Welcome 2016! - January 4, 2016

Hello family,

Happy New Years!! This is it!! This is my year I come home!!! I'm so excited!! I'll be home before y'all know it! I'm so glad to hear that y'all had a good New Years! This was probably the lamest New Year's Eve I have ever had... But I'm happy to say I did stay up until midnight! I know I'm a rule breaker but hey, it's New Years! So I guess I will just start by telling you about New Year's Eve. So we had to be off the streets by 7. Well problem number one of the night was we didn't have the car. Haha so we bummed a ride to dinner at the bishop's house and then bummed a ride to the Tompkin's house. The Tompkins were having a New Year's Eve party with all the youth in the ward. It was fun. We played some bowling and boxing on the Xbox and then we played some Mexican train. I'm getting pretty good at it! This time I was not in last place! Haha then around 9 o'clock Sister Tompkins took us home. We were super bummed because we just wanted to party. So we came home  and decided to play some games. I'm basically the apostate missionary and had a mini deck of cards so we played Go Fish! Haha that lasted until around 10 when I decided to put my pajamas on and write in my journal. Yes you heard me right... I wrote in my journal! I think I am on page 20 now! It's only taken me 8 months!  Haha! Anyways, by the time I was done with that we sat on the back porch for like 10 minutes watching stupid teenagers light fireworks off in the grass. And then I went to bed.. Well, my plan was to just lay there until midnight and then say "Happy New Year" and go to sleep but that didn't work out as I had planned. First, I fell asleep while saying my prayers and Sister McGregor had to wake me up like 3 times and then I finally laid down in bed when she woke me up again to tell me it was two minutes to midnight. We then went back outside on our screen porch and did the count down! Thank goodness I have a companion who can stay awake till midnight because obviously I can't! But all in all it was a lame night. I think this was the hardest holiday for me so far on the mission. You would think Christmas would have been hard but nope, knowing that everyone was still out partying when I was home in bed was the hardest. But yeah, that was my New Year's Eve. I just kept thinking of all the fun New Year's Eves we would have as kids with the family.

We had a pretty good week this week. We taught 24 lessons! That's huge for us! Last week I think we taught less then 10.. So this is a big deal! Haha we found some new investigators this week as well which is good because we need them! We met a man named Sammy. He is really humble and willing to listen to us and he was way excited about the Book of Mormon. To top it all off we set a baptism date with him! So funny story about Sammy, so we went and taught him on Saturday night and after his lesson we went back to the car and we were just sitting there trying to think of someone who could give him a ride the next day to church. Anyways, we had probably been sitting there across the street from him for about 10 minutes when all the sudden he came outside to take a smoke and talk on the phone. Us being stupid decided instead of driving away we would just duck in our seats. So then we got stuck sitting outside his house hoping he wouldn't notice us still sitting in the car.. Haha I made a video of it so y'all can see how stupid we are! Haha 

Another investigator we found is named Lucy. She is super sweet. We went and saw her yesterday. Are are pretty excited that we have found some new investigators!

We are still working with Tonnie. We haven't seen him since before Christmas. It's been tough with the holidays and his work schedule. We are hoping to see him this Thursday and reset a baptism date with him.  But he is still reading the Book of Mormon so that's good!

Isyss and Jenesyss are still doing good. We met with them on Saturday.  Isyss told us she doesn't want to get baptized until she can read the Book of Mormon and know it is true. So now their baptism dates are off. We have started a competition with them of who can read the Book of Mormon first. So far I am in the lead because I have made it to 1 nephi 2. Haha I guess this will help we achieve my goal of reading the Book of Mormon 4 times before I go home because now I am reading it from the beginning as well as from Alma. So I'm pretty sure I will dominate at this challenge but we are hoping it will give them motivation to read.

That's basically all the investigators that we are really working with. We are hoping that we will be able to get a bigger teaching pool soon! Oh, I had one other funny story. So we were going to see an investigator named Darion just to see if he was still interested and set up an appointment to come back or to just drop him. Well, he kinda lives in a really scary part of town. He lives right off of Martin Luther King street which is basically scary. Anyways, we start driving to his house and instantly you just feel so out of place because we are the only white peoples on the street not to mention we are two young white girls who drive a nice car. Well, we get to his place and we park and there are a bunch of people outside so we are just scared to get out so we sit there. Then this man comes out of his house and starts smoking and walks to the edge of the street and is just staring us down. We are panicking and decide it is best just not to make eye contact. Haha Sister McGregor decides to pretend to talk on the phone.  I decide it is a good idea to make a video of this awkward moment. Haha basically I hit record and then he walks up to the car. By this time I am in such a panic. Kinda like that time the cop asked me and Linsey if we had a dollar and I threw one at him! Haha so anyways, he walks up and I unroll my window. And he has no teeth and in his thick southern accent he asks if we are giving out Bibles. Well we had one in our car so I give it to him and tell him we would love to come by and share about Jesus Christ with him. Haha it was pretty scary! I made a video of it after it happened so you can see just how scared I was! Haha 

I gave my training in district meeting on last Tuesday. It went really well. I talked about the importance of the sacrament and how we can get our investigators to attend sacrament. We also had a training by Elder Hopkins on learning Spanish. Haha I am slowly learning Spanish.

He has been teaching me on P-days. Pretty soon I will be pro! Haha I think that is basically all that has been going on here. 

On New Years we had dinner with Sister Pulsipher in our ward. She is a sweet older lady. She cooks really good. We ate at her house on Thanksgiving. She made us potatoes, broccoli, salad, buttered beans, and then a prime rib roast. Oh and then we had homemade New York style cheesecake dessert! I was in heaven!! She basically cooks for an army and there is only 4 of us eating so she makes you eat a ton of food! I though I was going to throw up several times because of how full I was. So my piece of meat... Remember that time I told you I had a ham the size of my dinner plate? Well this is one of those times! My slice of meat was about 1 1/2 inches thick and it covered my entire plate! The only bad part was I got a middle piece and so it was still raw. Now don't get me wrong, I love a medium rare steak but this was seriously mooing at me still! It was bright red in the middle still and I just had to eat it. It was really good I just thought I might die eating it. Haha 

This has, once again, turned into a small novel so I will wrap it up. I hope y'all have a wonderful week. I appreciate all the prayers, emails and letters I get. They truly do help give you that boost of strength you need to keep pushing along. It has finally started to cool down here. Instead of being 85 every day it has cooled down to the 60. It's cold and miserable when you have to walk everywhere but I am surviving. 

Not going to lie, this week has been quite a struggle and I think I have hit a brick wall.. It has been super had for me to find motivation. But I've been praying and fasting for it and slowing I am feeling better. Hopefully now with the holidays out of the way I will be better. Sister Tompkins took us out to lunch at Olive Garden today and then spent the rest of the day taking us to all the malls and stores just to shop. It was really nice. I think I really just needed a day of non missionary stuff! Haha she is seriously the sweetest lady. She also invited us over for dinner tonight because no one else signed up to feed us. Best family ever!

Ok mom, so here's the deal. If you keep letting the ward put up my sucky emails on the ward newsletter I'm going to have to stop writing!  Haha stop letting them put my crazy stories up there! I send home testimonies occasionally... Post those! Haha ok enough ranting about that.

Anyways, have a wonderful week family! I love all of you! I'm so excited to hear how the baby shower goes! I wanted to send a gift but I never found something good to buy. But I still have six weeks to get something to you! I can't believe little Ivy will be here in six weeks! I better get lots of videos and pictures when that happens!

Love and miss you all!

Until next week.. Love,

Sister Webb :)