How Great Thou Art!!!

Monday, January 27, 2014

I have so much to write! A lot has happened since the last time I wrote all of you.

Monday! We invited family B_____ to get baptized!!  And they accepted!  It was really beautiful!  We watched the video about Joseph Smith and after that the member family that we were with bore these really beautiful testimonies.  The moment was perfect and we invited them to be baptized on the 23 of Feburary!  The dad is the most excited about all of this.  His life has been a hard one.  He seems like one of those people that has been searching for truths like this all of his life.  He is one of those people that God can touch really easily because he has been broken.  His wife seems more hesitant but I think she is excited too.  Their daughter also accepted.  It was a really beautiful lesson and I was super excited!  We also did a temple tour with them on Saturday and it went great!  I love showing people here that baptism is so not enough.  I love showing them that God has more, that God has a plan for us and he is going to help us be happy!  Not just the kind of happy where we always have His spirit with us, but the kind of happy that lasts forever with our families!  The more I study this plan, the more I see that this plan could have only been made by the careful hands of our perfect God and Master Creator.

Tuesday M_____ also accepted a baptism date!!!  for this Sunday!!!  That makes four!!!  M____ has changed so much!  I wish there was a way to describe him but there really just is not.  He is so great! He used to be so crazy... let´s be honest he is still a little crazy but now it is a humble and a teachable crazy.  But we really need your prayers because now he is trying to quit smoking.  That would be the only thing that stops him from having his baptism.  He is really excited.  So many miracles have happened in his life.  He told us from the beginning that he is missing the "umbilical cord" that he had before with God.  His daughter has come back to see him more often, and he has found work.  He is doing so well!  It is just the smoking part.  Please pray for him this week!  We need all of the prayers we can get.  That is pretty much all we can do to help him now.  We also took M_____ to the temple on Saturday.  It was a little overwhelming to him but I don´t really blame him the missionaries that gave the tour piled on like 12 compromisos I think he felt a little overwhelmed.  He is funny because he really wants to know about the garment, and things like that and we keep telling him that he does not have to worry about it.  So I am not too worried that he was confused about the temple.  We can worry about those covenants later with him.  He is awesome and I know he will make it to the temple one day!

The rest of the week was pretty calm but we were obviously pretty happy.  My other favorite visit was I_____.  He is the sweet man in the hospital.  We had an awesome idea and went with Y_____. Oh my word that women is adorable!  I really love her!  She inspires me to face the world head on! She inspires me to do things with a force of faith and hope.  She made a decision with her job but continues to run around like a chicken with her head cut off to provide for her family.  She is an inspiration.  She wants to visit people with us.  Which is funny because she is not a member so we were smart.  I_____ is still as full of faith and love as he was last week.  He is so sweet!  He has another operation today and they are taking off his other foot.  But he is not sad -- he told us.  He continues in faith all of the way to the end.  He told us he was completely at peace.  Afterwards we started singing hymns with him.  We sang one and then my comp asked him what was his favorite. He told us "How Great Thou Art!"  That song could not be more fitting.  He has more respect and love for this God than almost anyone that I have ever seen.  So we started singing and this time, instead of just listening he sang with us.  It was one of the most beautiful moments ever!  We were all bawling.  The spirit was so strong!  Y______ left completely convinced!  It was really beautiful!  She told us that it really marked her.  Especially his prayer at the end.  It was really beautiful!  The way he talks to God is the way we all should talk to God!

Saturday was obviously a bummer!  I lost my "mommy!"  I was pretty bummed to see her go.  I thought that I would have liked to have a change but I was wrong.  I really enjoyed working with her! It was fun!  We got along great and we worked hard!  We were such good friends that we were basically sisters.  So I was pretty bummed to see her go.  She left to La Reina ... which is not too bad. She is still really close.  We visited all of the people that she wanted to visit before she left and I cried in almost every one.  I can´t imagine leaving P____'s house forever. That would be terrible!  Which is why it just won´t happen.... I have to come back here.  I can´t leave them forever.  I am going to miss my companion!  She was really good to me!  I don´t think I really explained her well enough.  She is and forever will be one of my best friends!  She was so patient with the whole range of emotions I go through in one day.  She changed me.

Ready for your lesson this week on love?  I love loving!  It works!  I have been praying for it and I feel it!  This week I was able to look at all of these people as Hermana Maciel had to say goodbye and I realize how much I love them!  They are so important to me!  God is teaching me!  He is slowly teaching me how to devote everything to Him!  I love being His student!  My love for Him increases everyday!  I love the book that talks about how when God chose to love us He chose to leave Himself vulnerable.  I thought about that a lot recently.  It hurts to say goodbye!  I wondered if it was really worth it.  But I know it is!  God has this plan to make us happy and it includes a lot of ups and downs because it includes people not things.  It includes people who are not perfect, who get sick or who make bad choices.  But for some reason He has found that that kind of happiness is what makes it all worth it!  That is why He works so hard to seal us together in the temple!  He wants us to have those relationships that bring so much love forever!!  I love showing people that!  And then to make it even better, we get to fall in love with a God who IS perfect!  Who NEVER makes bad decisions and who loves us with a perfect infinite love!  Loving Him is the true joy that makes all of this worth it!  And the power of His son who has the power to make us holy can make us holy enough to receive that kind of love!  What a marvelous plan!  I agree with my friend I_____: "How Great Thou Art!"

I love you all!  Thanks for your prayers!  I need them!  I am a blessed missionary but turns out a weak one too.  It is a good thing God still loves me so much.  No matter how crazy I am;)  I love you all so much!  You are what make me happy!  There is nothing that brings me more joy than remembering that you are mine forever!  What a blessing!

Hermana Webb

'Well, I am putting on Mormon aren't I?'

This week was great!  It was also a bummer.  This is going to show how spoiled I am, but we had a couple of days this week where we did not have a single lesson in a house.  I know that is a normal occurrence in Thailand, but it is not in Chile.  Usually we get into at least on house.   But at the end of the week when I thought I had a right to complain, my companion and I tried to think of the miracles that happened this week and we found that we really can´t complain because the miracles continue.

Let´s start of with this weeks funnies shall we?  He, he, he ... we have good ones this week.  We were contacting in the street and contacted this nice old man who did not understand accents very well. First of all, he thought I told him that we were prisoners sharing a message about Christ.  (misioneras, prisioneras) Once we got him straight on that, I started telling him about Joseph Smith.  I told him that when he went to the grove of trees to pray he saw God.  But naturally, this cute old man got the word orar (to pray) mixed up with orniar, which means go pee. He repeated what he thought I said, and said 'when Joseph went to urinate, he saw God?!!'  I thought he said pray so I said: SI!.... It is a good thing my companion was there to stop me and say "NO, ORAR" (pray)!  It was classic.  So the whole week we had an awkward image in our heads and making us laugh of Joseph going pee instead of praying.  Then yesterday, we were teaching these two brothers who are menos activos.  We teach them during their work.  They are conserjes.  We did this huge lesson on priesthood this last week and we were trying to do a review.  We started by talking about prophets.  We were trying to help them remember that prophets have the priesthood.  So my comp said 'what is the thing that only men have?'  It was so great because both of the brothers just look at each other and started laughing.  Then I totally lost it!  I put my head down on a desk thing and basically laughed for the whole lesson.  My comp tried to make it better by saying 'no I mean what power?'  But that just confused him more and S______ said: "well they have the power to make women pregnant!"  That made it even worse.  But wait...there is more!   A member passed by and told them that they needed to keep listening to us because the church was a fountain of beautiful really awesome women (then pointed at us).... I wanted to kill this member.  I tried to smooth it over by telling them that he said that because we believe families can be together forever and so we have a lot of hope in who we marry.  Then Hermana Maciel finished off her very blonde moment with looking at S_____ and said 'don´t you want a family forever?' It totally sounded like she was asking if he wanted a family forever with her! It was terrible!  But very funny!  We are so awkward!

First, our miracle was Y______! I love her so much!  She is still progressing really well.  She is trying to find a different job so she can go to church and spend at least a little time with her son. S he is so cute but I feel impatient.  I keep thinking that she should have found a job by now but she has not.  I told her about my impatient-ness and she laughed and said 'no, this is good.  I obviously have something more to learn.  It is all about progression right?'  I wanted to take off my name tag and pass it to her.  This is the women who when we first met her was not sure if she believed in God or not.  Now we continue to pray.  But, she did find a better job.  She is not working for the community and so she gets paid more and she does not have to work as much.  It also means that she can be with her son more.  We are still missing Sunday unfortunately.  I am trying to be more patient now because of her example. 

We went to visit this old man in the hospital this week.  It was homework from the bishop.  He had heard of this man that is a member that has been in the hospital for a long time and his family cannot come see him because they live in the south and work all week.  So we went to go see what was up. We found this cute little man who was very skinny, blind and with out both feet in this big dark hospital room.  They recently amputated his feet and he lost his site a long time ago. T o make things worse, he is far from his family and he recently found out that his daughter died of cancer.  If someone were to just look at that picture of his life, it would look so dark and with out hope. But that was this opposite of this cute little man!  He was absolutely full of love and hope for God.  He told us his story.  He told us how he found the church and how he served God and his family for his whole life.  He told us about his children and his grandchildren.  Then he looked at us and with eyes full of a deep love and obvious pain and said but, "I am happy!"  It really hit me because this man was not fake about it.  He knew his life was hard.  He knew that he had to fight all of his life and that things were not looking up, and yet he had an absolute faith in his Savior.  Mom sent me an article about hope that I really liked!  It says that hope is like a woman with her eyes wet with fresh tears but looking steadfastly ahead for the light that she knows is there. (I am quoting the article, Sara, I am not being corny!)   I really liked that because I could see it in this man.  It was a really sweet experience! My comp is worried he is kind of there to die.  I am going to be really bummed if that is what happens!  I have kind of fallen in love with the man.  

P_____´s family are still doing great!  They are so cute!  E_____ has this weird phobia of praying out loud.  He refuses to do it with anyone!  But he did it with his twins this week!  P_____ caught him teaching them how to pray!!  Sometimes I want to calm those crazy kids down because they can make it so hard for them to progress, but then other times, they are totally the key to that progress! Thank you P_____ and R______! 

M_______ also continues to progress! He wants to get baptized but he keeps telling us that he can´t because he is not ready for the covenants in the temple because he does not know what they are. We keep trying to tell him that getting baptized does not mean that he has to go to the temple, but he is not getting it.   He is a very funny man!  I wish I could explain him to you guys.  He is just one you have to meet... But he goes to church every week and we are visiting him twice a week now so he is really progressing.  When I asked him if we could visit him again on Saturday he said:  'Well, I am putting on Mormon aren't I?'  'I need to see you guys more often!'  He also asked me that if he gets baptized if he has to cry during his testimony.  He is classic. 

It was a great week!  I love being here!  I laugh, I get frustrated, I cry, I get super excited, and I find real progression!  I have been praying for a real love and I am finding it!  It grows every day!  God is so good at what He does!  He has a better plan!  It is so much better than just washing us clean!  With the covenants we have made it is more than just not sinning!  God has a plan to make us holy!  He has a plan to make us want only good and seek after it!  This plan is not to bug us or to give us limits, but it is to help us soar!  He really is the perfect teacher.  And, if we use all of the little things he has sent us He will change us!  I thought a lot about the sacrament this week.  We get it every week.  It is made to sanctify us.  Baptism cleansed us but now we have to change!  Thanks for everything family! I love you all so much! 

Thanks for the fun news of my nephew! I am so excited to come home to two! I love him already! 

Hermana Webb

A really beautiful step getting there . . .

How are you all!?  I am discovering that it is kind of a bummer that I cannot talk to you guys as much as I would like. I want to tell you all how very much I love you but I can´t do it as much as I would like. So please take all of the !!!!!!!!!! as so much excitement that my love that I am sending over email lasts for days;).  That way you should all feel love from Carlie/Hermana Webb once or twice a day! I love you all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We had a cute moment this week! People think we are so great! Which is awesome but also a lot of responsibility!  We are always called angels and we get really beautiful moments when we think that we are not making an impact and then suddenly we realize how much of an impact we are making.  It happened this week with a sweet manos activo that we have been visiting.  She is adorable.  She is a little grandma who does not want to go back to church.  She always seemed kind of frustrated when we would come over and so I did not think we were doing anything.  We went over this week and she let us in and told us that she was heading out to work for two months in a orphanage.  She is this little grandma that totally does not have the physical strength to do it but is going to do it anyway because she wants to show love to these girls who never get it.  She was an orphan herself and so she knows the story well!  We were pretty bummed and told her that it could mean that this will be the last time that we get to be together.  We asked her who she would like to say the opening prayer and she said she would.  She started to cry as she thanked God for the angels that he had sent to her house.  It was really sweet.  We did not think we were doing anything for her.  She is the angel!  She was raised in many different homes, and never had real parents to love.  She lost her husband when she was super young and has suffered through much more!  Yet, she has stayed tender and loving!  God is good to us!  The words to that song continue to play in my head: "the only thing that's good in me is Jesus."  It is so true!

This week was another really great week.  The work continues to progress here in Chile.  It is slow but we are pushing;).  Our most exciting bits of news are P____ and E_____. I love them so much!!! Are you surprised?  We finally found a night when we got to go do a temple tour.  That is one of the perks of this mission; the temple is in our mission so we get to do temple tours.  They loved it!!  We asked them to not bring their kids so it ended up being this really sweet night out and they got to go just the two of them.  We told them we would meet them where the buses pick us up at 8:00 and by ten to, they had called us like three times worried they had gotten the time wrong.  I am going to send a picture of them but they were so fun!  They were dressed very fancy.  We went with them and another family in our ward.  E_____ is so cute! He does not talk very much but when he does, it is usually something beautiful.  He is struggling a lot but he continues to push forward.  We talked about who the Savior is for each of us and he just said "my brother!" Then when we talked about baptism, I asked him how he felt watching his daughters get baptized and he got emotional and told us that he cried during both.  P_____ has this dream of E_____ getting baptized first and then baptizing her.  He really liked that idea!  P____ is as cute as she can be!  She knew the answers to all of the questions and was holding her husbands hand the entire time!  They were this perfect couple! Then we went to the temple!  We told them that their family can be together forever!!  We told them that one day they can all enter in their white clothes and look at the mirrors and see their family forever and ever!  It was so beautiful!  It is awesome now because they know their goal!  It is not just baptism!   Baptism is awesome but the temple is our goal!  Families forever is where we want to be and baptism is just a really beautiful step getting there! 

The other family that I am really excited about is the familia B_____! They are so great! They are progressing really beautifully!  We went to thier house last night with the Bishop.  It was the first time we had ever left with him and he actually did a really good job.  He admits that it is hard for him to share the gospel which is funny because his wife is totally like grandpa and runs around with all of her little pass along cards.  It was a really beautiful lesson about the plan of salvation. At the end, we challanged them to be baptized!  And they accepted!!  They don´t have a date yet, because we did not feel like that was a very good idea but we are going to try to set a date next week!  I love teaching families!  I love that they have the possiblity of being together forever!! I  love testifying of that!  In fact, I think there are people that are tired of hearing about it but that is just too bad!  Because the chance of having a family forever is just to beautiful to pass up! 

That is it for this week.  I love you all so much as always!!  I have learened a lot in my scriptures from the end of Ether.  It is a sad ending to a civilization and I was thinking a lot about how Satan got them there.  Elder Holland used the quote "a journey of 1000 miles begins with the first step" and said that it can be used the other way around too.  satan used small and simple things to make the people terrible beasts ready to kill even children.  I am not saying that satan is going to make us killing machines if we ever feel prideful but what I am saying is I don´t think these people ever wanted to become what they had become. satan can lead us in directions that we never wanted to go!  God wants to lead us to where we can have the deepest desires of our hearts.  satan wants to fill us with so much anger, pride, or lust that we are blinded and cannot even really see what is right in front of us for what it really is.  While God wants to lift us higher and not just help us see here and now for what it is but He wants us to see the eternal perspective.  satan wants us to focus so much on ourselves that we lose the joy of what life can bring when we lose even the most basic human emotions that make us happy.  God wants to fill us with, not just love, but His love, a pure love, that can conquer any weakness or sin, ... it is so strong that with the binds of His love even death itself loses its sting.  satan does not care how we get there just as long as we end up miserable.  God has carefully created a personal path for each of us that leads through His only begotten sacrificed Son so we can get back to His loving arms.  Mom always says that for satan we are just a number, but God knows everything! He knows our names and how many hairs are on our head!  So the lesson is don´t let satan change things to the way he wants us to see them.  It ends up hurting.  God does not want us to hurt without purpose.  I love being a part of this church!  I love having the hope that God will do everything He promised me and preserve me from that awful monster of Hell .... how Nephi put it.  I am sorry to focus on satan.  I am not ... I am I am just grateful that my God is so good!  He will save us no matter how terrible things look!  Just like President Eyring said in the last conference, 'We can be happy in these crazy times -- we just have to keep loving God and our families!' That is not too hard for me to do!!!  You guys make me happy!  Thanks for everything!  Share the gospel with someone this week! The world needs it!

Hermana Webb

It is our turn to share it!

How are you all?  I am so great!  Life here in Apoquindo is pretty calm.  This week was great!  We have been really blessed with great investigators.

First Y_____.  I love her so much!  It does not matter if I feel tired and grumpy ... she turns my world around and helps reminds me that I am so blessed that I have been given so much that I should just be counting all of my blessings.  She has so much faith!  She is so happy and makes me so happy!  After the lesson, Y____ said a prayer on our knees.  It was so beautiful!  She is way too good to us!  I love her so much!  She just.... I don´t know, we just connect! She gets to me and makes me feel happy and have more energy and I love it!  She thanked God for the angels He had sent to her house and she told God she wanted to follow Him but needed a way to do it.  She is going to have to exercise a lot of faith but we are going to be right there with her!  I love her!

On New Years we ate dinner super late at a members house.  They are an awesome family!  That night we almost watched fire works.  We have a balcony and so we were outside to see them but all we could see were the colors of the fire works.  That is okay we really had fun with the poppers mom sent. 

M_____ is doing super well!  He makes me so happy!  He gave us a present this week and he had carefully taped flowers to every part of the present. He is so great! He finally understands why prophets are important.  He connected the priesthood with prophets this week and it was like a light bulb!  The other good news is he started believing in Satan this week.  We are making progress! We still have to help him understand that Jesus never sinned and we are resurrected, not reincarnated.  But I am serious - he has made a TON of progress. He makes me happy! 

The family B______ is doing really well too!  This week's lesson was awesome! They loved church last week and went again yesterday.  They are super sweet and were talking all about the different talks that they liked during sacrament meeting.  (Which were about Jesus!  - I was so proud!)  The lesson continued to go super well. I really had ganas to jump up and do a small dance on the ceiling.  I am sure my face looks so funny because I don´t hide emotion very well, but I was so excited.  We have some additional challenges that I soon discovered, but we'll work them through.

 

People always told me before the mission that I would feel the highest of highs to the lowest of lows.  I never believed them.... now I do.  It is crazy how many emotions I go through in one day.  That is the other difference.  I don´t usually have just good days or just bad days they are all mixed in together.

P____ and her family are doing great!  I love them so much!  Our "lessons" with them now are just us sitting and listening to their family night.  They each take turns giving it.  Last night V____ gave this beautiful lesson on repentance.  Where else could I have experiences like this!!?  I am so lucky!  I love this family so much!

I think that is about it!  I had an awesome conversation with my roommate about none other than love!  It was so beautiful!  I love love!  It makes everything work! Hermana R_____ said that every thing that she had intolerance for changed because God sent people that she began to develop love for.  It was so cool!  She said one of them was Chile!  She did not like people from Chile and this is the last place she wanted to go.  But now that she is here and knows the people she is in love.  It is the motivation for everything!  Everyone always asked how the Atonement can change our hearts, ... I believe it is love!  It is the only thing powerful enough because it is the only thing that can last forever.  Like dad said: because God is the source of it, it is also really powerful!  I am learning more about it every day!  Every thing God does is to help us learn and progress.  He wants us to be free and to love people the way we want to.  satan on the other hand does not.  he only wants to bind us!  It is so sad to watch people let him do it.  he just wants us miserable.  But, we don´t have to fear because God will always win, through the Atonement of His son (The most beautiful act of love that there is!) And, thanks to His merciful Atonement we can have access to that type of love and charity that lasts forever.  The kind that Moroni explains that is patient and kind and never compares and just wants what is good for others.  Not for attention but because of love ... no mas.  I love tasting that love!  As Lehi said, it really is the sweetest there is! 

I love you all so much!  I hope you know how absolutely happy you all make me!  I am so blessed with my family!  Do something with or for the missionaries this week!  The prophets are pretty serious about hastening this work!  Now is the time!  I am so excited!  God wants us to share the love and hope we feel!  We have been blessed enough to have it for so long that it is our turn to share it!  I love you all! 

Hermana Webb. 

"I know THIS is eternal!!"

How are you all!?  I loved seeing you guys so much!  You guys are so cute!  You should have seen me before I talked with you guys and after.  I just cried and cried.  It was pretty funny.  My companion learned the word "breathe" in English pretty quick because she kept wanting to say it to me.  (she is like you mom!)  Don´t worry, it was a happy cry.  And I testified of families a lot that night.  It was pretty funny because I just got really frustrated.  I told my companion that it gets me so angry because I have something so beautiful and so wonderful!  I want everyone to have it because there is NOTHING else that makes me SO happy!!  But people are not listening to me!  I kept wanting to say: "Don´t you see what I am trying to give to you!?  Don´t you understand how happy you could be!? Look at what you could have for forever!! Please take it!!"  In fact I think I did say it to R_____ family that night.

So you already know about half of my week but I will tell you about the other half now!  We spent the most important part of Christmas with Paola and her family.  I love them so much!  They already invited us to New Year's but we feel bad that we continue to eat her food so we are going to go to a members house instead.  But I had a great time!  Dad said in his letter that it is like these people that I meet become so much a part of my life that I can´t imagine not knowing them.  He is so right. Especially with them. They make me so happy!  The twins, Vania, and Josefa, Paola and the parents are just so great!!  They are all progressing so much and it makes me so happy! 

So Thursday we went to visit Y_____.  (Who is so cute!!)  She had the Christmas card we made for her on the top of her tree.  I made 300 cookies for Christmas this year and she was one of the ones we gave the cookies to.  She told us she loved our gift so much that she wanted to give us one.  She made us these super super beautiful scarfs that I love!!  She is so adorable.  It frustrates me to try and explain her because she is one of those people that you can´t really put words too.  "Adorable" just does not cut it.  She is just Y______!  We are still stuck where we are with her.  She loves it when we come over but she literally has NO time.  She is sweet as can be and would totally be baptized now but she has to work. 

So the funny story about her is she was super excited to tell us this story.  She kept starting the story and then getting distracted.  I knew what story she was about to tell and I was doing my best to keep her distracted.  She was going to tell us about an envelope.  I don´t know if I told you guys but we went with president and his wife to drop off a couple of envelopes to families that really needed it. We chose her family as one of those families becuase she is in so much trouble with all of the bank stuff.  We have made this goal to have more lessons with members this week and it was a bad idea! We came with a family who is also in need and also needed an envelope.  So when Y______ started telling the story I was super worried.  She told us that she got home late and tired one night and wanted to sleep but her son told her there was a sobre on her bed waiting for her.  She told us that she did not have the ganas to open it but she did anyway and found PLATA. "PLATA, chicas plata!!" Hermana G____ (the member with us) looked at her with wide eyes and said the same thing happened to me and I have the sobre.  As you can imagine, Hermana Maciel and I were, at this point, sweating bullets, and had our hearts in our mouths.  I did not know what to say. Hermana G_____ pulled out the envelope while Yesica went to go get hers.  It was obvious that the same person did the good deed and the only connection between the two women were these two idiot missionaries scared out of our pants.  They did not do anymore investigating so they don´t know who did it, but I think they do ... they just did not want to say if we did not say anything.  Ha ha ha!! it was a good story anyway.  I love them so much!  I hope I will be friends with Y______ for forever! 

Friday we had divisions so I had to do a lot.  I got to work with this cute girl who got here a week ago.  She is adorable but does not speak Spanish.  We went to the two hardest lessons that we have in the week.  The first is with the preachers son.  He is so great!  I really love being in his house.  I don´t know how this guy is so smart with such a limited book and such a limited way of interpreting it.  But he understands a lot of things really well.  It got kind of gross when the cute member we were with started Bible bashing.  He started saying we have missionaries that preach in the street every day and where are your missionaries!? (which by the way Evangélicos totally have missionaries!) I had to stop him and correct him and tell him that they do in fact have missionaries and that we know that all churches are great.  I ended up bearing a really intense testimony about families and the Book of Mormon!  I told him that he could throw lots of scriptures at me and I probably would not have the answer but I told him that I know that the Book of Mormon was true because I had read and prayed about it.  Then I happened to find this picture that mom had sent me of our family and one of Lauren (he knows her story) and I told him "I know THIS is eternal!!" He got really quiet and said 'how do you know?'  I know he wants a family forever!  I know he likes that idea!  I know he loves them so much!  I told him that I still feel the love of my sweet little sister and it is the same as when she was alive, so 'I know that relationship has NOT died!'  It was so cool!  I felt the spirit so strong.  He told me basically that he wants it to be true, but because the Bible does not say anything about it, he cannot believe.  It was so sad!  And then our cute member changed the subject to why the stake president is cool.... Oh how I love members.... sometimes.  The next day we had M_____.  He is on the other side of the spectrum.  I_______ uses his head way too much and M______ uses his heart way too much.  It is really funny because we have divisions every week and we always have these two people and at the end of the day the Hermana I am with always looks at me and says ... your sector is hard!!  It really is not but we do have crazy lessons with these two.  M______ is so great but he does not care what it says in the Bible he just believes what he feels in his heart.  So we are still stuck trying to help him understand that we will be resurrected and that Jesus was not a sinner.  That was the new discovery.  He told me that Jesus had to have been a sinner because if not he would not be able to relate with us.  It turned out to be really cool because I went to one of the best scriptures I know about the Atonement in Alma 7.  I read 11 and 12 with him and he said that is fine, but I still think he sinned.  The Spirit told me to read a little more so I looked down and in 13 it explains perfectly.  It says first that M_____ was right, up until that point the Savior really could not relate with us because it is one of the only things that the Spirit does not know.  But then it says that our perfect Savior took upon him the sins of the world.  I got to bear this testimony of how I know that the Atonement was that much prettier because not only did he sacrifice for my sins, he as a sinless man paid for my sins so he could relate with me perfectly.  He does know what it is like to be a sinner even though he NEVER sinned!  That is pretty ironic.  I love my Savior!  He lives!  And I know that he paid the ultimate price for me even though he was the last one to deserve it!  I am finally starting to understand what it means to use His atonement every day!  I need Him to teach me, to strengthen me, to cleanse me, and to forgive me.  You guys should read the talk by a 70 in general conference.  I don´t remember his name but it is called "Will you also be made whole?"  It is in the second session on Saturday.  It is a beautiful talk about how we need His atonement for every part of our lives.  I love this new idea.  That with this infinite act of love, we have the power to fill our lives with love too.   Enough love to completely change our hearts and only want good.  (Mosiah 5 and Mornoni 7)  I think that is really all God´s power is.  Priesthood power has the exact same trates as charity.   It says that the Atonement was a great act of love!  God´s love is so pure and so infinite that he has the power to use that love to make us holy!  He can use that power to save us from satan.  That is why satan cannot be stronger, because his power is hate and we all know that love is always stronger than hate.  If you don´t believe me you can watch whichever Disney movie you choose!!  ;)

The girl I did divisions with the whole time kept asking me when she was going to know Spanish like me. I did not know I knew Spanish, so that was fun.  It turns out I learned a lot without really noticing it.

Saturday we went to visit that family that I told you about last week.  They are so great!  They are doing great!  The dad thanked us right off for the visits because their home is already changing.  He told us that they could feel more peace in their home that week!  Yes!!  They also went to church on Sunday!!  That is HUGE!  People never go to church that fast.  We found them on freaking Wednesday and a week and a half later they were at church.  We have another appointment with them this week so I am super excited. 

Sunday was rough!  I miss Lauren!  I love her so much!  I read all of the book that Sara sent me and it made me really happy!  I hate that she had to leave us and four years is a long time!  I cried a lot.  I made a goal though.  Lauren hated contention.  She would run away as fast as the Spirit would if we let it enter the room.  So I made the goal to stop letting contention enter my life.  I don´t want to feel angry.  Lauren did not like contention because it made it harder to love.  She was so good at loving that contention just did not make sense.  It did not matter if she did not get what she wanted she wanted to love people.  She knew how much better it was.  Anyway ... so that is my goal.  It started before New Years, so it is not my New Years resolution;).  I love you all!  You are all an example and a power in my life!  We have a family with power because we know how to love!  We are good at it! Even if it has to be on different parts of the world and even different parts of the veil!  And, because God loves us enough we are going to be whole again one day!  Because His love is more powerful than death!  I am so grateful for my Savior who made that possible for me!  He lives!  He is real!  And His love can save us! 

Love you all! 

Hermana Webb.

Feliz Navidad!

¿Como Están?

Life is so great here in Apoquindo.  We had a week absolutely full of miracles and I am so grateful for everyone!  I love being a part of the work of God!  It is so tricky because we have to choose to accept it ... but God has a really good way of showing us what will make us truly happy! 

Tuesday- We always visit V___ and J____.  J____, as always, is doing really well.  She continues to have health problems, but never testimony problems.  She loves to pray and especially sing.  I love her so much.  V_____ on the other hand was not progressing as much. I went to their house scared. You guys remember what has been going on the past couple of weeks.  She was not sure she wanted to continue with this whole church thing.  She was pretty sure that God did not even exist.  I told her the last week that I would pray with all of my heart.  And I did!  I made a deal with God.  I have been struggling with the idea of "praying with faith" lately so I told Him I would be a really good pray-er if he would just help Vania get her testimony back! :-)  She did!  She told us that she has been praying pretty hard too, and one day she was lost in the hospital and she told God: "if you are really there, and I am really in the right church please help me find my way."  (I know God does not always answer prayers like this) And, she found her way!!  She was so happy on Tuesday!  I left the house bawling!! I was so happy!  That little girl is like my little sister, so when she was questioning her testimony I about died.  It was so beautiful to see how God answered her prayers.  I like it because I have a lot of really beautiful experiences of when God answers my prayers, but it was really sweet to be involved in the story of the answer to prayers for someone else.  God helped me pray harder in faith.  And, V____ is happy!!!  I could not be happier! 

Wednesday- This day started out tough.  At lunch with president we started talking about cancer and how terrible chemotherapy is.  I am definitely feeling pretty tender about her recently.  I miss her.  It really hurt to think about chemo again.  I hate that stuff and I hate that Lauren had to suffer through it. I was crying pretty hard but did a really good job at hiding it except when president asked me to give the closing prayer.  I have this terrible habit of crying at his house.  IT was not that terrible I just really missed her and you guys and had serious ganas to testify of families!  Don´t worry, God knew! That night no one wanted to talk to us!  I was done!  I wanted to go home and cry myself to sleep.  I could not seem to get some really nasty images out of my head from the last days of Lauren´s life. We were getting rejected by everyone!  It was like 8:45 and we had a appointment at 9 ... I felt like we should go to one more house where they are never there.  It is the house of this lady that I contacted like 4 months ago and was not interested at all.  But we went anyway, because it felt like something better than contacting someone on the street.  We rang the door bell and no one was home.  But a man drove up and asked if someone had come out.  We told him no.  It was the husband of this lady we had talked to.  He was really interested!  He wanted us to come inside but he is a man and we can´t go in the house if there is only a man. The wife walked up while we were talking and they invited us in. We sat down and started talking about the first points of the gospel. Then a little randomly, God whispered, "Okay Carlie, I need you to testify of eternal families."  God is so good to me!  I got to tell them with all of my crazy passion that I know that families are forever! That with the Gospel we can have stronger family relationships!  The dad was pretty happy after I was done.  He looked at me and said 'that is something we need!'  Then the image in my head was not of Lauren suffering in a hospital bed, the image changed into my family triumphant pure, strong, and eternal!  The Atonement restores everything!!  We had another appointment with them on Saturday and they were there waiting!!  The mom and the daughter had read and the husband did not have time.  But I am so excited because the second lesson is a good sign!  I am so happy! 

Thursday- Remember forever ago the reference of the Peruvian named John with a black fence?  We found a different person instead.  It is a house of Peruvians.  Every time we go there someone else leaves the house.  One of the times we went we taught this kid that seemed drunk and not very excited.  We continued going back to this house and we continued finding this kid. His name is Aldo. He recently fell while doing construction and broke his shoulder (or some bone around there). His animo was pretty low and seemed more excited to listen to us.  This Thursday we went to his house to give him a blessing for health. The elders and a member from our ward came to give the blessing and it was awesome!  The spirit was so strong!!!  After the elders asked how he felt and he just smiled and said 'I don´t really know how to explain how I feel.'  I felt really impressed to invite him to get baptized, and he accepted!!  It was pretty exciting!  He told us he felt really good!  He kept saying I don´t know how to explain it I just feel really good! 

Friday- We went to see MC.  I love her so much!  She is a sweet heart!  Hermana Maciel has been visiting her for 9 months now every week and she has never said a single prayer.  My companion told me that that was one of her goals before she left this sector.  When we got to her house I felt very impressed to try to include her grandchildren who usually don´t want to listen.  They are 7,11,11, and 20.  They were all sitting in the same room and I kind of made them join by joking around.  We talked about the gift that we can give to Jesus for his birthday.  They all had sweet answers.  It was kind of a joke of a lesson and I felt bad for making them join.  I tried to end it with a prayer and none of the grandchildren wanted to say it.  Hermana Maciel felt impressed to asked M____.  I had given up hope on her praying but it worked ... she prayed!!!!  MC prayed with us!!!!!!  I was so happy! Hermana Maciel was happier!  She cried for like twenty min. and had an emotional hang over and everything!!  It was pretty funny she kept looking at me with all of her tears in her eyes saying 'this is all your fault!!' He he he he!! my evil plan of making all of the world an emotional wreck is totally working!  :-)  We were pretty excited!

Saturday- We finally got E____ to leave her house and go to an actividad at the church.  She was pretty sick but she was still really determined to go. It was pretty fun. It was an activity for the primary.  We went with her and her two girls.  I also played the violin!  My violin playing skills are getting popular around here.  Which is funny because they are pretty lacking in supplies right now but it was exciting to play again. 

That was our week of miracles!  We are so blessed!  It ended with a bummer.  P___ and her family moved.  I have not written about them because they are a member family that live in the sector of the hermanas.  But they are really amazing!  I love them!  All four of the Hermanas in my apartment had a nice cry.  It was hard to see them go.  This ward really needed them.  They will be great where they are headed though. 

That was my week! Can you see that God loves me and really loves these people that He is letting me serve!?  He is so good at this game!  I love God so much!  God lives!  He loves us!  He is doing so much more than moving mountains here in Chile ... He is changing our lives for eternity!  I am so grateful that he is changing my heart!  He is so good to me!  I love you all!  Thanks for being a part of my family! Talk to you in 2 days!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Love Hermana Webb

I am still in Apoquindo with Hermana Maciel!!!!!

This has been a very exciting week that ended up being less intense than we thought it was going to be.  Hermana Maciel and I are together again!!!  I know it is crazy!  We were both prepared to be transferred, but we are both happy and I am just really excited to have six more weeks with my favorite companion, and celebrate Navidad with someone I am already really comfortable with.

This week was really similar to all of the other weeks with a lot of ups and downs.  First down: sweet V____.   AHHHHHHHH!!!!!  I refuse to have children  -- it hurts too much!!  Oh my word, I hate that she feels like she has lost her faith.  And what makes it worse is she is not really trying to find it again.  She does not really want to and so she is not going to find it.  She told us that she is content where she is.  I don´t think it is because she is lazy, I think it might just be that she is afraid to find out that it IS true.  I find it is worth the risk.  We are going to keep working with her and her family, who are still doing great, but I think are pretty tired.  It is good that the girls are in vacations now hopefully the family can have some time to rest together. 

We had zone conference this week.  It was intense.  President gave this really beautiful talk about the Savior.  We talked in detail about the Atonement, and how we should use it to teach our investigators. We tried to talk about it a lot more often this week and it worked well.  It is pretty spectacular that we have access to that Atonement that is infinite!  It does not matter what we have done, what sin we have committed, what challenge we are going through, what temptations easily overcomes us, what weakness constantly haunts us, or what trial we are facing WE KNOW IN WHOM WE HAVE TRUSTED!!!  He has the power!  No one is excluded in that group! Sometimes it feels too good to be true, and so I freak out a little but turns out His Atonement can cover my freaking-out-ness too!!!

So, Y_____ is doing really well!  She is such a sweetheart.  I love her so much!  She is doing really well spiritually, but not too well financially.  She lost a good job which cost her her savings and now has taken a job doing something with parking and is now working EVERY DAY for 18 hours!!!  The only day she has "off" are Sundays when she only has to work 9 hours.  She is working more than us!!!  We only work like 16 hours a day and our day off we only have to work 5!  You know your schedule is RIDICULOUS when you are working more than the missionaries! And, we get a lot of support.  We get letters from home, lunch with members, and of course the most important is a lot of strength from God Himself! ... because we are doing His work.  Pray for her please!   We challenged her to get baptized and she accepted very happily!  We are really excited for her!  She begs us for homework even though she does not have time to read and she reads every time!  I love her!  We don´t get to see her very much but when we do it is a delight!  I don´t know when she is going to get baptized (she can´t go to church so we are kind of stuck) but she is awesome. 

We continue to have really beautiful lessons with M C____.  I can´t believe she still has not gone to church!  She is so sweet!  She has a heart of gold!  It is so hard for her to find the faith that she feels like she has lost.  I don´t think she has lost it; I think she just has to find it in herself again.  She is the one who lost her son and her husband cheated on her and left her all in the same year.  I love her so much!  She told us that she was able to just straight up forgive her ex-husband.  She taught me a lot about how we should just love people .... that being mad at someone is actually so much harder than just loving them. 

We also challenged Manuel to get baptized and he accepted!  His only real problem is he believes truth is just what you feel is right.  He is half right but he does not trust the scriptures.  I feel like the Tree of Life vision is right on because I feel like I am on the path using the scriptures and words of the prophets to feel God´s love.  He can see that I am happy, and it is like he is in the field, calling to me: 'How do you have such a firm path to the tree?'  I keep repeating over and over ... I am using this bar of iron (the scriptures) and he keeps saying ... 'that is not it!' 'what are you doing?'   He told us he knows this church must have something good with how many signs he has experienced in his life but he just wants more time to learn. 

So, now for my sermon on Love :-) .... Sorry I did not realize it was always about love, but dad is right ... I love loving people so much!  I really think that was the joy God was talking about when He told us we can have a deeper joy.  When we love, look for, and enjoy the good; it makes it so I don´t have to feel angry, I don´t have to wonder if God is real.  I just get to feel love all of the time!  I am so obviously not perfect at this but I love learning about it.  This week is about hope and love.  There is a scripture in Romans 5:3-5 that says that we are grateful for trials, because they bring patience, and we are grateful for patience, because it brings experience, and we are grateful for experience because it brings hope (like the article you sent me mom!) and "hope maketh us not ashamed because the love of God shedeth itself abroad on the children of men."  I love that!  I can have confidence in my hope because I cannot deny his love!  I know it is real, so I can go out every day UNASHAMED to share His gospel, because I feel His love.  What a beautiful idea!  God lives and loves us!  I know it!  I hope you all have a great week and I can´t wait to talk to you all super soon!

Anyway, I love you all!  

Love, Hermana Webb

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