Preparing to baptize like crazy! - October 19, 2015

Hola me familia!

Guess what?? One more month down only 13 more to go!!! Although I should tell you I've looked up the transfer schedule for next year and my date to come home will be the day after Thanksgiving... Hope y'all wanted two Thanksgivings next year! Haha

This week has been a pretty good week! It was pretty busy at the first of the week because we were trying to pack our apartment at the same time as trying to get out and share the gospel, but we managed. We have seen so many exciting things happening here in Ocala! I seriously just love it here!! Carol is still on for her baptism on Saturday and we couldn't be more excited! We have 2 more lessons with her this week to finish cramming in all of the lessons for her before her baptism.  She loves the lessons though and is so excited to be getting re-baptized!

So to give you a recap of my week we will start with last Monday. So after p-day was over we had scheduled a lesson with La'lesha. She lives in a kinda scary part of town right off of Martin Luther King street. We didn't have a car so the other sisters were kind enough to drop us off. Well we usually have our lessons with La'lesha in a church parking lot.. Kinda weird I know. Anyways so we are standing in this parking lot waiting for Lele to get there when all the sudden this really ghetto car stops and is just sitting kiddie corner across the street from us. It was kinda scary! Basically where La'lesha lives there are no white people at all so now we are these two little white girls standing on a street corner by ourselves in a scary part of town.. Luckily the car drove off after about 10 minutes! We were able to have a good lesson with Lele though, we taught her the gospel of Jesus Christ again and helped her understand her baptismal covenants better.

On Tuesday we had zone meeting so we drove up to Gainesville. It was really good. We had a lot of great trainings. My favorite one was on obedience and becoming a more consecrated missionary. President Craig challenged us to put 2 things on the sacrifice table this week to become a more consecrated missionary. I still haven't quite decided what I am going to do yet. Gainesville is really cool! It is totally a college town. We got to drive past all of the sorority houses.  Everyone there has a little Vespa they drive around. It made me want to just be a college kid! Haha I guess I have that coming for me in another year. Also on Tuesday night we went to see a family in our ward. They own a rodeo grounds! It was pretty cool. They do barrel races every Tuesday night and they are going to start doing things on Thursdays as well. We are hoping that we will be able to go to some of the rodeo they are putting on around Thanksgiving!

So we contacted this referral we received from another area. Her name is Brenda. She is prime! She knows the Book of Mormon is true because she has read it and prayed about it. She has been to church a few times already and loves it! She just moved to Ocala and said that she has already had a minister come invite her to church but she had made up in her mind already that she wanted to attend the Mormon church when she moved here! We are really excited to be teaching her and are hoping to set a baptism date with her real soon!

On Wednesday we spent lots of our time packing and cleaning the apartment because we were having the elders move us on Thursday morning. Later that afternoon we went to see a new member in our ward.  She just moved here from Wisconsin. We started visiting with her and found out that her 9 year old son is not baptized!! She wants us to teach him and get him baptized. Her son is Jonathan. We asked him if we could practice our lessons on him. He was pretty excited! Like I said, we are just seeing so many great things happening here in Ocala!!

So on Thursday we spent basically all day moving.. It was a very boring and unproductive day! But I am happy to say we successfully got moved and settled in. 

Our new address is, 2707 SW 33rd ave. apartment 503 Ocala Florida, 34474. 

So now that y'all have my address I expect to get lots of mail and packages!! I got a package this last week from Carolyn Barnes! It was such a cute package full of yummy things! She knows me too well and sent me 3 packs of Oreos!! :) oh, and to top my package off she sent me some flarp.. Haha everyone loves that stuff!

Ok back to my move, so we are living in a cute little apartment complex. We have a 2 bedroom 2 bathroom apartment. It is really nice because we each get our own bathroom as well as our own closets! I've come to realize that I may have too many clothes for a missionary because my clothes fill up my entire walk in closet almost.... How does this always happen to me. I don't even know how I have acquired so many clothes in the past 5 months.. Haha oh well, I guess I will just have to get rid of some of them when I get transferred next. We decorated our apartment with the cute Halloween decorations y'all sent us! They were really cute!

On Thursday night we had a Relief Society activity. It was on visiting teaching. It was really good. Carol was able to come so that allowed us to be able to go and participate! It really gave me a eye opener to how important visiting teaching is. I can't wait to get home and become the best visiting teacher ever!

On Friday we had weekly planning and then that night the Spanish branch was having a Latin night we were invited to. We got Jonathan and his mom to come to that. It was a lot of fun!! They had a ton of food!! Mmmm, I was seriously in heaven because I just love my Latin food! I think I ate like 5 tamales! Haha they also had singing and Latin dancing! It was fun to see all of the fun dresses and dancing.  The elders sang a song in Spanish and it was really fun! They also sang the Star Spangled Banner at the beginning and it was the strangest thing ever. My first instinct is oh, I need to stand up and put my hand on my heart. Well let's just say they are all Latin so none of them did. It was only the few Americans who stood up. My companion just looked at me like I was crazy when I stood at first until I explained that it was our national anthem. Haha

Saturday we had a yummy dinner with the Tompkins in our ward. They are great! Brother Tompkins told me all about his mission in Japan... It was kinda cool to see all of his pictures. For dinner we had bbq fajitas! They did it with bbq chicken and then peppers onions and mushrooms on them. Y'all would be so proud of me I ate them will all of the peppers onions and mushrooms on them and oh my, they were amazing! I have finally become a big girl and can eat those things now! Mom, I know that statement probably just gave you a heart attack!  Haha   After that we just had a lesson with our investigators Sam and Daniel. It started off real nice. We found out that Sam had all the lessons previously with other missionaries but Daniel had never had any of the pamphlet lessons so we decide to teach the restoration. It was going great until Sam started in on a bible bash... She basically told us that we were not Christians and that she had read the Book of Mormon, prayed about it and knew it wasn't true. It was a long and painful lesson which by the end we just left Daniel with the pamphlets and told him to let us know when he wanted us to come back.

My last exciting story for the week isn't really exciting but pretty funny. So we were having our studies and out of no where Sister McGregor says "spider!" I thought she was just pulling my leg because she does that all the time to watch me scream and jump. This time she was being serious! This was probably the biggest spider I have seen here so far. It was like the size of a 50 cent piece! Well y'all can imagine I jumped up on my study chair and start screaming. Sister McGregor tells me I have to find the bug spray so she can kill it.  Well, I couldn't really find bug spray so I brought her the bee killer instead.. I didn't realize that stuff shoots like 20 feet.. Let's just say we sprayed it and it took off running so Sster McGregor had to smash it with her shoe. I just screamed the whole time! Haha

That is about all of the excitement around here. It is really starting to cool down which is nice! But it is started getting a little too cool for me. I am going to have to start wearing my tights and coat soon!

But I would rather the cooler weather then the heat from summer! I hope y'all have a wonderful week! I can't wait to tell you all about the baptism next week! Oh and speaking of baptisms, I got a email from Brother Wink last night that Gene got baptized yesterday!!! I think I cried a little when I saw the picture! If you don't remember who Gene was she was my neighbor I was teaching back in Mandarin! I was pretty excited for her!! I will send y'all the picture so you can see!

Anyways, have a wonderful week!

Love and miss y'all!

Love,

Sister Webb :)

Pictures from October 19, 2015

These are pictures of sister McGregor and I at the rodeo! It was so much fun! Oh and check out my nice outfit that I got a goodwill! Haha

This first one is of the pretty sunset.

Then we have our all day breakfast at mackers! (McDonald's, Sister McGregor calls it Mackers) nothing like a Coke and some breakfast food! :) 

This is the giant spider that we had to kill! I thought I was going to die! It may not look so big but seriously it is! Haha

Here are the pictures we took at Latin night. I had a funny video of the elders singing and dancing but it was too long to send so I will have to figure out how to send that later..

This is Gene and her baptism! :)

This is me and Sister McGregor standing out front our new apartment complex. Then we have a tour of our apartment.

Our lovely living room.. If you look on the wall we have a picture of President Hinkley.. Haha

Then we have our bedroom. Do you see my lovely bed! :) I even halfway made it for you mom!

Next is the kitchen/ laundry room. The washer dryer is right across from the fridge.. Haha 

The lovely picture of my bathroom.. Basically just a toilet shot! Haha but I have my own bathroom!

Next is our desks/ study room

And finally my personal giant walk in closet!  Yes, I'm living the life here on the mission! :)

I'm seriously livin' the life! - October 12, 2015

Family!!!

First off I am so excited to finally find out that Racheal is having a girl!!! Yay!! Y'all will have to send me more pictures of the games you played for the baby reveal! Rae, your tummy looks so cute!! I also loved all the pictures of everyone with the balloons stuffed up their shirts! Linsey sent me the video of Ashly and Matt telling Hunter and Hadley they were going to have a baby and that was the funniest thing ever! Haha I'm so excited for all of these babies!!! Especially little Ivy!!

Ok now on to the exciting stories of the week! So, we set 2 baptism dates this week!! Woot woot!! Ocala is he place to be right now! We set a baptism date with our investigator Tony this week. He is 22 I believe and is currently dating a less active in the ward so it worked out perfect to be able to teach him. We set the date for November 28.  Now we are just working on getting him a different job that will allow him to have Sunday's off. 

Our other baptism date is with Carol Baughman. She is probably in her 80's she is the mom of one of the members in our ward and she came up to us on Wednesday night with the bishop and said she wanted to be baptized as soon as possible. So we began teaching her on Friday and set the baptism date for the 24 of this month!! We are so excited!! Now all we have to do is pound out the lessons for her! We also have another member who's girlfriend is not a member that is interested in the lessons. hopefully we will be having another baptism soon!

Well I don't have much time for emails today because we have decided to spend our day shopping so I will quickly give you a recap of my week. So last Monday we spent our p-day playing volleyball with our district. I'm quickly remembering why I never played sports before...I'm awful at them! Haha but it was fun and it gives you a chance to get to know the district better.

On Tuesday we had our lesson with Tony and set the baptism date! We are just praying that he will be able to get Sunday's off so he can come to church and be baptized!

Wednesday we had a lesson with our recent convert La'lesha. She is awesome! She is 16 and just got baptized 2 weeks ago. She has it kinda rough right now. Her mom just went to jail last week and her brother was shot like a week before that so he has been in the hospital so she really doesn't have much support at home right now. She is so sweet though and is loving young women's! We were able to go over the plan of salvation with her and also teach her friend Na Na. She kinda lives in a scary part of town... We have our lessons in some abandoned church parking lot. We heard like 3 car chases go by as we were teaching. It was kinda exciting and I was hoping that one would drive past us. Haha later that night we went to young women's with La'lesha and Na Na. It was so much fun! We made pumpkin decorations! They turned out super cute!

On Thursday we had our addiction recovery class we went to. I really like this 12 step program that the church has come out with. It can help anyone with any addiction they might have. After class on Thursdays we play volleyball with the Spanish branch. Sadly this week I accidentally packed my bike shorts instead of basketball shorts so I couldn't play because my pants were too tight... If only I wasn't a missionary I wouldn't have had that problem. Volleyball is really fun though, it is nice to get a break and play. We always get the less actives and investigators to come out with us.

Friday was our weekly planning and after weekly planning we went to a lesson with Carol where we were able to set a baptism date. So let me tell you all about this lesson. Carol lives with her daughter Sister Lyon and they live like 30 minutes from our apartment. We didn't want to waste our miles on our car so we asked a member to take us. We asked this old couple named the Davis's. Sister Davis is this little old lady who thinks she knows best about everything so we ask her if she will take us to the lesson and then after take is to see some less actives that live out that way because the bishop asked us to go see them. She instantly told us that the bishop didn't know what he was talking about and she would not take us to see them because they were going through a rough time and shouldn't be bothered... Frustrating!  On top of that she was so insistent that we had to pray before our appointment. As if we don't always do that... Haha she just likes to take charge I guess. Well back to my story, so brother Lyon is a magician!! Crazy right? He went to clown school and then became a magician after that! Haha.  He showed us like a million magic tricks so be prepared when I come home to be amazed! We had a wonderful lesson with Carol though, she just has the strongest desire to be baptized because she knows it will just bless her life so much! After our lesson some members in the ward took us out for ice cream!  I'm seriously just living the life out here! Haha 

Saturday we had the chance to do some service for Sister Martin in the ward. We mowed her lawn! It was so much fun because no one ever lets us do that and she had a riding mower which made it that much better!  After service she bought us lunch. Here is where a little miracle took place. So Sister Martin has been trying to rent out a room in her house and she just really wanted a good roommate. Well we have been praying for that and on Saturday she had this lady come look at the room and the second Sister Martin introduced us the girl starts freaking out and says that she is LDS as well and she has been looking for a nice place to live that would be close to the temple so she can go be a worker there!! Crazy!! Just the other day Sister Martin was wanting to find a temple buddy!! Miracle!!! The best part was this lady raises sugar gliders! She pulled them out of her purse and let us play with them! Oh my.... I need one! I don't just want one I need one! Haha they are the cutest things ever!! I sent some pictures of them but I really think y'all should get them so I can have one when I get home! :) 

Saturday night we decided to go visit this less active who lived in a rehab center near our home. That was quite the experience! We walk in and we have never met her before so when we get to the room there are two ladies in there. One who is Down syndrome and sleeping and the other one is this old lady who is just talking to herself. Well we figured out that the lady talking to herself was the one that we were there to see. Having a lesson was quite interesting.She kept telling us that she was only 25 and that she had been married 2 times and then we talked about the Book of Mormon. She remembered getting baptized and getting married in the temple and she said she remembers reading the Book of Mormon. While at the end of our lesson we ask her to say the prayer and she just starts talking nonsense again so like after 5 minutes we just say amen. She looks at us and seems confused. So we ask if she is going to say amen. Her reply was no. She was not done saying her prayer.. So she continues to mumble nonsense and finally I just had to stop her and ask if I could pray.

When we were leaving we asked if there was anything we could do for her. She told us we could find her a new husband! Haha priceless lesson! I was trying not to laugh the whole time!!

We had a wonderful day yesterday! We taught Carol again and then had dinner with Sister Martin! She is seriously the best! She is like my mum out here! After dinner we went over to our recent converts Jennifer and Jessica's house. They are sisters. Jessica is 17 and Jennifer is 12. They are the best and I just love them to death! They happened to have Bean Boozle jelly beans so we played Bean Boozled with them for a bit. If you don't know what they are they are basically just nasty jelly beans like rotten egg mixed with a good flavor and you take your chance when you eat one with it being good or bad. It is hilarious! I got some video of it so I will send that to you.

That about sums up my week! I am planning to buy some new clothes today because all of my skirts are too short.. Also I am going to buy some new shoes. I am hoping that I can find some Toms or something similar so my feet won't hurt as much when I am out walking. We are moving this Thursday. I got a package from you last week but I wasn't sure if that was the same package you were taking about in your email mom? It had my jacket in it and then Halloween stuff. I will try to keep an eye out for the other one. Also don't send any letters or packages this week. I will get you my new address by next Monday I hope y'all have a wonderful week! I know I will! I am loving it here! Sister McGregor is so great! I haven't had this much fun on my mission yet! We are constantly just laughing about something! Anyways take Care. Email me more pictures! I love getting them!

Love and miss y'all!

Sister Webb

Pictures from October 12, 2015

Here are some awesome pictures I took this week.

These are of a turtle Sister McGregor and I rescued because it was in the middle of the road.  

This is me holding a dove.

We got some with the sugar gliders.

We mowed the lawn!

Here's us with our balloon animals that Brother Lyon made us. So I hope y'all recognize the material on that couch! When I saw it I just laughed and thought to myself hey, maybe dad made it! Haha

The pumpkins we made at Young Women.

The cute socks you sent me!

This first one is the lovely view of our pool.. To bad I can't swim in it!

October in Ocala! - October 5, 2015

Hello family,

I am pretty sure I always start my emails off like this but wow, what a week!! I made it safely to Ocala. It is about 2 hours from Jacksonville. The cutest couple took us home. They bought us dinner and then carried my bags to my apartment for me. The old man was the cutest thing ever and right before he left I went in for a hand shake and got a big hug and kiss from him! Haha Ocala is not as country as people said it was.. We actually live over by the main road and all of the stores. It is probably as busy as Layton is. Everything is really spaced out here though, so it takes a long time to get from place to place. It is way more ghetto then Mandarin was! There are quite a bit of neighborhoods we don't knock because they are scary.. Haha 

My companion is Sister McGregor. Like I told you last email, she is from Australia! Her accent is already wearing off on me and I have already started saying weird words like rubbish bin.. Haha she is the youngest in her family and is 22 years old. It is nice to be serving with someone my own age. She has been out 1 more transfer then I have. This week was a kinda tuff week for us. Sister McGregor has only been in the area for 6 weeks and the area is so big and the streets are all numbers. Like SW 13th st or NW 18th ave. So it is going to be really hard learning the area. Not to mention they just redid the area like a few days before I got here.. Making our area book all messed up. So, we basically don't know anyone here or where anything is. Thank goodness for a GPS! Oh before I forget you don't need to send me my GPS anymore. I got one from a missionary who went home. On top of not knowing the area and it being so spread out, the mission has also just put us in a car share again. Let's just say I seriously may die being in a car share this time. We have to drive for about 10 minutes to get to the church.. It's going to take like an hour to bike there. And sadly there are like no houses around us.. Not to mention I am pretty sure Ocala is the only place in Florida with hills!! What is this??  Florida is suppose to be flat! Haha They say sacrifice brings forth the blessings so I am planning to see a lot of blessings in my near future! Haha I can't complain though, our district leader Elder Jorgensen gave up his car for the sisters last transfer so he is completely on bike!! Crazy right?! He is seriously the most dedicated missionary I have ever met! He was suppose to go home back in August but managed to extend his mission until January. He is very strict though, as a district we are not allowed to have photos on our iPads so each p-day we will have to delete them off and save them to a USB drive. We are not allowed as a district to have contact with any of the missionaries with out going through him. Unless it is regarding our car share. But despite his strict district rules he is great!  I hope to become as consecrated to the work as he is! Our district covers the largest area in the mission. We border the Orlando mission.

We also have the most missionaries in our district as well as the most elders in our district. We have 14 people in our district and 10 of them are elders. We have a Spanish branch in our area so there are I think 2 sets of Spanish elders. We are currently living in the same apartment building as one of the Spanish elders so they will be moving our apartment to a new complex on the 15th. I am learning why elders and sisters should not live in the same complex. So, I have an address for my current apartment but we will only be staying here until the 15th.

The address is: 3240 SW 34th st.  Apt. #103  Ocala Florida 34474. 

You can send things here but just make sure everything you send will arrive before the 15th of this month. Because that is when we will be moving to a new complex. I am slightly sad about this.. Our apartment is actually super nice.  The club house has wi-fi and a computer with a printer we can use, as well as free treats!  I'm living in luxury over here! Haha  Enough about free wifi and treats, let me tell you about my week. 

I arrived here on Wednesday and we went straight to work. We had a great lesson with our investigator Tony. We were able to teach him the restoration and commit him to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it. We then went to the church because on Wednesday nights we have a gospel principles class we teach. Sadly no one showed up.

On Thursday we had a wonderful district meeting. Elder Jorgensen our district leader makes sure that everyone has an assignment and can participate some how. This week my assignment was role plays.. I seriously hate those! Haha but I know there is purpose in doing them because they are preparing you for your lessons you will teach. After district meeting we just went out and visited with some less actives.

Later that night we went to the AA meeting that is held at the church each week. We go every week to support those who are coming to it. I am actually really excited. It will be great to learn how to resolve any addiction I might face. After the addiction recovery class we play volleyball with the Spanish branch if we can get investigators or less actives to come. This week we were lucky enough to be able to play! It was a lot of fun! This is such a fun area and the people are all so nice here!

Friday was our weekly planning. I'm pretty sure this was the most stressful day of the entire week!! We basically spent all day trying to plan our week but we didn't know where people live and who is active and less active and how we were going to get from place to place on bikes because of how far things are from each other. It was super stressful and we never finished our weekly planning... We had to stop multiple times to say a prayer and ask for inspiration and help! I can tell this is going to be a really tuff thing trying to learn the area but I know that as I rely on the Lord I can do it! I always just have to remind myself "I love tuff things, I'm the first to do tuff things, I do tuff things first! I LOVE being a missionary!!" This always just gives me the extra boost I need!

Saturday was an amazing day! Can I just say I love conference so stinkin much!!! It was kinda different not watching it until noon and to watch it at the church instead of at home. Despite all of that it was amazing! I think I took like 10 pages of notes!! There were so many great talks that I just loved. One of my favorite talks from the Saturday session was the talk Elder Holland gave. Yes, it made me miss my mum and I cried like a little girl! Haha but it was very good!! I also liked the talk given on Saturday that talked about how we need to center our lives on Jesus Christ. I loved the story that was given about the clay being thrown on the wheel. It reminded me of all of my ceramics days in high school and then I remembered learning about the importance of keeping our clay centered. I just remember having to watch this stupid video and thinking how easy it looked. Well, when it came time for me to test out my skills I remember putting my clay on the wheel and not making sure it was nice and secure before starting.  That was my first mistake. As y'all can remember my clay went flying off my wheel and across the room. When this clay story was shared it made me realize the importance of not only having our lives centered on Jesus Christ but our testimonies need to be secure as well. 

Sunday conference was just as good as Saturday! I loved the talk about womenhood and the divine role we have here at this time. It was give by President Nelson. Once again this made me think of all the wonderful women figures I have in my life and I again got teary eyed and emotional! I loved hearing our beloved prophet speak to us!  I was right there with you.  I just wanted to reach through screen and help him out. He really does look so fragile and frail but his words were so good! Another talk I loved was the talk that was given by  Elder Aoyagi. I loved how he talked about trials and kept asking Heavenly Father why we received trials. I have often found myself asking these same questions in life. I also loved the talk given by Elder Durrant about ponderizing scriptures. One thing we do here in the Jacksonville mission is memorizing 2 scriptures a week. I have been super bad at this so I am planning to start ponderizing 2 scriptures a week. I am excited to do this and share it with y'all!

The Sunday afternoon conference we watched at a members home. It was nice to sit on a soft comfy couch, but man, it made it kinda difficult to stay awake. I am so sad that I missed out on the yummy breakfast at home! I did however have homemade chili for dinner just like y'all did! The members we ate with started to tell us about these peppers called datil peppers. They are grown here in St Augustine. They are these little orange peppers and the member told us how every elder who has served here always eats one and they try to have a competition on who can eat the most before they leave. He then told me no sister has ever eaten one. Well, I decided to set the record... I ate one and oh boy!!! That was the worst idea ever! My eyes started watering, my mouth was on fire, my lips burned and my nose started running but I managed to eat one! My mouth was on fire for about 30 minutes after and the only thing that finally made it feel better was eating a more mild pepper.. Strange right? I am proud to say that I hold the record here in Ocala for the sisters! Woot woot!

Well, that about sums up our week here in Ocala! This morning we did something different for exercising. Although I am pretty positive it may have been breaking a few rules. We went bowling on our tennis courts with the Spanish elders! It was a lot of fun! For some reason we had 2 bowling balls in our apartment so we set up some water bottles and went bowling. We plan to start playing tennis in the mornings or baseball because we have rackets and tennis balls as well as a baseball bat, ball, and mitts. The elders got mad at us for just celestial stretching in the mornings so we have decided to be more active! Haha 

I hope y'all have a wonderful week! I can't wait to get letters and packages from you this week! I will be watching for them. Oh also, is there any way you could send me my BYU sweatshirt? It is starting to get pretty cold here and I need something to keep warm in the morning.

It is finally starting to feel like October here. It has been getting down into the 70's and it is cold! Haha anyways, love y'all and miss ya!

Love,

Sister Webb

Pictures! - October 5, 2015

Here are some pictures I took this week. Sorry there are not very many.

This is of me and Sister Johnson. I miss her already. 

This is of me wearing the shirt Sister Johnson gave me. Hahaha she must have thought because I stole her skirt that I wanted more of her clothes! Haha 

This is of me, Sister McGregor, Sister Clemens, and Sister Nay.