Summer is here! - June 27, 2016

Where has June gone? Can y'all believe that July starts this week?

Time is flying by!! I had the sad realization last week that I only have 3 more transfers left and after this one only two more! I'm not even sure how to feel about that... My companion and I had someone tell us that now is the time to start thinking about what we want to do when we get home... Yeah, that thought was a little frightening.

Anyways, I'm glad to hear y'all had a good week! I'm excited to see Amanda's house when I get home! It sounds super cute and seems like it has a lot of space and rooms! Maybe by then she will have pity on me and allow me to stay there for free! Haha my second resort was living with grandma for free but it sounds like Danielle and her fiancé have beat me to that as well. So last resort I will mooch off of mum and dad until I get married and move out! Oh and Manda, I don't want to hear anything about snakes! I feel like they are everywhere in Florida! Not to mention I deal with lizards on top of that!

Mum, your hair looks great! It's actually very pretty and it's a nice golden blonde! So you can stop worrying about it. I'm glad to hear y'all got to spend time with Peggy and John. I am actually serving with an elder from their home ward. We have served together his whole mission so far. He said he knows the Beechers pretty well!

I've definitely realized that summer has finally hit. I forgot how hot it gets here and how much you sweat! It's been up in the 100's this week and it doesn't cool down at nights anymore. But hey it could always be worse. I just need to remember to bring a rag or something to wipe my face at each house so I don't look as hot and desperate! Haha

Last Tuesday Sister Ruesch and I decided to go through our area books and clean them up. We deleted people who hadn't been taught in over 100 days, we called and dropped people who were not interested and we tried to see a lot of potential investigators. While we were doing this we got the feeling that we should try some of our former investigators again. That was a miracle in itself because we found 3 of them who were interested again and we set baptism dates with them!  Yay!!  

We are working with a man named Justin Thomas again. We dropped him last transfer because he was not ready to change his life but this time he says he knows he needs to change and he is willing to turn to God to do it. His baptism date is scheduled for August 6th. We will keep our fingers crossed that all will work out for him. 

Next, we are working with Shirley Green again. She is a hoot.. She says the funniest things ever. My favorite is when she says "oh my, ham sandwich and cheese." Or she loves say "hotdog!" Or "oh my, merciful me!" If you couldn't tell she is absolutely crazy but we love her! She has had almost all of the lessons we just had to drop her because she wouldn't read from the Book of Mormon. But since we dropped her she had been reading on her own and she is planning to be baptized on July 30th! 

Finally, we started working with a lady named Deanna again. She has been taught everything she just needs to give up some bad habits before being baptized. When we met with her again she told us she is finally ready and now that no one will be in the house with her for the summer she can can do it! She is planning to be baptized as soon as her husband gets back in town from work! So yeah, we saw a lot of awesome miracles happen as we cleaned up our area book!

On Wednesday we had a very sad day.. We had our final zone conference with President and Sister Craig. I don't think you realize how much you actually love and appreciate someone until you are saying goodbye to them. A few tears were shed but we are so excited to be welcoming our new mission president and his wife this week to the mission! As president Craig told us this morning on our missionary leadership conference call, "FJM ROCKS!" That's For sure! 

Our new mission president is President Bruce Lee! Haha he and his wife are from Burley, Idaho. They seem great! They own a furniture store there in Idaho and that's about all I really know about them. Haha they will be arriving to our mission tonight around 7 pm and the Craig's will be flying home tomorrow. On Wednesday we will be having another zone conference to meet with new mission president and his wife! It's going to be great!

After our zone conference last Wednesday we had our first trade off of the transfer. It was with the YSA sisters. It was great! They are so sweet! I went with Sister Ward again and we had such a blast. We worked here in Hendricks and Sister Ruesch went with Sister Hannah to the YSA area to work. Trade offs this transfer are going to be crazy.

We were just looking at our calendar this morning trying to finish getting them all in order. We will be having 2-3 trade offs every week until the last week of the transfers. We are also planning a week long transfer with one companionship who is really struggling. So that will be interesting. Sister Ruesch and I will not really be together except on Sundays until the transfer is over. This may be a good thing because we have been butting heads still.. I've come to the conclusion that I am very prideful and I'm working on my pride a little so we can work together better.

Nothing else to exciting happened this week. On Saturday our ward had another baptism. The elders investigator named George got baptized. It was a sweet baptism. He asked me to speak at it so we were able to go and we brought Shirley along with us. It got her excited for baptism!

The best part of the week also happened on Saturday. Both nanny and John were able to go down to the Orlando temple and do baptisms for the dead! It was such a happy day! They both loved it! When we asked John what he thought he said how it great it was! He loved how everyone dressed up in white and how quiet and clean the temple was. He said "there is no place on earth like that!" Nanny loved it as well! She was so excited to do the baptism! When I asked her what she thought she said; well, I've been dunked 8 times now in the past week but it was worth every moment of it! She is excited to get some family history done so she can take the names of her mom, grandma and sisters to the temple. We helped John with his family history Sunday after church. It was so great to see how excited he got about finding out about his family. He didn't know much about any of them. His mom's side of the family immigrated here from Barbados! It was awesome!

That is basically all that I have been up to this week. I've decided to start a diet this week so we will see how well that actually goes.

I have thought of a few things y'all could send me if you were thinking of sending a package. So I ran out of stamps and I have no money to buy more so y'all could send some of those! Also, cute cards that I could write letter on. Basically anything but food and candy will be helpful and nice! I hope y'all have a wonderful week!

Love and miss y'all!

Love,

Sister Webb

My Nanny got baptized!! - June 20, 2016

Dearest family,

First things first, I completely forgot that it was Father's Day until halfway through the week when someone happened to mention it to us. By this point it was to late to do anything so I'm sorry I didn't get anything sent for you Dad but I hope you had a wonderful Father's Day and a Happy Anniversary!!

I'm not even sure how describe my week... We saw miracles, I got sick, I had a melt down, we had a baptism!!! That about sums up my week right there! The best part of my week was witnessing Nanny get baptized! It was so beautiful and brought tears to my eyes! Before I get to that though I will start at the beginning of my week.

I can't remember if I mentioned in last weeks email that we had a sister stay with us for the first half of the week until transfers. We had Sister Handy with us. It was good. We experienced the best miracle while she was with us. So I've been trying to seek and follow the spirit more in my work and one night it was about 8:40 and we had about 10 minutes before we had to start heading home. We decided to try this referral that we had not been able to get a hold of. Well Sister Ruesch said how she had tried a few times and no one was ever home but we should just try him so we could drop him if needed. I felt very strong that we needed to try him one more  time. When Sister Ruesch said the prayer she prayed that we would be able to set a baptism date during the lesson. We all thought it was kinda strange because we hadn't even been able to get a hold of this man but she said the spirit told her to pray for that. Anyways, we get to the door and a lady answers. She tells us that the referral we were looking for was her husband but they were going through a divorce so he no longer lived there. She then tells us how she is a member of the church but has been less active for years. What? She invites us right in and introduces us to her 3 children. 2 of them are old enough to be baptized! She lets us share a message so we start talking about Jesus and how we can follow him when one of the boys asks his mom if he can be baptized! Yes, the 9 year old and 11 year old want to be baptized and we were able to set a baptism date with them! Sadly the 3 child is only 6 so she has a few more years! What a miracle! They are planning for baptism on July 30th and are all going to start coming to church again!

We did some service earlier this week and oh boy, let me tell you about it. I've never dry heaved so much than I did helping one of the elder's investigators box up their house to move. This lady is a complete hoarder and there were cockroaches all over and old food and it was dirty... Yucky! I literally wanted to throw up! So the story was this. The lady was getting evicted out of her apartment and has known about it for about a month now. She had not done anything because she had lost all of her important identification cards so she could go get a new apartment.. Last week Sister Ruesch and I went to her house, said a prayer with her and started rummaging through piles of junk looking for her information. Luckily I found it! She was then able to get an apartment across the street from where she was living now. By the time this all happened she had until Wednesday to be out and it was Friday. On Tuesday we showed up to help box some things up and she had not even started... Remember grandma's boobie trap room? It was like 10 times worse then that! She was wanting to keep everything even garbage. Sister Ruesch and Handy were nice and boxed up the garbage for her. I just couldn't do it though.. I was throwing things in the garbage bags as quick as I could and every time she was not looking!  It reminded me a lot of Grandma Webb. Haha Luckily she is all moved in across the street and the elders can continue teaching her! Lesson learned: I will never in my life become a hoarder and let myself get to that point!

Wednesday was transfers and we took Sister Handy to the Mandarin building so that she could meet her new companion. It was nice to see all the missionaries there. I got to talk to Sister McGregor and Sister Rigby and a few other missionaries that I never get to see. It was great! After that I don't know what hit me but I got very sick. We had a lesson with Nanny and I could hardly keep my head up to teach her. My head hurt, my stomach felt like knots were in it and I was just exhausted. The mission nurse loves me so much she gave me permission to have a sick day. I went home and slept for about 2 hours and then it was time to get back to work. My headache never went away but it's manageable.

Thursday we had a crazy day. We decided that we would go to the Dunn Ave. district meeting. So we left early and we drove about 40 minutes to get there to find out we went to the wrong building... So we then turned around and drove even more until we got to the Fort Caroline building about 10 minutes outside our own area.. We were pretty sad about all the miles we wasted. We basically are out of miles and there is still 2 weeks left of the month. It wouldn't be so bad but we live about 5 miles from our area and we still have 2 zone conferences this week and one of them is in Kingsland Georgia! Basically we will be biking the remainder of the month. After we finally got to the district meeting it was really good. I just love going to them. We did service for Nanny and her grand-daughter after that. It was good. We cleaned their living room up for them.

By Friday it was weekly planning and that is always long. Especially the first one of the transfer because we have to sit down and set up all of the trade offs we will be going on. We got all the ones figured out with the sisters in our zone when we got a call from president asking us if we would also be the sister training leaders in charge of planning and carrying out the other sister training leader trade offs with all the sister training leaders. Just when I thought things were getting easy I got more to worry about. But all is good. We planned them all and it's going to be great!

Saturday was Nanny's baptism! Words can't even describe how happy that day was! Nothing was better then seeing my 83 year old grandma follow our Savior Jesus Christ and get baptized! The service was very special. Nanny lives with her grand-daughter and 2 great-grandchildren who are all members. Her grand-daughter was able to give the talk on baptism and then Ethan her great-grandson gave the talk on the Holy Ghost! Nanny had to be baptized 3 times and I think the best part was when she went under the first time her foot came up and she didn't realize it so after she come back up she throws her hands in the air and starts to do a little victory dance! Sadly we had to dunk her again! Haha it was funny though!

Sunday was such a wonderful day! Nanny was able to get confirmed and receive the holy ghost and it was just beautiful! In her blessing she was promised to live long enough to get herself to the temple to take out her endowments! I may have cried a little! After sacrament I was asking her how she felt and just listening to her describe it brought tears to my eyes! She made me promise her that I will always keep in touch with her. She is determined that I am going to go home and instantly get married and have children. And she threatened me if I don't send her pictures of her grand-kids and of my husband then I'm in big trouble and she will come hunt me down! Haha 

After Nanny's confirmation our recent convert John was able to get the priesthood!  He was ordained to the office of Priest! It was great! He was just beaming from ear to ear! This week on Saturday he is going to be going to the temple to do baptisms! And next week hopefully Nanny is going to be going! It just makes me so happy!

So y'all will get a kick out of my next story. So you know how midgets kinda freak me out? I don't know why because I'm basically one.. Haha anyways, last week we were driving down the street and I saw this midget... No they were not driving a car for y'all who think you have heard this story before.. Haha they were in their front yard. Well, basically I've been keeping tabs on the house all week and finally last night I noticed a car in the driveway so we stopped. I taught my first midget! Sadly she wasn't interested but hey, who knows maybe someday she will join!

Well, that's basically all that has happened this week! My companion and I have realized that we are total opposites and we butt heads most of the time but we are working it out. Most companionships learn this very quickly but it has taken us an entire transfer because last week was the first full week we have spent together. We realized that we both suck at communication and we both have our own way of doing things which usually gets on the other one's nerves. But don't worry, all is well and we still love each other!

This is our last week with President and Sister Craig. They will return home to Utah next Tuesday. It's going to be so sad to see them leave. They will always have a special place in my heart but I am so excited to be getting President and Sister Lee. It's going to be good!

I guess I will just end by saying how grateful I am for my father. Who would have guessed that it would take someone 24 years to realize how great of a dad they actually have! My Heavenly Father has blessed me with such a wonderful dad! My mission has taught me so much and it has helped my eyes open to how much I truly love my dad! He is the best example of a father, a husband and best friend that I could have asked for! I'm not sure what I miss more... Teasing you to death, constantly trying to scare you and give you a heat attack or pretending to laugh at all of your corny jokes! When I go to family home evening in other people's homes it's just not the same without dad being there to say, "'Welcome family, to family home evening." Or constantly telling the kids that he use to be part dog in another life and and then when they go to feel the marks having him scare them with his bark! I miss him just whistling nonsense tunes. His collection of cans because he thought he would strike it rich someday if he recycles!  Him falling asleep during family prayer even if he was the one saying it! Haha I miss being able to go out to the garage and just spend the evening with my dad. But get real, how many times did that actually happen! I miss making fun of you in your sweat pant outfit and wearing your safari hats! Most of all, I miss being able to say "papa" with my puppy dog eyes and being able to get what ever I want! Every kid in our family thinks your the coolest man ever and looks up to you so much! You are a fatherly figure to more then just your kids. You have helped raise many of your nieces and even made impression on their children! I mean, every time Hunter comes he has to go out to the garage to see what Uncle Tom has for him in his locked up treasure chest! Haha I was reading a conference talk this week from this last conference in April on fathers. It was by Elder D. Todd Christofferson. I loved when he quoted Mosiah 4:14-15 it said, "Ye will not suffer your children that they go hungry, or naked; neither will ye suffer that they transgress the laws of God, and fight and quarrel one with another...“But ye will teach them to walk in the ways of truth and soberness; ye will teach them to love one another, and to serve one another.” My dad is the best example of this! You might have some strange ways of doing things but you have taught all of your children truth and to love and serve one another.  

In John 15:13 Jesus said, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”  Elder Christofferson said, Fathers manifest that love as they lay down their lives day by day, laboring in the service and support of their families. I'm so thankful that I have a wonderful father who loves me and  loves our family! You work so hard to support all of us in everything we do! I remember when I told you I wanted to go on a mission and you freaked out because I didn't plan properly but you never once complained or told me I couldn't go In fact you have worked twice as hard to support me and my adventure of sharing the gospel to Heavenly Father's children here in Florida. Anytime I have needed anything all I have had to do is ask. I know there have been times in my life that I have not shown the love and respect to you that I should have but I'm so blessed and lucky that I get to be sealed to you for eternity! I'm thankful for eternal families and the knowledge I have that we will be a forever family!  

Thank you for raising me with the right standards and morals to get me to where I am today! I could not be at the point I am today with out your love and support! I love you with all of my heart! And I leave you my testimony that I know that this church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is Jesus Christ's church and that it has been restored to the earth through a modern day prophet. I know that we have a prophet here upon the earth today to lead and guide us and as we listen to his counsel and direction we will be able to stay on the right course in life to make it back to our Heavenly Father. I have a testimony of the atonement of our Savior Jesus Christ. I know that he suffered bled and died for all of us and was resurrection so that we would be able to be forgiven of our sins and someday be resurrected just as he was. I know with out a doubt in my mind that the Book of Mormon is true. I know that as we make the effort and study from it everyday we will be blessed beyond measure and we will be able to find the answers we are seeking for in life. I have a testimony of eternal families and I know that because of the priesthood power I will be sealed to my family forever. I can't wait for the day when I find my Prince Charming and can go to the temple to be sealed to him for time and all eternity. I know that no one is perfect and we all make mistakes and go through rough patches in our lives but I promise you that as you turn to our loving Heavenly Father and seek his guidance, help and forgiveness he will support us and guide us to our full potential. He is always there he is just waiting for us to seek him out, to reach out and to take hold of his hand. I leave these things with you in the name of Jesus Christ amen.

I hope y'all have a wonderful week! I love y'all so very much and miss y'all like crazy!

Love,

Sister Webb

Pics from June 20, 2016

Service selfie with Sister Handy and Sister Ruesch!

Sometimes I crawl in bed and wait for Sister Ruesch to finish saying her prayers and end up falling asleep.. That happened this week and she thought I looked funny so she had to take a picture of it.  Apparently I like to wrap up in all my blankets like a cocoon and sleep! Haha

Me, Nanny and Sister Ruesch

 Me, Nanny, Sister Ruesch, and Elder Peterson. He was the lucky one who baptized Nanny!

Nanny and her two great-grand children Ethan and Fable. Nanny tells me everyday that I better get working on finding a man so I can give her some more great-grand kids! Haha 

 Leeann, Sister Ruesch, Me, Nanny and Jenny. Leeann and Jenny come out with us almost every night of the week. They are so sweet and will always have such a special place in my heart!

All the girls who were at the baptism. Leeann, Sister Ruesch, Me, Nanny, Autumn (nanny's granddaughter), Jenny, Kate, and Mama Cano. 

13 months down 5 to go! - June 13, 2016

Hello family!

I'm so glad to hear that everyone seems to be having a good week and enjoying summer vacation. Summer is finally starting to hit here. It's finally hit the point where 85 degrees feels nice and cool. Most days it hits 100 and doesn't cool down much from there. I sport the sweaty look most days. Strangely people still find me attractive sweaty or not. This week I receive another kiss from another strange random man that we met outside of John's apartments. I don't know how this keeps happening but I must find a solution. It seems like I just go to shake their hand and the next thing I know they are hugging me and kissing my cheek! Thankfully it's just my cheek! Haha Well this week is transfers but that's nothing new, I'm still in Hendricks and still have 3 more transfers here! And then guess what?  I'll be at my last transfer!! Crazy right? I only have 4 transfers until I'll be home! But enough about that. I don't want to get to trunky yet..

This week was good. It was the first week all transfer that I spent with Sister Ruesch. We didn't have a single trade off which was nice but we start them all back up this next week.

We had some awesome lessons this week! We set 2 more baptism dates and we bumped Nanny's baptism up to Saturday!!! I'm so excited! She is seriously the best! We had a lesson this week and she told us how she wants to get a hold of everyone who isn't coming to church just to tell them how happy the gospel makes her and ask why they don't come to church. Haha 

We had a competition this week of which companionship could find the most investigators. I thought we were on fire because we had 8 new investigators but we lost to the Spanish elders who managed to find 11.

I really don't have to much too say this week. I gave a talk in church yesterday. It was good. It was on member missionary work. If y'all aren't going out with the missionaries or opening your home up to have lessons there then I am calling y'all to repentance right now! You should be ashamed and call them up and get them in your home! Even if it is just for dinner. 

We have such a great ward and the members are finally warming up to us. Seriously though, who could resist spending an evening with me? I'm basically like the best person ever! Haha I basically don't have much more to report so I will talk to y'all next week!

Love and miss y'all!

Sister Webb

Pics from June 13, 2016

District photos

I was so excited and happy this week that finally after a year I found a taco stand and got to eat at it! It was so yummy!!! I love me so tacos! Definitely not as good as my favorite taco stand at home but it will do for the next few months!

John got baptized!! - May 30, 2016 (oops! out of order!)

Hello family!!

I'm going to try to make this a better email then the ones that I have been sending lately. It was a such a crazy week this week and ended with a bang! John got baptized!! It was such an amazing day but before I tell that story I will start back at the beginning of the week.

Monday, we had p-day. It was our district p=day and we just played a bunch of games and ate lunch at the church. After p-day we went out to work and we did a golden hour in hopes of finding someone.  Well, we knocked and knocked and finally we came to this cute mint green house and I was determined that this was the house we would find someone to be baptized. This cute little old lady answers the door and we start to teach her and she is like "are y'all Jehovah witnesses?"  We say no and and with a big smile on our face we say "we are from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints!" The lady just says "even worse.."  And then slams the door in our face! Haha it was probably the funniest moment ever!

On Tuesday we went out for the night and we started street contacting by the hospital. Well, we met this man named Santos who we started talking to and he spoke zero English. This made it a bit tricky but we managed to get his number. Luckily I remembered that much Spanish.  Well at the end of talking to him out of no where he just learned over and gave me this huge hug and before I could react I realized I was getting a kiss as well... Talk about awkward! I just wanted to die!

On Wednesday we went to the Mandarin district meeting! That was so much fun! It was so good to be back in my first area again. After district meeting all the elders and sisters went to this Mexican restaurant and ate lunch! It was yummy and fun! After that we had a trade off with the YSA sisters! Talk about a fun trade off! I went with Sister Ward and she is just the sweetest sister ever! It was fun!

We found some new investigators and taught some awesome lessons. We taught John to finish up all of his lessons for baptism.

Our trade off continued on to Thursday. It ended with a bang. And when I say that I mean literally. As we were driving to meet the other sisters to trade back we found out they got in a crash! Talk about ending a trade off on an awkward note.. We had to sit around for about an hour waiting for the cops to come. And then we had to fill out a bunch of paper work.. It was a long afternoon. Thursday night we went out with one of the young women and we had some more amazing lessons.

On Friday Sister Ruesch and I realized that we have to give a training on Tuesday in missionary leadership conference and we had nothing. So we decided to take our lunch time to started it. Well about 10 minutes into it we got a call from one of the sisters who was upset and in tears and was having a bunch of problems. So we ended our lunch then and drove straight to their apartment to have a companionship inventory with them and to solve the problem... Talk about awkward! We ended up having a 2 hour companionship inventory and talk all their problems out. It was super awkward. After that we went to the mission home and we started making a PowerPoint for our training that we still hadn't written. So we made a power point and then we rushed straight to the church to meet John and president for John's baptism interview.  Happy day, he passed!

Saturday we ran around like chickens who had their heads cut off getting things ready for the baptism. That afternoon we had interviews with President Craig. I love interviews. Mine usually go about like this. He asked me how my family is. I usually answer in one word of good. He asked me how I am, I usually reply the same way. We talk about my past companion. Yes, I talked all about Sister Olsen and how much I miss her and love her. He told me how awesome I am doing at being a sister training leader. He told me I need to do a trade off with another sister who is struggling. And then left me with a prayer.  This interview lasted a total of 10 minutes. Most missionaries are in there for at least 30 minutes.. 

After my interview it was time for John's baptism. The baptism was amazing! John was just beaming and glowing. He has completely turned his life around. He went from doing drugs and partying all the time to checking himself into rehab and starting his journey to turn his life over to God. We taught him and he loved everything and believed it all. His cousin came to the baptism and cried the whole time because the spirit was so strong. She loved it and so did John!

Sunday was a day of miracles. John got confirmed! He got his dog back so now he won't be lonely and we worked hard and accomplished so much!

So starting on Sunday night for our goals we still needed 3 new investigators, 3 other lessons, 1 baptism date and, 1 more progressing investigator and 1 recent convert or less active lesson. So we prayed and followed the spirit and we were able to accomplish all of that!  Heavenly Father just blesses those who work hard!

So today we had a sister's pday. It was a lot of fun! We still have not written our training but hey, we love waiting to the last minute to do things.

I hope y'all have a good week! Mine is going to be crazy busy again.  We have MLC where we will give our training tomorrow morning. We then have a trade off right after that with Sister McGregor and Sister Rigby! I'm so excited for that. We trade back from that on Wednesdays and start another trade off where I will be going to the Mandarin area for a day to help them because they are struggling. And then when we are done with that we have a trade off on Friday with another set of sisters. Talk about busy! But it will be great!

Anyways,

Love you all! And miss you so much!

Love,

Sister Webb

Pics from May 30, 2016

Trade offs with Sister Ward and Smith

Me and Sister Ward

Me and Sister Ruesch

Same picture

Trade off selfie

John's Baptism

 

This was at our sister's p-day! We celebrated Sister Smith's birthday!

Sister Nay and I found some awesome hats!

Sister Ruesch and I are just awesome!

No words can describe this photo