Family!!
How is everyone! I love you all so much! This week has been great! We have had lots of miracles. Today is the first day back to school and it was weird ... we had to like wait to cross the street because there were too many cars... what!? That like never happens!
First off familia B____ continues to stress me out and continues to progress. We have a lot of lessons with them during the week but then they don´t go to church!! It is frustrating me so much! I know it is boring :-) and that it is three hours but you would think that after all that has happened in their lives they would be willing to give the capilla a try. Their story continues the same.
M_____ continues the same too. Sometimes I want to bop him on the head and sometimes I want to give him a big hug. He continues to fight against smoking so please keep the prayers coming.
The miracle of the week is the daughter of Hermana M__ C____. MC is the one who has been listening to the missionaries for like 10 years. (she has been inactive for like 12). Her daughter never wanted anything to do with us but now suddenly she has invited us to her house, she wants to feed us, and she wants her whole family to listen to us. It is weird. But I am happy with it! I have no idea what we did but I will take it! They are really sweet and I am super excited about how much she wants the missionaries. Her daughter has already expressed a desire to get baptized but I have so already learned my lesson on that one. I am not even going there until both mom and dad are going to church. But I have high hopes for that family. The only bummer is the dad is racist about gringo's. But that is okay I will use my charm and good looks to convince him that not all gringos are stupid idiots that buy what they want when they want. :-)
M____ is our other little miracle. She was my third convert and I thought she was just a simple cute teenager, but it turns out she is a lot more complicated and comes from a family that is a lot more complicated. But it has been really beautiful to see how much this gospel has changed her life! Wow! The way we think is just different. Because she thinks more in eternal family mode, she cares more about what happens with her family. She cares more about her mom, and wants her dad and sister to be more united with her. I am so proud of her. She did not just listen to us, she has changed! I really love her!
CC still just makes me happy! I love her so much! She thinks about others before her self. And she is just sweet. She never complains even though she has every reason to! We learned from a member that less than a year ago she almost died from cancer. We have never heard a word of it. And I want you to all hear her pray. There is no way to describe it except it is obvious that she has so much faith that when she prays she is talking to her Father in Heaven that loves her a lot! Words are just not enough.
The week we had a big conference with all of the missionaries in Santiago. There are almost 1000 of us! We all crammed into a capilla for three and a half hours!! It was intense! I got to see lots of people I love. Annie was there! That was exciting. She is doing great! And then random people from my high school and our stake were there too. That was really weird! One of the Lathem triplets was there! What!? (See the above picture with Elder Latham and Hermana Jones.) It was a big group. And to make things more intense we were in trouble. He got mad at us for not teaching the doctrine of Christ well enough. I really liked the part on repentance.. I love repentance! I am learning so much about it now. When I was little I used to hate "Sunday Mormons" because I thought they got all of the blessings for doing half of the work. That is so not true! God expects us to change! He wants our hearts Monday through Monday! He loves us and has a plan but if we only show up once a week that plan is going to be slow and we are going to miss out on lots of fun! As missionaries we like to do the fluffy stuff. We like to say oh we need faith and then you can get baptized but that is not all! God wants us to change! Our hearts certanly are not going to change if we just sit in our house saying with a smile oh it is okay ... I have faith.
So at the end we had a challange. We were supposed to think of one thing that we were to do better. There was a quote that he said that I loved that said that we should be 'contagiously optimistic because of the brightness of (our) faith'. That was my goal. It has been hard this week because we had to drop a lot of investigators which was a big bummer. I don´t like dropping investigators. We have the truth! They just don´t know it yet! It is hard to be optimistic when people are so hard. So I am trying to find that delicate balance between having a firm faith that God loves me and is involved in the details of my life but not falling to the side of thinking everything happens for a reason. It is an interesting thing that I am learning from experience. That is something I have learned a lot here. There are just some things you won´t understand without experience. We need it. Words don't work. People always told me the mission is great!... But they could not tell me why. And it makes sense! Have you ever tried to explain how fun it is being a daughter, or a mom or a wife or a sister, or a aunt or a sister in law or all of those in boy form? It does not work! We have to experience it! ... Like Taylor´s brownie lesson. I think that is why repentance is so important. I really do believe that we can have a real hope that focuses on Christ! My roommate said something really cool to me this week ... We were outside on our balcony looking at the stars and she said, 'I am learning to look at people the way God sees them. At first you might see a drunk man but God sees each of them as His son or daughter that could one day be a king or queen!' It was really beautiful! Each of us have a path that could lead us to the Celestial Kingdom! God has a way to change each of us.
Each of our paths may be a little different but each of our paths will lead us through faith, repentance, covenants, and MOST IMPORTANT the atoning love and power of our Savior and Redeemer! What a blessing it is to carry this message! I love you all so much! I hope you have a great week and can stand as a witness!
LOVE YOU!!!!!!! I continue to pray for all of you!
Hermana Webb
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