHING! I wish I was as good of a teacher as PMG.

TWO STORIES for this week! But before I tell them, I want to set the expectation that these things NEVER happen... These were both pretty rare occurrences, but unfortunately in Oakland, things like this DO happen some times...

#1 Two sisters in our zone: Sister housekeeper and Sister Wirthlin are SO innocent and kind. They're both blonde and perky and nice to everyone. Sister Wirthlin actually just arrived to the mission on Wednesday this past week... And on Thursday, they witnessed a murder!

It was a public shooting. They were stopped at a red light and it happened right next to them. She's basically terrified of life now...  :(

#2 Elder Castleberry and I were visiting a less active member (who shall remain nameless). We were just around the corner from her house when we ran into her daughter. We asked her if her mom was home, and she gave us a weird look. Almost like she didn't want us to know. She eventually said "Yeah, but she's... umm.. cleaning the house right now. It might not be a good time..."

we asked her if we could pop in and say hi, and she said "....um. sure!"

So...

Her front door is one of those doors with a see-through gate right in front of it, but the wooden door behind it was wide open, so we could see into the house totally fine.

We definitely caught the mom off guard.. long story short, I've seen way too many topless Latina women on my mission..

This next week is our "Heck-Week". We've got like 4 different monthly meetings that all happen to land on the same week. So we should be running around quite a bit this week.

Thanks for everything!

Happy Birthday mom!!

Love you!

Elder Webster

Six More Weeks of Winter

Transfer calls are in!

I'm staying in Oakland for six more weeks with Elder Castleberry! No big changes really.

Just a little interesting tid bit: He was my first companion last year, and I'll be his last companion this year! :) He goes back home to Spanish Fork at the end of this next 6 weeks.

This last week, we beat our record of lessons taught together! We taught 15 in one week!! I know it's different in every mission, and some people probably think it's pretty pathetic to get anything less than like 30 a week. But here in my mission, 15 in a week is pretty solid... It's been a great week for us!

Yesterday I got to conduct this month's "Porque Yo Creo"! Last month, I was the translator, but this month we switched and I got to conduct the meeting while Elder Castleberry translated for me. (Which means, I stand at the pulpit and speak Spanish while he sits in the back corner and speaks English into a little headset.)  It went really well! Toward the end, our mission president got up and shared his (English) testimony and asked me to "live translate" it for him (which means I was basically the "parrot" to his "pirate". repeating everything he says one sentence at a time.)

Good times.

I filled up my memory card with pictures this week. I might be persuaded to send it home soon. I have a spare, so I'll probably send the last one home and start a new one.

PS. Thanks for the letters and gift cards! :) I love getting them. I haven't been writing back very well, but y'all are da best. thanks!

I don't know if I ever mentioned this or not, but our new(ish) president made us a new rule where we can only listen to Mormon Tabernacle Choir/ Conference talks. Which at first was kinda hard, because I only have like 10 songs from them on my flash drive, so i had to put it on repeat... but Now I kinda like it. It really helps you to feel the spirit. :)

do it.

just kidding.

Thanks again for ALL THINGS.

Love you!

THE OAKLAND ZONE! (morning sportz)

The most "oddball" companionship in the mission.

X-changes

I went on Exchanges again on Monday night! I went with Elder Dotimas. A 25 year old Filipino character who enjoys folk dancing and cooking. It was actually a pretty good exchange! His area is basically the ONLY concern within our zone, because they've been struggling with a ton of different things. I had very low expectations going into his area, but we had a pretty decent day. No lessons or anything, but I studied more for his investigator than I have studied for my own investigator in a long time. I got very acquainted with her needs and our plans. I want to take that back with me and improve my study habits. :)

That's pretty much it. Transfers are this Saturday, So I'll has some exciting news next week! :)

Love Elder Webster

EXACTLY a year ago, Elder Castleberry and I became companions for the first time on THIS EXACT SPOT on the day that photo was taken. It's like our anniversary!

This is my zone.

Stake Reports? More Like Stress Reports!

I'll admit, not my cleverest subject heading...

This week we had to do monthly Stake Reports! Just a little fun fact:

Every day, missionaries keep track of how many lessons they've taught,

and how many people they've talked to, and who comes to church, and

whenever they add or drop investigators, and every Sunday they send us

the weekly totals of all that stuff. Every month, the stake asks us to

make a report of the monthly totals and account for the missionary

efforts within the stake boundaries. Including who's been baptized,

who's good, who's not so good, our concerns, our efforts to solve

their concerns, and of course, some good ol' fashion spread sheets and

graphs. It's a whole big thing. It took us a couple days to finish

everything, and then we had to present our report to the Stake

Presidency.

Fortunately, our zone has been on the rise since I've been here. So

the presentation itself was pretty easy. :) And it turns out, my

"Excel" skills aren't too shabby. But it did eat up a few of our

valuable proselyting time.

We also had a few meetings this week, some where we were being trained

and some where we were training others.. But those on top of our stake

reports made this week a bit of a headache.

That's pretty much all the big updates for the week! That's what's

been keeping me busy!

on a random note, I started writing poetry this week! "The Rap of

Salvation", "Gay Pride Nation", "Elder Rojo" and "Castillo de las

Moras" are some of my favorites. But I don't have them with me. I

might send them next week if I remember.

Thanks for all the support.

Love you all!

Elder Webster

This is a picture of some graffiti. It's everywhere. I haven't taken a

whole lot of graffiti pictures, but this is pretty much how everywhere

looks.

Our lunch for the next two weeks!

Shum Shtuff

This week, I went on exchanges with one of the District Leaders in the

zone, Elder Shaeffer. In honor of this experience, I thought I'd make

a pun-reel. See if you can guess why...

At first, I was totally 'spoked' for the ex'chain'ge. I really wanted

to help 'steer' the area in the 'right' direction. One 'road'block

that I was 'tred'ing was the fact that they don't have a car. But I

was 'pumped' to join Elder Shaeffer, because he's got a good 'handle'

on things.  Our daily planning was 'wheel'y great 'bike'cause we had

so many solid plans. 'Schwinn' the actually day started, we were both

pretty 'tired' because we were 'locked' into conversation the night

before. But we kept 'pedaling' on through the day and eventually got

into 'gear'. we knew that if we decided to take a 'brake' through the

day, we would just 'kick-stand' around for a while and it would be a

total 'race'd of time.

but after we 'buckled' up and took life by the 'seat' of it's pants,

we made a great 'tandem' team.

And that's basically all I got. I hope that all made sense. :) The

exchange was actually pretty good. I just hate bike areas. haha

We found a new investigator this week! His name is Guillermo, and we

found him while he was gambling over checkers with one of our other

investigators. He's great. He asks all the best questions just like a

good investigator should. At one point, he literally asked "What steps

do I need to take to be happy in this life?" We've got high hopes for

him.

I've read this "consecration" talk about 7 times this week. It's been

a big focus within our zone, and so I've been studying that talk

inside and out. It's be Tad R Callister if anyone wants to look it

up.... BUT if you're too lazy or you just don't care enough to read

it, that's ok. The principle of consecration is dedicating all your

efforts to the Lord. Which sounds intense, but He's really not asking

too much. Especially from full time missionaries. Personally, I see no

point in serving a "Full Time" mission if you only plan on working

"Part Time". I happen to know several missionaries that seem to think

they can accomplish their goals by sliding by at the minimum... BUT it

didn't really work for me in Highschool. and it doesn't work for them

now. In order to accomplish what the Lord wants from us, we have to

work HARD and then rely on the Lord to make up the difference.

That's a very very basic description of my studies this week.

ANYWHO! Love you all. My weeks been pretty average, so not a whole ton

of new updates. Sounds like things are going well back home!

Shout out to those of you who started school this week. That's the stuff..

LOVE YOU!

Elder Webster

OAKLANDISH

Oakland is growing on me! It has potential to be my favorite area so far, even if I've only been here a couple weeks.

So one interesting "Mission Culture" thing that I've learned from my experience in the last year is that NOTHING EVER GOES ACCORDING TO PLAN. In fact, there has not been ONE SINGLE day where EVERYTHING goes EXACTLY according to the plans that we make for ourselves each day. There is always something that goes wrong, and there always will be something... whether it's people not being home when they said they'd be home, or ending up teaching a different gospel theme because you realize the one you planned isn't applicable. or not finding the house you were looking for, or showing up late, or dinner falling through, or whatever it may be. Generally, we plan on having about 6 lessons a day, but by the end of the day, regardless of what we do to help our case, we might only teach 2 or 3 lessons. sometimes none! and that's just how life is! :) It's best not to get upset or discouraged because that's how life is in the real world as well. So now, it doesn't even phase me.

BUT! This last Tuesday, July 21st, 2015. Will forever go down in the history books as the FIRST (possible only) GOLDEN DAY OF MY MISSION! For the first time in my entire mission, we had a whole entire day filled with appointments and errands to do, and not a single one of them fell through. It.... felt.... nice. :) What a blessing.

At the end of the day, it's less important to have "OUR" plans go through than it is to have "God's plan" go though. It's definitely more important to follow the spirit and help God finish the things in his daily planner... but for the first time, we both seemed to write the same things in our planners! So that was exciting!

In other news, Elder Castleberry and I led our first Zone Training this week and we were asked to teach "The Basics" of teaching. SO! We ended up preparing a training of how to teach the Restoration while explaining each key point in EXTREME clarity. And it went very well! :) Our zone covers the Assistants to the President, and they told us it was a pretty solid training, so that was good to hear. :)

Also, we led Porque Yo Creo yesterday, and I was in charge of translating, and there was this one guy that spoke for like 20 minutes straight about the most complicated story of all time involving bone marrow transplants and becoming inspired by amputees on city busses, and basically, was a VERY hard talk to translate at full speed. I was just sitting in the corner with my little headset and gunna be honest, I sort of had to make up a big chunk of it... haha but other than that, it was pretty good. :)

We're going to start doing some pretty "unheard of things" within the zone in the hopes of helping people be more diligent and enthused. So this week, we are planning on visiting some of the zone members and joining them in their companionship studies. Just to observe how everything is going and see where the strengths and weaknesses are. And we plan on going to a few more district meetings this week. We're excited. There is a lot to be done. We're gonna turn this zone around, yo.

That's pretty much it for this week!

Shout out to Devon for leaving on his mission this week!!

Shout out to Jace for getting his adult life started this week.

Shout out to Preston because he's a total homie, but now it's going to take longer to get letters from him!

And shout out to Gharrett for dominating the sport of soccer.

Love you all!!!

That's me in back.

This is Pioneer Day with Elder Castleberry

This is a zone activity. We hiked up behind the temple. BEAUTIFUL!

Land of the Oaks

So I've officially finished my first week in Oakland! Every one talks about how ghetto it is and how scary it is here, but I've had a pretty pleasant week. :) In my opinion, San Francisco is 10 times nastier in every way. But Oakland has potential to be one of my new favorite areas!

I've had to do A TON of administrative stuff this week, which has made our schedule totally unpredictable. Last night we were up at the mission home till almost midnight with the Assistants because we had to record everyone's key indicators into excel files.. Staying out past 9:30 is basically un-heard-of in our mission. But apparently it's pretty normal for Zone Leaders. Who knew...? The whole week has been full of stuff like that. We had to go to the DMV one day because some of our elders asked us to escort them, and we had to lug around some of our sisters' bikes because their area got converted to car, and we were just constantly running errands for people all week long. It didn't feel like it, but at the end of the week, we realized that through all of the admin stuff, we actually had quite a lot of teaching appointments! Our area is looking great! We just need to work a lot more on our investigators... When I got to the area, I found out very quickly that nobody had updated our area book in like 2 months... SOoooooooo. I don't really know anything about our investigators... :(

This ward also asks missionaries to "live translate" all of our sacrament meetings, so this week, I sat in the front with this microphone set-up and I translated the whole sacrament meeting into English for those who would rather listen to it in a rough English translation. It was so hard actually! But it's a weekly thing, so I'm sure I'll get the hang of it.

Elder Castleberry is still one of my favorite comps, so everything's going pretty well with us. Even though I'm bitter about our area book. haha jk. But seriously, all is good in the hood.

Love you all!

Thanks for the emails!

Last moments with Elder Wride in our BRAND NEW MISSION SHIRTS!

I've NEVER been able to solve this puzzle... And I try fairly often. And Elder Castleberry solved it within the first 5 minutes of the transfer... grrrr. (this is the one you sent me for Christmas)

This is one of my favorite songs. Props if you can read it.

This is my favorite Licence plate. :) props if you can read it.

Transfer Calls!

Welp, it looks like my time here in Concord has come to an end. I've only been here for one transfer, and it looks like that's it for me! I haven't really gotten to know it a TON yet, but I have grown attached to a lot of the people. Particularly the Plascencia family. They are so close to full reactivation and Elder Wride and I have helped their "Part-member-family" become less "Part-member". But the transfer has ended and I'm on to my next assignment!

Starting tomorrow, I'll be a Zone Leader in Oakland with Elder Castleberry. It's kind of a crazy call! I've already been companions with Elder Castleberry because he was my trainer fresh outa the MTC. But we're back together! It's exciting! :) I'm not entirely sure how to be a Zone Leader, but I'm sure he can train me fine. haha He's got some experience. Anyways! That was this week's transfer doctrine! A sister in my district also got called to be a Sister Training Leader! No surprise there.

Updates from this week include:

Exchanges with Elder Jensen from Montana!

We taught a "Preach My Gospel" class about relying on the spirit and it went AWESOME!

Got an oil change for our car. (I've had SO many problems with that car.)

That's all the big things for the week! We have a zone activity today, so I can't email for very long, but this next transfer should be pretty.... well... difficult... but I think I'm excited. I really enjoyed being a District Leader... I've heard that Zone Leaders have a much crazier schedule, and a lot more responsibilities. But I'll let you know how it's going next week once I get there and get comfortable. :) Wish me luck!

I'm not covering them anymore, but if you could still keep Pedro Ramirez in your prayers, that would be awesome! He's working towards his (hesitant) baptismal date, but is having a hard time deciding what he wants from religion in general. Thanks a lot!

Wish me luck!

Love you all!

My parents sent me this sweet "How to tie a tie" thing this week, and this was one of my favorites. Too bad it's illegal in my mission. :) haha

This is a card house we made this morning.

Elder Wride and I were both Elder Ah Hoy's companions at one point. He gave us both a "Lava-Lava"

This is the Sistrict I'm leaving right now. (plus a couple random members)

Jerry's Baptism and Other Stuff

First things first, a lot of y'all have been asking about Jerry. And I have good news! We were able to hold a double baptism on Saturday for "Josegerardo 'Jerry' Ramirez Plascencia" (age 10) and "Yahir Guzman Martinez" (age 14). And it was a total success! Jerry has been our investigator for about a month now, and he is incredible. His baptism went smoothly and his whole family attended! Including his Non-member father who has just invited us to start teaching him as well! So we are super excited to continue to work with Jerry and his dad, Pedro.

This last Sunday was pretty exciting. They asked me to give a talk again. And I decided to speak about the Gospel of Jesus Christ, I spoke about Faith, Repentance, Baptism, The Gift of the Holy Ghost, and Enduring to the End. I chose to speak about these basic topics because we had quite a lot of investigators come to church this week, including Pedro, who, although a very supportive father, has never been taught the things his Recent-Convert-Son has been taught about baptism. And seeing as his son was receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost that day, I thought he would benefit from a little bit of an explanation.

After Sacrament meeting, like 4 minutes before the next class started, a teacher asked us to teach a 15 minute lesson about the Priesthood with no prep time. (I like how everybody assumes that missionaries are always prepared to speak about any topic for any amount of time on command.) It was a little choppy, but we tried to speak more by the spirit than anything else, and I think it ended up alright. There's a scripture I love that talks about treasuring up the words in your heart continually... that way when people ask you to give talks the night before, or ask you to teach a lesson 4 minutes before, or you introduce gospel principles to strangers that seem interested, "the words will be given to you in the very moment what you should say."

Sunday was a testimony of that!

Our area is finally turning around for the better! We've seen so many miracles this week and we've officially resurrected a dead area. We're working with a few strong investigators and ironing out details of a few pending baptismal dates, but be sure to keep Pedro, Mirbel, and Marisol in your prayers! :)

Elder Wride and I click like a mouse. He's so fun, and we've seen a lot of cool miracles this transfer. We're starting week 5 of our 1st transfer together today.

Also, I get a new mission President this week! I'll meet him on my Year mark!!! :) (Thursday)

Super exciting, but I'll give you more update on him next week!

Love you all!

My main man Jerry!

My mission is beautiful!

Elder Wride is such a homie!

Me, Elder Wride, and Jerry getting ready for the big day

Elder Wride's planner cover

Note from my punk companion

Making calls after an appointment blew us off

Some recuperation from wisdom teeth cirugia

Look at this little guy!

Look at this other little guy!

This is when I crashed the car.....

And this is when I locked the keys in the car and had to call the mission office.