Amazing and hard like always.

Misión Chile Santiago Este
Cristobal Colón 6824
Las Condes, Casilla 27.144
Santiago, Región Metropolitana
Chile

First of all,  Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Second of all, dad is really about to turn 50?!?  That is really old!  I was thinking he was still 40 y tanto.  Pero, turns out time goes by really fast!

So this week was awesome!  First I have to tell you all about the temple because it was really beautiful.  We finally got to go.  President lets us go one time every year, and so we planned it so that our old apartment could get back together again.  It was absolutely beautiful.  Going to the temple reminded me of some of my struggles when I was scared to come to another country and try to convince people about some things I wasn't 100% positive of myself.  Whenever I would get overwhelmed, I was saved by one beautiful word, LOVE!  I can happily say that I know that God is good! I continue to have to fight for my testimony but He continues to show me ways how ..... just like He promised me that He would.  I wish I could explain how many times your letters and love that I got from you were answers to my prayers!  This week was no different. I have a testimony but I don´t just get it for free.  I have to fight for it.  I have to chose faith which is sometimes hard for me to do, but I am blessed to make that choice. 

So I went to the temple with hopes (and prayers) that I would really feel the spirit.  My prayers were answered!!  It was a beautiful session!  The love there is so strong.  (When I want more faith, God sends me more love!)  Not that I think I am cool or anything but whenever there are lots of missionaries doing one thing the experience usually turns out to be a little more sweet.  And it was! 

It was just so beautiful!  I wish I could show you guys all He did to send me love ... from temple workers, my companions, from you guys, but mostly from Him!  But, as Moroni always complains; words are just not enough and neither is my precious hour and a half to write. 

The rest of the week was amazing and hard like always.  _____ finally came to church again. He is such a sweetheart.  I really love him like my little brother.  He was my first baptism and we have been really worried about him.  We went to his house and asked him what had changed.  It took a lot of prodding and reminding him how much we loved him but he finally opened up.  He told us that he was frustrated that he can't get support from his parents.  Wanna adopt him, mom!?  I wish he could have the type of support and parents that I have.  

________ is a manos activo who I love! She can´t read very fast because she has dyslexia but she always reads with us.  She is a sweet example of someone who is just awesome because of all of her experience.  She left the church because of pride and could not be more humble now.  So I felt impressed to tell her that it was time to go back to church and asked her if she was ready.  She told us yes and that she would come to church next week!  So we will see.  I love her so much! 

______ is still adorable!  We had a problem with her kids wanting to sing in the primary program and having the leaders not let them; I was mad, but thankfully, it did not shake ________.  She is wonderful.  I don't think they meant any harm, but I DID feel like punching a pillow or something.  :-)

I love you all so much! thanks for everything!!  Thanks for giving me the faith (and love) to continue! 

Love Hermana Webb

When I feel like I want more faith, God always sends me more love.

Dear Family that I love!

How are you all?! I am doing so great! I loved all of your letters so much. First I need to respond to those. 

I love that Doug got married in the temple (where he could be closest to his cute dad)! What a fitting beautiful thing!  I love that family so very much!  I miss Uncle Thayne too!   I love the temple!  It is the goal! Baptism is great, but as I have discovered many times, a lot of people have gotten baptized.  To make covenents with God and the one you love in the temple is the most beautiful goal that I could ever think of. To start a family that can be together forever and provide even half of the joy, support and love that I get from my family is totally a fairy tale!  I thinking it is fitting that our Temples look like castles sometimes. (Sorry I am a corny nerd!)  But that is the goal!  I dream of one day Edgardo and Paola entering the temple together to be sealed together forever!  That is where God has saved some of the sweetest blessings. I don't know the wife part, but I definitely know how sweet it is to be a daughter, grandaughter, sister, and friend.  I love it! 

Also that baby of ours has to be the cutest thing I have ever seen!  Oh my heck!  I am slightly jealous that you all got to see him so recently but it is fine because he will quickly realize who is his favorite aunt when I get back. 

This week was really great!  Erika is doing wonderfully!  She is such a sweet heart!  She is already planning on going back to work after being sick for such a long time. She is still really progressing but I am hoping that this whole break of us bugging her to go to church won´t stop her progression.  We gave her a DVD with a bunch of mormon messages on it. 

Paola and her family are still classic!  Josefa was going to get baptized this week but her dad is not quite going to be home so we will have to pospone it for the next week.  I would like to postpone it a little more so that her cousin can get baptized with her too.  We made sushi again last night and basically I just love them!  You should see all the things they do for us!  If Paola had the choice, I think we would live in her house!  She now plans a FHE every night.  She does the lesson and we do the game.  Good deal right!?  Last night she taught her family about the law of chasity!  I love her so much!  She was very specific and direct! Poor Javier (the cousin who we are now teaching) looked very scared as Paola basically yelled at him that he better be clean when he gets married.  At least we don´t have to do that lesson now before he gets baptized. ;)

Elder Holland came this week to my mission!!  It was so cool!  The talk was amazing!  Elder Holland is classic!  He was very intense with us.  There were parts where I was surprised at how much he was yelling at us but then I remembered that it is Elder Holland.  He told us that we are God´s investigators.  He told us that we might be a little further along than the people we are teaching, but all of the hopes and dreams that we have for them, God has for us.  He told us that if we fall away after the mission he will come and hunt us down!  He was awesome!!

What I really loved was Hermana Holland´s talk!  She basically just got up and blubbered about how much she loves each of us.  She was so cute!  That is my new thing.  Just love people!  We are missing out on so many blessings when we choose to judge, compare, have pride, or even look at our own needs before those around us.  We need so much love here!  There are so many people on this planet who just need to feel loved.... I had a really beautiful experience with love this week.  Vania was acting weird and I felt very impressed to go and give her a big hug and tell her that we just love her!  The next lesson I felt impressed over and over again that I should tell her how much God loves her!  I came to find out that she feels like she does not have enough faith.  I have found that very interesting.  When I feel like I want more faith, God always sends me love!  Love focuses me, it helps me remember and see the eternal perspective.  It is easier to see lies, and faith feels so real because the feeling of love is so real!  No wonder Moroni told us to pray for it with all purpose of heart!  Without love, it is so hard to have the motivation to do anything.  I am so tired of watching families be torn apart because they don´t have it when they could!  I am tired of seeing parents not even want to follow God for their children or men who leave their families. We need more love!  It makes things make sense!  It makes joys eternal!  It makes our lives have purpose!  I think one of the reasons that the story of the prodigal son is so sad is that the older brother missed out on the party!  He was so busy worrying about himself and his own fate that he missed out on the party of loving people! That is my new goal!  I want to just love people!  I don´t want to worry about comparing myself, or judging others ..... I just want to love them and stick with that! 

Sorry, that is my rant for the day.  

So in other news Hermana Maciel had a dream about mom!  She said that she was in hiding and wore a disguise so that we would not notice her but that she had come to Chile to see me for Christmas.  We both laughed because we know that that is actually a possibility!  Good job mom!  You have made a big enough impact here that people are dreaming about you!

Other than that life is great! I am happy as can be. Sometimes I feel a little bipolar but I remember that everyone I talked to before my mission told me I would feel that way at times.  I am happy to be a missionary and helping people accept this gospel!  Thank you for your testimonies!  I loved them!  I loved mom what you wrote when you said that God has us do things and we just have no idea how He will use these commandments to bless our lives!  It is tricky to explain that to these people but I hope I am getting better at it.  I love you all! 

Hermana Webb

Pray to be filled with His love.

On splits ....

Family!!

How are you all!?   

This week was great.  Really stressful but really great!  We have a lot of people who think we can solve all of their problems.... Hee, hee, hee, we can´t ... but we are trying! 

We will start things off light.  It is time for the drunk of the week!!  This week is one of our investigators (yeah bummer but I am over it).  We were walking in the street and when people see me they just start yelling things at me in English.  But what is really fun is when I yell in English back.  My companion thinks I am crazy but I like to play with the drunkies in the street.  We had a good two sentence conversation where they really just repeated what I said but changed a word.  They told me their English was very well, so I corrected their grammar and told them it is very good.  So they started a chant: VERY GOOD; VERY GOOD! The chant lasted a good minute and I was very entertainied!  They were very happy that the gringo girl actually talks in English too!!  I don´t know if we will be stopping by his house again.  Let´s be honest, we probably will -- there is not much else to do at nine thirty at night so we usually pass by for him. 

In other news I am learning a lot!  Life is hard, just in case you were wondering.  We have lots of members and investigators who are experiencing really hard things.  The lists are long -- and it is extra hard because I love these people!! It is challenging because we always have the same recipe.... um we are not mom´s, wives or grandmas; we do not have all the answers, but we have this awesome book that you should read and you should pray.  It is a great recipe, but I have been thinking a lot about the blessings 'promised' as members of this church.  They are not all that you/they think.  We promise they will be blessed, and people think the blessings are the stuff they all want.  They think they are going to be healthy with living the word of wisdom; they think their money problems are going to go away with tithing; they think all of their family is going to be completely better and have more friends in school.  These are not bad things to want, but those are not the promises.  I have found that if we let Him, God has a different plan.  He wants to shape us, fill us with love, and help us become His!  That is what He has promised!  The other stuff are blessings from Him too, but we can not be sure we will have them.  We have a recent converet that is super suprised at how hard it is now to not do drugs.  Before it was easy for her but now she is struggling.  No, God does not take the hard things away! Sometimes things hurt more because you have more love for people.  But suddenly, with the gospel there is purpose!  There is a reason for all of this suffering!  There is a hope in a better world and their is a true profound joy here in this life!  It is so hard to explain what it means to be a Mormon.  I don´t know how to say it in English, and so much less in Spanish. 

______ has a baptism date and _______ accepted! We are continuing to see wonderful miracles with ______ and her family.  We love them so much.  I can't wait to for them to be baptized.

I think that is about it.  I love my mission.  It is hard, because God is doing exactly what He promised me He would do, ..... He is filling me with his love.  I hope I will ays long but it is worth it!  I continue to learn exactly what it means to just put it all in His hands and have trust that He will do the rest!  I find that that is even harder to do when it is with other people´s lives that I love so much!  But God continues to patiently show me that His powerful, all-knowing hands are so much more capable than my passionate but week and awkward ones.  I love God!  He is so good to me!  I am so slow to respond and I try to turn around so many times in a day that I probably give Him a headache, but He still loves me and He still shows it.  He is good!  Pray to be filled with His love.  It is so much more worth it and we need so much more of that stuff in this world!  I love you all! 

Hermana Webb

Logic has limits but the truth does not!

We need to have faith to understand . . .

I am still in Apoquindo with my comp!!  It feels so good to say that!  Life is good!! 

Voy are quidarme y me companiera tambien!!!!

So to start, I'm going to answer a couple of questions that dad wrote for me:

1. I have never had to speak in Sacrament meeting except to present myself at the beginning of the change. There are six of us in the ward so the young ones don´t talk a ton.

2. There are 10 missionaries in my district.  I love it - it is super fun!  My district leader is from Chile and is super funny!  He talks really fast and when he is mad he mutters stuff in English which is usually really funny.  I have no idea how many in my zone.... a lot.

3. The missionaries I know are awesome!  I have not seen any break big rules.  Like, I have seen some sleep in till 8 instead of 7:30 (our schedule is an hour later) but I don´t really call that rebelious. ;)

4. Have not been to the temple.... Want to!  But we only get to go two times so you have to save it.  We are thinking that we are going to go in like three weeks.  The new movie still has not hit Chile though which is a bummer.

5. I understand all of Sacrament meeting... well when I am listening.  Most of the time I entertain the children of the barrio during sacrament ;)  I love my life!!!

6. I have been attacked by some angry dogs. I HATE DOGS!!  They are gross!  They leave gross things and do gross things in the middle of the road and it does not make me a very happy person.  There is a dog who belongs to an investigator who is crazy -- its bottom lip looks all wierd and it is always growling.  It bit me, but I am over it now.

7. Most people are really nice here.  We have a couple of racist (against Americans) people but then again, people who think I am the coolest thing since sliced bread because I am from the States.  Entonces, I really can´t complain.  We did have someone tell us we were going to Hell because I am American. This was, of course, when I did not undersatand anything that was going on so I just smiled and said "que bueno!"

In other news I love my life!!!!  We are so happy here!

Paola and Edgardo are still progressing beautifully!  Edgardo is still far away but he is reading and calling his kids every night to talk to them.  I love the changes!  I wish I could tell all of the stories of what we heard before to show how much he has changed.  They made us Sushi last night.  It was so fun!!! I really do feel like I am in my own house when I am with them. They put up Christmas already which made me very happy!  I know where I will want to be during the holidays!

Erika is a sweet heart and I love her but she is worrying me! She did not go to church yesterday, but she did go out shopping in the hot sun with her daughters... uhhh, hello!?  If you feel good enough to go to a feria you should feel good enough to sit on a bench for an hour at church!  She has surgery this week and so she won´t be able to go to church now for six months so the progression with her is going to have to be put on hold.  We are going to try extra hard to strengthen her because satan likes it when people stop progressing for a while.

We found Javier again!  I don´t know if you guys remember the cute Peruvian man who was progressing a lot and then suddenly disappeared to go up north.  He came back!  We were super excited!  And in the break, he has been reading the Book of Mormon, and sharing the gospel with other people.... Yes! you read that right!  He have his pamphlet away to one of the people he works with!  Yes!!  The problem is he has been here for three months and may not be able to get a carnet to stay in Chile.  We are going to get his address in Peru if he suddenly has to go home.  We like him a lot he is a good man!  He works hard for his family and is looking for the truth!

Rosa went to church this week!!!  I am so proud of her!  She came in late after the sacrament and left right after sacrament meeting but I was happy!  She is adorable!  She also got her cute (but sometimes lazy) pololo to go too!  I am so proud of her!  I was so happy - I almost screamed in the middle of the meeting!

I love you all! As always I have been studying a lot about faith I found something interesting in Mark 14 this week. Here is what I wrote in my journal:

I am really good at having faith until someone looks at me like I am crazy. I don´t like it when it feels like people seem to have a "point" as to why I might be crazy.  So now, imagine those people around the feet of the Savior when he was being crucified. They had to be pretty sad but to make things worse the other people around him ¨had a point¨ when they said "He saved so many but he could not save himself" ... This would have to be a major test of faith for those around the Savior at that time.  They mockers had a "good point."  It had to have been hard not to think.... Yeah... Why is he not saving himself?  There are enough reasons to doubt and walk away.  My limited mind can come up with a lot of "plot holes" in this story that is so full of "happily ever afters" ... but that is just it ... My mind is limited!  I may see plot holes now, but that is just because I can only see a finite part of the infinite picture.  What the Chief priests were mocking - the "point" . . . . Christ did not save Himself so that He could save EVERYONE ELSE, including the very people who were mocking Him for not saving himself.  Christ did not save himself so that he could save everyone else!  He had not just come to save the few that he healed while he was here; He had a bigger job / purpose that they did not see or understand. The chief priests did not see that because they were just looking at the fact that he was not saving himself.   MICH!!  I love the scriptures!  We need the spirit!  We need to have faith to understand because logic has limits, and the truth does not! 

I love you all! this gospel is true!  My faith is growing every day!  I still don´t get it all and I still hyperventilate sometimes but I am learning to breath!  I love this process!  I hope you are all enjoying it too!  God has a beautiful lesson plan for each of you that is so full of Ah-ha!! moments and love that I can´t wait to see what is around the next bend.  I love you all! 

Hermana Webb