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