11/30/15 life is good

Dear Familia y Amigos,

This week has been so amazing as always. The Lord has blessed us so much! I'm not only saying that because it was thanksgiving and I have to be grateful. But really, I am grateful for everything God has given me. We've had a hard time these two transfers with people committing to do really anything. I have a greater understanding of how God feels when I'm not doing what he wants me to do. But I feel like every second of this mission is worth it, even if only one person will choose to follow Christ's plan. We've seen so many miracles these past week. I'll share one of them.

So we have a conference call with the people in our district during the week to account for our week so far. We all weren't doing our best, and so we got a little rebuked. He was asking us what our reason behind the lack of work. Of course there were lots of different excuses, legitimate excuses, and yes we felt like we were working hard. Then a missionary said it's because of our lack of love for the savior. Man, it was a shot to the heart. But actually in the end it was really motivating. We've been working hard, but the rest of the week we were way more urgent and efficient.

One night when our plans fell through we were just knocking all of these doors near a trailor park, and it was freezing then we went to this one trailor with a car parked in the front. As we were about to go to the door at 8:50, a lady came out of the car and asked us what we wanted. She said she really didn't have time right then. Well we talked to her for like 2 minutes and she opened up. We felt prompted to invite her to be baptized and she said that she would and her daughters wanted to find a church to be baptized in. It was just so amazing that her heart softened immediately after we were talking to her.

We came back to that house the next day, and of course it was a bad time again, they were just fixing to leave. But we were talking to the 8 and 10 year old on the porch, about the Book of Mormon and they were so excited to read it. Then we hear a voice across the street, "Hey Sisters." So as I was still talking to the girls, my companion turned and talked to the lady across the street. She said to come by after we were done talking to them. Of course we went over. Turns out it was this young couple who moved from West Jordan Utah all the way to Ulysses Kansas in a car, then they sold their car to get a trailor. They want to completely change their lives around and they both want to start coming to church. They both came to church yesterday and met all of the members. The girl is a less-active and her boyfriend is a non-member. When we were talking about the Holy Ghost I asked her when she's felt it. She said that she knew that was the spirit guiding her when she saw us, and telling her to yell for us. They are so special! We're all like best friends, as if we all knew each other in the pre-mortal world. :)

I know our Savior loves us soo much and he gave his life for us and this is His true church on the earth! :)

I love yall so much!

mucho amor,

Hermana Webb

11/23/15 I got to milk a cow!!!!

Dear Familia,
So I spent too much time looking at photos to send Cameron for the
DVD, instead of writing this email. I can't use half of my pictures
because their from the iPad and have low resolution. Hopefully the
photos worked.
So we milked cows today out on the farm. It's quite a forearm workout.
Casey should get a cow for his workout before climbing. Well actually
it wasn't to hard. You just pinch and squeeze and aim it into the
bucket. I decided I like the farm life. :) I guess I am a Webb :)

Anyway I'm so grateful for the gospel in my life! We got challenged
during someone's talk in sacrament to write down 100 things we're
grateful for! Challenge accepted!
Are you up for the challenge?
Love,
Hermana Webb

11/16/15 Be Grateful! :)

Dear Familia,

So this week was amazing! We had our ward thanksgiving dinner. We had a lot of leftovers.. so they gave it all to the missionaries. I think they think we don't eat. So the members are really good at feeding us pretty much every night. I made some spanish salad for the dinner and it turned out pretty good, not nearly as good as mom's though! Another good thing my companion and I made was a Tongan food: Musubis. It's spam, eggs, and rice all wrapped in seaweed. We made that for our district meeting.

I sent a picture last week with me holding up rattle snake rattles. We were visiting some Less actives about 45 mins away from Ulysses. They collected rattle snake rattles and salt and pepper shakers. She literally has thousands of salt and pepper shakers. She has them ranging from Santa Clause to Watermelon shaped. She travels all over the world and buys them wherever she goes. She's been collecting them ever since she was about 8 years old and now she's 80. I couldn't believe it.

Violet has been really busy with work and we haven't been able to get a hold of her or find her. We've called her and texted her scriptures and that's the only contact we've had and she hasn't replied back. We mentioned her in ward council that we cant get a hold of her or see her at her house and they mentioned that she was probably just being nice to us. Well we decided to try to focus on other people more, which was sad because we knew there was something special about her. Well today we ran into her at the store and we're going to go see her later today! Apparently she's been really caught up at work, and her work is about an hour away. So we were so glad to find out she wasn't ignoring us!

We've really been working with part member families. There's this crazy house of about 4 families in one tiny house and a couple of them are members. We've also found a lot of potential families that we have appointments with this week. This next week we're going to see so many miracles!

The weather is actually pretty nice right now. But there's a storm headed tomorrow!

I hope everything is going well with everyone! Keep me updated on everything! Love ya!

Love,
Hermana Webb

11/9/15 Families are Forever

Dear Family,

Thanks so much for all the support you've given me! I love all of you very much!

So this week we didn't have an apostle talk to us, but that's okay, it was still an amazing week. We've spend some time teaching part member families and it was so amazing to hear one of the girls say that it's "her dream to go to the temple" I know that the temple truly does seal us together as families for eternity.

We had a church tour with this lady named Violet. She was reluctant to have us talk to her at first because she said she went to another church. But then she slowly opened up. She didn't agree to setting an appointment until the next time we showed up again. She actually asked us if we could have a bible study at the church and then she set up the time. Well we didn't exactly have a bible study. Once she got to the church we had an amazing member come out with us and we asked her if we could show her around the church. It was the most spiritual church tour I've ever had. I don't know if it was partly because the member was a seminary teacher or what. Anyway we showed her around the church and explained the pictures on the wall of Christ. We actually spent quite a bit of time talking about the temple and doing baptisms for the dead. Which normally isn't what we talk about when we first meet someone. But really it was the spirit directing the church tour and she really liked the idea that she could be forever with her family especially with a sibling that passed away. She told us that we came at a perfect time in her life and that this is what God wants for her. The member testified that God really knows us individually and loves us so much and he's guiding us. We showed her the picture of Joseph Smith and told her the first vision. She thought that was the most beautiful thing she's ever heard. When we saw the picture of President Thomas S. Monson on the wall we explained having a prophet in these last days and receiving modern day revelation, which she agreed that of course we need modern day prophets to lead us. I was in awe just how much she agreed with everything we taught her. I thought to myself, okay this cannot get any better. But it did. We showed her the chapel and talked about the sacrament. We talked about how we renew the covenants we make at baptism. Then she asked the perfect question, "Where do you get baptized?" So then we showed her the baptismal font. We explained what baptism was and that she could be cleansed from everything she's done in the past and it's a covenant to follow Christ. Well we invited her to be baptized and her response was,"Yes." but the way she said it was like, of course I'll be baptized, type of look. There was no hesitation. Well we're so excited to be teaching this young mom and she'll fit right in with all the other moms in the ward. In the past 2 weeks we've had 3 babies born in our ward! Not to mention we already have like 6 toddlers/babies.

I'm so excited for Ashley to have her baby! :)

That was the highlight of the week. There definitely were more miracles that happened. For example, a less-active came that we never thought would come. Well we had faith he'd come but it was just so surprising! We know that he definitely enjoyed church and he participated the most out of anyone in our Spanish Gospel Principles class. Everyone was just so loving towards him and not caring the reasons behind him not coming. I'm sure he'll start coming more and be an example to his family.

Well It's amazing being a missionary. :) I know this is God's work and it definitely is hastening!

Love,

Hermana Webb

 

Rattlesnake Rattles: Here's a picture of me with... Yep you guessed it! I so want to make
earrings out of them!

 

11/2/15 Bear your testimony!

Hola,

This week was absolutely amazing! Here are just some highlights. We got to hear from an Apostle of the Lord, Elder Stevenson. Well I'm not sure if I need to highlight anything else. That was just so amazing! But of course there were some other experiences worthy of my weekly letter home.

We found this one teenager about 3 weeks ago in a potential investigators house and we gave him to the Elders to teach. Turns out the 14 year old son wasn't just curious about the gospel, he really was seeking the truth. Within 5 minutes of talking to him he asked us about 50 questions about the bible and what were something's we believed weren't right to do. So fast forward a little bit and this kid has been reading the Book of Mormon. His mom doesn't believe that we even are Christians, so she grounded him for wanting to be baptized. She took away his truck (because in Kansas you can drive when you're 14) and his phone and wont even let him read the Book of Mormon. So this is a teenager, you'd think he'd love all of those things enough to just let it go and wait until he's 18 to be baptized. Well after much prayer and fasting his mom finally let him come to church this past Sunday. Luckily it was fast and testimony meeting. It was amazing to see his friend go up there and bear his testimony. Then at the very last minute, before the meeting ended, this shy 14 year old boy who just barely got introduced to the church, went up and bore his testimony. I'm sure just about the whole ward was in tears and moved by his testimony. He prayed and read the Book of Mormon and knows that it's true and this is the true church. He said that he's praying that his mom's heart will be softened to let him be baptized. After he bore his testimony Sister Samani and I looked at eachother and said, "What just happened?" Miracles do happen. So we'll see what happens next.

We met Elder Stevenson on Halloween night in Salina. We spent about 5 hours in a bus one way and 5 hours coming back. It was totally worth it. Those 21/2 that he spoke felt like 10 minutes long. I learned so much about how to be a better missionary. He talked a lot about his time serving as a Mission President in Japan and the stories of the missionaries there. He's such a down to earth, relatable person, but he teaches with power and authority. He taught us about having a vision, being obedient, and how to teach from preach my gospel. He compared himself a lot to the other general authorities. He said that whoever got to hear from Elder Holland on the mission to "lower their expectations" he said that's the only time in your life we should lower our expectations. Well he definitely isn't Elder Holland, or President Thomas S. Monson. It's hard to compare servants of the Lord, or anyone because everyone has something unique to bring to the table. Elder Stevenson taught me many things and I know that he truly is called of God.

I hope everyone had just as good of a Halloween night as me. But the only ghost I felt on Halloween was the Holy Ghost. :)

I love you all. I know our Savior lives and loves us. I know that this is the true church. I know obedience brings blessings.

Love,

Hermana Webb