4 months down, 14 to go!!!! - September 14, 2015

Hello family! 

I hope y'all are doing good! My week was such a good week! We had many great things happen this week that I am so excited to tell you all about! Yesterday marked 4 months gone! Wow time is flying! 14 more months and I will be home! Crazy!! 

I will start by telling you my favorite story of the week! It is about our neighbors We have been working Bill and Gene. So, as you remember Bill has dementia and things are slowly getting worse and worse for him. He ended up in the hospital on Tuesday and has not made it out since. Gene on the other hand is doing good. She is just trying to hang in there. She had a test on Saturday to get certified for medical coding. We decided that on Tuesday after we found out that Bill was in the hospital we needed to heart attack their door. So we wrote a whole bunch of cute little sayings on hearts and put them all over their door. Ok skip to Sunday, we just had this feeling we needed to check up on Bill and Gene so before church we text them to see how they are doing. Gene then tells us that Bill had a stroke that morning.. Heart breaking... We decided that we would go and visit them after church. We get to the hospital and we got to meet Bill's daughter Barbara who was there. It was great.  We told her all about the Book of Mormon and invited her to read it! We then were able to have an awesome powerful lesson where we talked about the spirit and read straight from the Book of Mormon with Bill, Gene, and Barbara. It was awesome!! Finally we sang some hymns for Bill. It was the sweetest thing ever! The spirit was so so strong and it brought tears to his eyes and he cried the whole time we sang! Well I'm like the biggest baby ever so of course seeing this 88 year old sick man being touched by our singing made me start tearing up as well! Haha after our lesson Gene thanked us for heart attacking their door! She told us how she had just had such a bad day finding everything out about Bill, she was tired from working all day and being at the hospital most the night and then she came home to find our heart attack! She loved it so much she brought our "get well" heart to Bill so he could have it with him and she took the one that said "Good luck on your test, Gene" with her to her test on Saturday. We also gave her a Choose the Right pencil that she brought to take her test with! Haha it was seriously the sweetest thing! We have been praying all week for Gene to be able to find a way to come to church because it is just so hard with Bill having dementia and he doesn't want religion in his life but he is ok with Gene learning from us. Well a miracle took place when we visited him on Sunday. After we sang he asked if we sing in church because he would come to church if he could hear us sing! Well we promised him once he was out of the hospital we would sing in church so he could attend! Crazy! Our prayers were answered! Bill and Gene are going to come to church soon!! :) 

One thing I have learned this week that really hit home to me is on service! We have had multiple experiences this week similar to our heart attacking Bill and Gene's door. Something so simple to us.. It always amazes me how the smallest act of service or just being there for someone when they are going through a hard time and need to talk can mean the world to them! This is one of my favorite parts about being a missionary. Just serving others and seeing the joy and happiness it can bring into their lives! It is the best! 

We have been working really hard on inviting people to baptism this past week. As I told you in my last email our investigators Lenor and her brother Nate want to be baptized and we were able to invite a few more of our investigators this week to baptism. We have been working with the Mall family who is a part member family. The mother Katrina is a member but her two children Makayla and Tyler are not. We had an awesome lesson with them on the plan of salvation and at the end Tyler expressed how he wanted to be baptized! We were able to invite him and Makayla to baptism and plan to set a baptism date with them this week! So exciting! We are also planning to set one with Gene! Pretty soon all of Mandarin will want to be baptized! Haha 

So this week we had our mission conference and we had Elder Dube from the seventy come! It was awesome! We did have a funny moment about him coming. So we had our apartment checks this week to make sure they are clean and nice. Well the mission office asked us if Elder Dube could come to check our apartment!! Sister Sorensen and I were stressing like crazy! Haha a general authority would be coming into our apartment!! Well, I know y'all are thinking about how messy I am and how this is probably the worst idea ever! Haha I would just like to say that I never have clothes lying around anymore and the second I am done praying in the morning I make my bed! Not to mention the second I am done eating something I wash my dishes! Ok, mom I know you probably just had a heart attack! Haha  but anyways, back to my story. On Monday we stressed about cleaning our apartment and we even cleaned it on Tuesday morning before the apartment checks. We were down on our hands and knees cleaning everything we could think of! We scrubbed all the base boards and we wiped out all the window seals, we even cleaned the fridge! Well finally we get a knock at our door and we are in such a panic because that means they are here to check the apartment. Well, we open the door and sadly it was just the senior couple to inspect our apartment.. Elder Dube could not make it.. We seriously did all of that cleaning for nothing! Haha oh well, according to the senior couple our apartment was by far the cleanest one in the mission! They told me my mother would be proud! Haha 

On Friday was our mission conference. It was amazing! We heard from President and Sister Craig. They each gave excellent trainings. President talked about being a good missionary verse becoming a true disciple of Jesus Christ! It gave me a great perspective on who I want to continue becoming on my mission and how I can accomplish becoming a true disciple of Christ. Sister Craig talked to us about the spirit. She was shocked by how many of the missionaries said that they can't recognize the spirit in their lives. As she was talking I realized why sometimes we have a hard time recognizing the spirit in our lives. When we are keeping the commandments and doing what is right and are honoring our baptismal covenants we are promised that the spirit will always be with us. We are just getting use to always having it with us that we are mistaking it for feeling like we can't feel its presence. Sister Craig promised us that if we are always keeping our baptismal covenants and doing what is right we never have to fear that the Spirit won't be with us. We just need to open our hearts and minds and follow those promptings we are getting. 

We then got to hear from Sister Dube. She gave a wonderful training. She talked about how to become a successful missionary. She told us that just as our missionary purpose states we are successful when we invite! She then said a few things that really stood out to me. She talked about how if we truly know the scriptures we will not have to fear of not knowing what to say to someone. We will always be able to relate to the scriptures if we know them.  She then talked about what we are doing as missionaries is blessing those at home. She then told us to make sure that we do all we can so that our loved ones at home can receive all the blessings they need. That statement alone made me want to be the best missionary ever! I hope through my diligent efforts and service y'all are receiving the blessings that you need and deserve! 

Finally we had like 3 different trainings by Elder Dube. He talked about becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ and not just being the natural missionary. The then talked a lot about utilizing the members in our missionary efforts. Get them excited about missionary work. He talked about not wasting time at members houses for dinner appointments when we can be out serving and sharing the gospel. Finding those elect children who are ready to hear the gospel. He also talked about finding when you teach and teaching when you are finding. We did a lot of role plays on inviting to baptism. It was awesome! He gave us one promise that I loved. He said "If you will double your efforts I promise you will see double the baptisms!" Wow! What an awesome promise!! 

Well that is basically all I have been up to this week! I hope y'all have an enjoyable week! Thanks for all the letters I received this week! Amanda your letter really helped me and I loved hearing about my sweet little fish Chase! I'm glad he is doing well! I also loved the letters I received from my sweet nieces and nephew! My favorite part about those letters was reading Spencer's letter where it said, " Lillian is playing with a toilet paper squirrel right now, she says it is sucking the juice out of a nut.." Haha I could just picture cute little Lilly with her paper squirrel the probably got thrown away later that day. Then I get to Lillian's letter which made Spencer's even better. She told me all about her paper squirrel named Lyla and how she hides millions of nuts under her bed.. Haha man it made me miss the kids at home and all the crazy things they do! Haha anyways, thanks for the letters they made my whole week! 

I love and miss all of you! 

Love,

Sister Webb :)