The story of His grace is learned by experience!

So this week was interesting... Tuesday my comp woke up with a migraine from satan.  She has had really bad migraines, before but this one was so bad that it got down to her sholder, and her upper arm.  We went to the doctor, and she winced with pain if the doctor only touched her!  So her gave her these super muscle relaxing pills that she has to take three times a day that KNOCK HER OUT!  She takes her second pill in the day during the day and then BARELY makes it to her bed because she is so tired.  So this week I have ... been in the house!!!!  AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH bad idea!  I don`t like being a missionary trapped in my own house.  She only has to be taking these pills for ten days so thankfully she is almost done.  We are on day 6 so just 4 to go!  It has been a great chance for satan to attack, but I have learned a lot too. It made me realize something though.  I don`t think I am as ready to go home as I thought!!!  I am sure I won`t ever be cooped up in my house at home but I like always doing something for God.  I like trying to concentrate on His power to heal and save us.  It is kind of wierd just being at home not doing anything.  That is why when I found out that the ____ family has officially left the church, it left me super pensive. I LOVE studying! It is so fun to learn about Christ`s life, I love reading the scriptures, and seeing how people were saved thanks to the Grace of our Savior.  But I know Him because of experiences.   If it were not that way we would not have even needed to come to this earth.  If the story of grace was something that we could learn in a classroom, or with disscussion, we would have never needed to come to earth, mess up and make it so God had to send his Beloved Son to be sacrificed for our sins.  I am so grateful for experience.  A lot of mornings when it is time to leave, and it is hot, cold, raining, or I am just tired, I would think how much I wish I could just stay home. ... But now I learned that that is where God teaches me. OUTSIDE! 

As for things that we were able to do: We usually left in the morning and in the night so it was not like we were inside the WHOLE day.  We had a great family night.  The lady who has the mom who is like Gogo (Carlie's maternal grandmother) had a FHE with us this week in the house of an AMAZING family.  We watched  "Because of Him" and talked about why Christ is our savior.  The daughter (L_) is going to be harder to crack than we thought.  She is adorable but is leaning toward being Buddhist now.  She says she stills believes that Joseph Smith was a prophet but also that Buda was a prophet ..... I don`t know how you can come to that conclusion.  I guess she has good experiences with the two.  But she is really sweet so we are going to keep working with her. And the family was GREAT!  I love them so much.  It is a newlywed couple in our ward that makes me think of Taylor and Heather. They have a little daughter and they helped us a lot with the FHE!

Then we also had an activity.  It was great!  We have a lot of people from different countries in my ward so each of them did something fun from their country.  The ward supported us a ton!  It was great!  They all came with their foods and they were all so sweet.  But the bummer was the activity started at 7 and at 8 there were almost 0 investigators.  We had invited the entire world and no one showed up!  I was totally bummed!  So I said a prayer.  I told God that we had worked hard, that we had faced so much opposition and the ward had been so good to support us ... I begged Him to help someone get there!  And they did!  Y_ called five mins after the meeting started and came with a car FULL!  She came with her husband!, (who completely ignored us before because he did not want to listen to us) her two kids, and primos of her kids.  God answered my prayer!  And, they loved it!  The husband listened intently to the messages, and talked to everyone in the ward afterward. Y_ could not come to church yesterday because she got sick from all that she had eaten the night before but it was totally worth it!!! 

Well family! I love you so much! I am really experiencing that broken heart as I come to the end of the finish line!  It feels SOOOO good to finish and to be able to see you all in a couple of weeks, but at the same time, I start to feel sick when I think about saying goodbye to some of these people! Loving hurts but it is worth it! 

I love you all so much! I hope you have a great week! 

Spiritually blind ...

How are you all!? I love you so very much! This week went flying by ... Which is good and bad. I am now starting to realize that seeing you guys will also mean that this is all going to end.  Which on one side is really exciting because I am excited to start a new chapter as Carlie as an ex missionary.  I hope to be a better Carlie than I was before.  But, at the same time, it is going to be kind of hard to finish this without wishing I could continue with some parts. 

We had a "NO trunkie" meeting this week!  That was pretty funny because to be perfectly honest it just made me more trunkie. They asked us to choose scriptures that describe how we feel and one sister chose the scripture that says that we should be fishers of men because right now we are fishing for people to listen to the gospel but soon we will fish men! It was pretty funny and she totally left president SPEECHLESS ... which does not happen much. 

So this week we actually had a lot of success.  We are pretty happy about it.  We continue to contact every one and their dog (almost literally) ... And we might actually be finding some people that are interested. They are all at the beginning, but I think I am going to be leaving this sector a lot more full than I thought with investigators and I am happy about that!!!  And I feel like we were not in the street all week ... we were in more citas and working with more people. I wish I had more stories but we are waiting to see what happens with all of these contacts.  It is a slow process but now that it is finally moving it feels good!! 

Last week we contacted this cute little Peruvian lady.  She just works in our sector so we will soon pass on her information but we made a cita kind of at the end of the contact. I was sure that she would not be there. But she was there waiting for us. She even stayed late at work so she could talk to us. We talked for a little while about the love that God has for us and how he is our Heavenly Father and how we are His greatest gift, so He wants us to have the same and has given us families.  She ate it all up and wanted another cita.  She was cute about it because we told her that she was not in our sector and that we were going to have to pass her name onto the other missionaries.  She was bummed and did not give us her address, so we are going to keep working with her so she can meet with her missionaries.  She told us at the end, "you know I listen to everyone but there is something different about you two."  It was pretty exciting!

Then later in the week we were contacting when we found a lady watering her garden. She told us that she was a member of the church but that she did not go anymore. It had been a long time since she had gone to church. She was not going to let us in but her cute mom was there with her because she was too sick to be in her own house.  We got to teach them and yesterday we brought them the sacrament. This cute old lady riminds me of Gogo so much!!!  She is like the spanish version of Gogo!  She kept saying 'I lost my head and I can`t seem to find it again.'  She was frustrated because she thinks she is a burden and not a blessing and that she just wants to be better so she can go back home.  Her daughter is an amazing woman.  We took her the Sacrament this week and it was really beautiful.  She has been a member for 47 years (which is almost the amount of time the church was even here!)  She took the sacrament with so much respect and so much reverence that the spirit was really strong! I hope we can help the daughter want to come to church so her sweet mom can participate with all of us. 

A_ is doing really well.  We were running around so much this week that we did not have too much time to talk to her.  But she continues to progress slowly.  We are hopefully going to do a FHE with some members that are her neighbors soon so we can start teaching the whole family.  She has two brothers and her parents. 

Y_ also continues to progress. She makes me so happy! We saw her talking outside with some lady so we greeted her.  Her friend looked at us like we were two little rats and said "aren`t they Mormons?!?!" (how could you talk to Mormons!?!?) And Y_ responded with YES! They are my friends!! It was great! We are also starting to work more with her husband. 

This week I studied the word blind.  Hermana Wright told us in the trunkie meeting that we should ask God what other things He has prepared for us to teach.  I love that!  So I asked Him.  And at least that week He wanted to teach me about being blind. There are so many ways that we can be blind. In the bible dictionary it explains a couple of different reasons that we are blinded.  Sometimes we are born blind (physically), but sometimes we develop our blindness because we don`t take care of our spiritual eyes, or we catch a spiritual sickness because we are hanging out with too many people who are also blind.  It was really interesting to study all of the stories in the Bible of people who came to the Savior and begged him to give them the light that they were missing but to think of it spiritually and not physically.  Each of these people had been blind for a long time.  I am sure they had tried everything else, but in the end they chose to come to Him. Just like mom said about the empty tomb ... some people came to him running, some were carried, some had to push past unbelievers to get to his feet, some had to follow him for a long time, and some had to just wait for him at the temple, but each one came and found that it IS as he said!  He can heal us.  We see things so distorted.  We forget how good it is to LOVE, how good it is to be obedient, how good it is to give, and we get locked up in a prideful blindiness that does not let us see things as they really are.  Sometimes we are blind because we are too caught up in anger and the thing that is making us angry seems to overtake everything else.  Some times we are caught up in self-pity and our problems seem like the only ones in the world.  Sometimes we are caught up in self-righteousness and seem to see only our strengths and other peoples weaknesses.  Sometimes we are caught up in fear and our doubts and insecurities seem to overtake our view.  All of these things overshadow the truth that we really DO love that person we are mad at, that there are other people that we can help and that Christ DOES have the way to heal our hurts. When we take off the blindness we can see our weaknesses and take them to the Savior and let Him make them strengths.  And finally when we let him heal us from our blindness, we can see his strength in the mists of a random world and find the true peace he promised his Disciples. I love when it really is AS HE SAID! Sometimes it is hard to constantly be asking for HIS sight instead of mine! I get fed up with realizing that once again I am looking at a situation, myself or someone else, - blind, but when I humble myself as the men in the bible and tell Christ that I need Him and that I believe that he can heal my blindness ... He heals me! I testify of his power! I love you all so much! God is real and so are His promises! 

Love Hermana Webb

Working my face off is the least I can do after all he has done for me!

Wow!  The weeks keep passing quickly.  Your letters made me so happy!!  I followed my same tradition in reading the letters and crying, but this time I was in a busy KFC!  I now understand why people think that Mormons are so weird.  I was reading the e-mails and could not stop crying/squealing/laughing!  Well, that's one reason people think I'M a weird Mormon, I guess!!  I can't help it.  I just love my family!

So this week was good. We are working hard like always and trying to press forward. The bummer part of this week was P_.  He dropped us.  That was a bummer!  We got to his house for his appointment and he had us talk to him outside instead of coming in which I knew was a bad sign.  Anyway, this time we came over with M_ the CR who is AWESOME! He is so great and bore a beatiful testimony.  Anyway, AGAIN the spirit was super strong! AGAIN I cried and he cried and AGAIN he put up his wall.  He kept telling us that he just did not think that religion was the answer to all of this problems.  I wanted to yell in his face ... I am not trying to just give you a religion!!! I am trying to give you the truth!  I am trying to help you understand and accept the healing power of the Atonement in your life so that you can feel the true hope of an atonement that really is infinite and really does reach to where you are!!!!! I am trying to help you make sacred covanants with God that can bind you to God and eventually bind you to your whole family and God! How do you not understand!!!??  But don`t worry, I did not. He told us that it is not what he was looking for and that he did not even want to try it because it just did not look appealing to him.  So we left, and I cried!  It is the same as last week!  

I wish I could explain the power of the Atonement!!  In a Steven Curtis Chapman song (1 Peter 1:10-12) ... it says that the angels (that have not lived yet) long to understand the story of grace!  Maybe they know what God looks like because they are still with Him and maybe they know a lot of things we don`t know but what they long to know, is the story of grace that we have come so familiar with.  Dad wrote me a little about this. Those little things that have built up to be a lot of big things, when we realize how fallen we really are and how sweet it is to be saved by his all-powerful hand! 

I thought about that same idea this week with Y_.  She is doing GREAT!  She came to church this week and I think she liked it!  This week we are going to tackle the Word of Wisdom... that is going to be fun!  But she is a sweetheart!  We really love her.  My companion prays all of the time and says that she is grateful for the existence of Y_.  And it is true she helps a lot!!  We talked about the Plan of Salvation this week.  She is great but it is really hard to talk because she talks A LOT but we were able to talk about how after this life we will still be with our famlies.  She has this joke with her husband who always says NO I signed up for only until death separates us.  But she has told her daughter to mix their ashes;) so they are together even after death.  She told us that she thinks there has to be something because we don`t finish our work here.  There is more to do.  I kept thinking about that.  I started thinking about Lauren and how NOT done I am at being her sister.  I am not saying I was a bad one, but I feel like I am a better one now.  I started thinking about how frustrating it is that I can`t love her better now.  I realized again, that I had fallen.  I realized again that I needed Him to lift me up.  I was not doing well.  I was really missing Lauren I wanted to send her an email that had lots of love and lots of !`s and I was bitter that I know that there is not e-mail that is powerful enough to get to the other side of the veil.  But, The atonment is.  Once again God taught me and helped me see the reality of my ETERNAL family!!!  I don`t have to start enjoying the power of His sealing power until I die! Just like I don`t have to wait to enjoy his perfecting, or enabling power until I die. ... Like mom said I can participate in His bread of life EVERY DAY!  I can`t hug Lauren, and I can`t send emails, but I can continue loving her more and more everyday, and I can continue learning more and more from and with her everyday!  What a blessing!  She said it right when she said that we don`t have to wait for our happily ever after.  I know that sounds weird but I feel her learning and progressing with us. It is a total bummer that I can`t hug her until her eye balls buldge, but I can participate in some of the promised blessing NOW! God is good! He will let us finish every job! and I am so grateful that being a sister, daughter and maybe mom and wife is not a finish-able job!!!  I am up for the task! 

The other fun house this week was A_ and his family.  A_ is adorable!! He is the CR who is staying with his sister and their family. He is so great! The family is three boys, the mom, the dad, and the brother of the mom.  So it is hard to get into the house because the mom has to be home. (mission rules.)  Anyway, the mom left and we had to leave running too. But we still had not eaten pizza with them. It was so cute the entire family ended up eating outside on the front pourch (which is extremely small) so they could be with us!  I love that family!  It is frustrating because the entire family is pretty interested except the mom.  She is REALLY catholic, so the dad just kind of follows her even though he does not really like it. But we will get them someday. They like it when we come over so that is a good sign. 

And last but not least, we have SOMEONE PROGRESSING!!!! Her name is A_.  She is really great!  She is VERY open to the world.  She is very politically correct ... which is why she started listening.  But she is praying and reading the Book of Mormon.  Now her mom is listening and we get along great with the whole family. This week we are going to make Guatemalan food (I am learning how to make Guatemalan food it is SOOOOOOO good!!!! I love my comp!!!!) So we are excited about them. They are just starting so there is not much I can say. 

Other than them we contact all day!!!  We have found some potentials that look like they could be pretty cool so we will see what happens.  Please keep praying for us.  We are going to need it!  We are working hard and I am learning how to endure to the end.  It is true that satan seems to attack even harder than he had before.  But God seems to be even more willing to help us understand.  I am learning so much about His goodness because I experience it everyday.  He is so good to us!  I love you all so much!  I wish I could express, but once again I am limited to only capital letters and exclamation points!!!!  I look up to everyone!  It is so good to be part of this family!  I feel like I fit and I LOVE it!  Thanks for everything!  Thanks for the letters, the prayers, and thanks for counting down the days with me!  I promise to work my face off!!!!  It is the least I can do after all He has done for me!  I LOVE YOU ALL!!!!!

Hermana Webb

You cannot really taste how freaking delicious the cookie is unless you put in the other ingredients!!

How are you all!? I love you all so much! I have a tradition on Mondays that all of my comps and roommates are used to.  I print off my e-mails, I run up to my bed, and I sit on my bed, read, and cry like a child and then usually end on my knees totally overcome with how much I love my family and how happy I am that they love me back, ... and then I say to myself, "wow self, you are really, really, really corny! -  Heather would be so embarrassed " but, then when I think about Heather, I start thinking about all of you people again and ... I start crying... again.... I am a mess, but you all love me that way so there is not much to do. ;). I followed the tradition today.  I love reading your letters and knowing that God is protecting you just like He is protecting me!

I have good news! We got into like 4 houses of investigators this week!!!!  That is pretty good! I was pretty content! The new investigator this week is P_.  He is this 25 year old who is very sad. He lives with his family, and is studying to do something really smart, but the bummer part is his dad died about 3 months ago from cancer! I HATE CANCER! It really does hit everyone.  It does not matter if they are saints or devils, old, or young, or rich, or poor, famous or unknown.  He sounds like he was an amazing dad.  We had this amazing lesson about God`s plan for us. We talked about all of the joy that P_ had felt with his family and how this is something that was meant to be and eternal!  We talked about how God had planned that because He loves him!  The spirit was way strong and me and him cried a couple of times. Anyway, at the end of the lesson once again I was sure we had him!  So my comp invited him to read the Book of Mormon when I thought the spirit was really strong.  I guess not, because he totally told us no!  He did not want to commit to anything except to pray.... prayer is great and everything, and we can learn a lot but it is like the flour in a cookie.  You cannot really taste how freaking delicious the cookie is unless you put in the other ingredients.  We will see how it went ... maybe he was hungry enough that the prayer will taste good to him.  It is so hard to have the answers to so many of his questions and have him not take it!!!  That is one of the hardest parts of missionary work ... Watching people die of thirst but when I get to offer them the living waters through Jesus Christ ... they say things to me like 'ummmm no me nace' (ummm it just does not come (born) from me ... or that it isn't important to me)  How could you say something so dumb!? You are dying of thirst! Take the water! I think that is what the brethern wanted to say this last conference. They have tasted the water, and we can too! I loved that we don`t even have to just take their word for it that drinking from the living water is great. We can try it!  And it is true - it is great! 

We also taught another man named P_. He is a really nice man who always wants us to come over, but it is really hard for us to find a hermano at the same time that he can. But we finally found a day that he would be home and could find a member.  Sadly, the day we went something was wrong.  It seems like he was really stressed and he kind of took his frustration out on us.  The spirit during the lesson was more like the spirit of contention. But it was really sweet, because suddenly I felt the Spirit tell me a question to ask him.  He is always helping people and so I asked him WHY he did it. P_ was frustrated that God would give us agency (or the possiblity of failing,) and then give us rules that He expects us to keep.  So I asked him why he is always helping people.  And he told me that it made him feel good.  So I asked him if there was a time that he could have helped someone and he did not do it. I told him that that is what God wants us to free us from ... I told him about my experience with God and how I had asked for Him to help me give more because I was not a giver like I would have liked. And it was so cool because the spirit came back and we could explain that God wants to FREE us from selfishness.  It is not just that God is trying to find reasons not to save us.  We can`t love like He wants us to be able to love if we are trapped in selfishness, anger, or laziness.  I know I have already gotten on this soap box, but it is so freeing to put aside the chains that keep me from running to him!  And, I love testifying of it and promising a new view of everything to those who are learning about who the Savior really is!  Because even though we have to wait for the perfect bodies that he will give us through His perfect grace when we are resurrected, I don`t think we have to wait to start leaving the chains behind NOW!  I still stand by the fact that we can`t change and leave behind those chains without HIS help, but I believe with all of my heart that he plans to start changing us now!  He plans to start freeing us from the effects of a fallen world in the moment that our knees hit the ground!  It is a hard process and usually I make the same mistakes every week but like they said in conference, as I take the sacrament, and keep relying completely and wholly on HIS Grace, I really do start changing!  He is good!!!!!

The other fun news of this week is Y_ (the MA) came to church!  She came to the first session of Saturday Morning.  She loved it!  It was so cute because she was so nervous that she went to the barber before so she could look cute.  She really is so great!  She made a lot of friends, and she plans to come next week too so that is pretty fun! She has been a tender mercy of this sector. We found her contacting, so in the end it kind of works. 

Conference was AMAZING!! I love our prophet and apostles! They really are amazing people!  I also really liked seeing Aunt Holly and GREG!?  (A cousin.)  That was weird!  I did not know he was in the choir.  I just yelled it out ... hey Greg! in the middle of the conference when I recognized him.  That is fun.  Tell them all I love them and tell Aunt Holly that she looked hot!  During the first session, I just enjoyed the spirit of God telling me over and over again that those men and women really were called of God.  I love being part of His church!  I felt like people of Moses listening to Moses speak.  How cool is it that we can listen to a prophet who has authority from God!?

I love you all so much!  Thanks for everything!  You guys could not make me happier!  I know this is totally a sinner thing to do but I am reallllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy excited to see all of you!  Six weeks to go!  I love you all and thanks for everything!  I testify that God really is good and He really does have plan to save us even when it looks impossible.  He knows how to save our hearts, and He does it exactly in the way that WE need it!  I love Him for it!  And I love all of you!  And, I am sorry Heather that I am so corny!!!  ... It just spills out of me - I don`t know how to stop it! 

Hermana Webb

Mision Chile Santiago Este
Cristobal Colon 6824
Las Condes
Santiago, Region Metropolitana
Chile

51