March 28, 2016

Hello Brothers and Sisters,

How goes it? Life is well down here in the projects. So hopefully this email will be a bit better for yall cuz I wrote some notes down.

So this last week was Holy Week here in the Philippines and since there are mostly only catholics here there was a lot of celebration. Lots of graven images, lots of chanting and people getting nailed to a cross. Im sure Jesus really loved it! (sorry if any catholics are reading this, if you want to learn more, contact the LDS missionaries in a area closest to you:) ) But yeah there was really just so many people in the streets and since the Philippines has no laws against sound, all the catholic churches have speakers on the outside so whenever they sing or preach, the whole town is lucky to hear it:) 

But the week started off last Pday where we took a senior couple to look at a house we had found to move into. They thought it was alright (but we didint end up picking that one, tell ya about that later) But after that they took us out to lunch for my birthday which was very nice. THen we just had work the rest of the night. So on tuesday my bday!! That was an okay day! We had to wake up early for our district meeting all the way down in Baliwag so we woke up at about 530. Turns out our water wasnt working... So being the "Mr. fix it" man I am, I went to investigate the problem. Turns out one of the pipes outside like broke off the connector thingy. BUT DONT WORRY. Good ole Mac Webb fixed her right up. Then we headed down to our district meeting. After District meeting we all ate at a pizza place and Elder Kirifi and split a big pizza which was way good. I havent had good pizza in a while. So later on in the night is when it gets good... So a couple weeks ago I gave a member some money to cook us 4 (Markham, Salazar, Kirifi, and me) a "special" dinner... So some of you may know that the Philippines is notorious for eating.... dog... Well I may or may not have paid a member to get some dog and cook it up for my birthday dinner. So yeah it was pretty good. I recommend it:) So as most have you have read we have a lot of less actives in our area. So our wednesday consisted mostly of just LA lessons. It was a busy day but its good because we are starting to have LA come back to church:) Hahaha so thursday not much happened but we had 2 encounters with some drunk guys. The first one was pretty funny, we were just walking down this path and this guy came out of a gate and just randomly started apologizing to us, and so we stood there and talked to these 2 drunk guys for a bit and then one of them whips out a brand new cigarette and then we were leaving and said (in tagalog) Wait! Before we go, I will throw that cigarette away for you! and he says "okay okay okay" THen takes a big hit and he gives it to me and then I just threw it in the water hahaha. It was so funny but he thanked me for it soo I guess I just saved 13 minutes of his life statistically. Friday kinda sucked haha. It was a struggle. We worked hard but had little results, We just tried to find some new peoople to teach. On Saturday we made our trip up to Santa Ines which is a far away place in our area where most of our actives members live so we taught them and did our home teaching because we have families in our branch to home teach.

So maybe I have wrote this in the past but I dont remember. But we have been looking for a new apartment to move into. We have been looking for like 7 weeks. And just the other day we found a WAY nice apartment. A member owns it and they offered to rent it to us cheap. and.... We got it! We signed the lease today sooo we are moving next week. I show you some pictures next week if my camera gets fixed. Oh yeah my camera broke. But yeah the house is cool.

On sunday I gave a talk in church. I was surprised on how well it went. I went 13 minutes without even looking at a paper, and it was in all Tagalog. I actually was really bold in everything I said because our branch is putting up a weak effort in helping out the missionaries. So I gave a good talk about the Book of Mormon and sharing it with others and I was satisified:) 

So yeah there is my week. Hope you all enjoyed it. If you didint I am sorry. I cant change it. TIME FLIES. Love ya all

WEBB OUTTTTTT

March 20, 2016

I have a bunch of cool pictures to send you guys because we went up to the mountains earlier today buttttt I forgot my camera sooo dang it.

Holy week is here... Holy week is crazy in the Philippines. I kid you not that Catholics here crucify real people... They dont die but they nail them to a cross and then if they do that there sins are forgiven for a whole year.. Yeah pretty messed up right?? Sad stuff.

So we had some good success a couple weeks ago with the baptisms but now its back to the GRIND on finding new people to teach. We did a lot of work just finding a lot of people this week but we kinda got rejected a lot haha. But since I am with E. Kirifi we just make fun out of it. We did have some luck this week with less actives coming to church and thats always great to see people coming back to church. Kirifi and I made a big mistake on sunday though hahaha... So we had these two less actives boys walk into church that we love, they are like our little homies. So they came into church and we were so happy. THen they said hey lets go get our cousin (also LA) and we said "you guys just go we have to go get someone else" So they went off. But once they left I thought to myself oh crap they probably wont come back. But we had trust that they would. So church started and they werent there. So I said to Kirifi, crap man they didint come back so he said "okay lets go get them" So we walked out quick to go to the house around the corner to get them. So we went and we saw them and they were bringing there whole cousins less active family. So Kirifi and I booked it back to the church. Buttt we missed the sacrament... Man I felt so bad. But in our defense we were going to gather the lost sheep;)

That actually sounds worse now that I typed it out... 

But yeah its getting pretty hot here. I kinda hate going out right at 12 because gosh its just humid and hot. But I kinda love it. I always walk outside everytime we work and I say "Ahhhh looovvee this heat" Then I love it all day. I actually do love it though. It really beats MN.

We have a couple of progressing investigators that are doing well. They are both youth age. Annabelle, and Patrica. Annabelle was supposed to be baptized this upcoming saturday but we felt that we needed to move it because she is not quite ready for it yet. But she is getting close. Patrica is a part member and her and her Grandma are starting to come back to church which is awesome.

I promise next week I will have a more detailed letter. I will take notes every day on what happened. 

I love you all.

ps I found my camera

March 13, 2016

Hey..........

Well I guess I am on too early for yall... Cuz I have 1 email and thats from Elli. So thats why she is my favorite...

Haha but its okay I understand you guys are busy and its probably too cold for you guys to type over there!;)

So it is the beginning of a new transfer! Man its my 7th transfer already. Time is flying. So I am still in the same place, San Miguel and it is going great!! I have a new companion Elder Kirifi and I love this guy he is awesome! He is from New Zealand and he is a great missionary! We both want to work hard and we both have the same vision for the area so things are going great so far. The only weird thing is that he is my first foreigner companion. Its kinda funny how different the people treat you here when they see 2 foreigners instead of one Filipino and American. But Elder Kirifi and I are both pretty good at Tagalog so we dont have a huge problem with it. But the work has been a lot of fun because Elder Kirifi and I get a long so well so the days kinda just fly by and we have a lot of fun. 

Since I have been here we havent really had any meetings with the branch which kinda sucks. But yesterday all four of us had a meeting with the branch president to kinda sort things out and try to get a new Branch Ward Mission Leader (because our current one is less active) But yeah we set some way good goals for this transfer to make it good.

Just these last few days we have found some solid new investigators. 

So right now we have 3 progressing investigators and they are all youth. I like teaching and baptizing youth but Elder Kirifi and I want to find some families this transfer and some more older and mature investigators just to add some balance to our branch because we have a lot of youth. So the new investigators we have found have been a family that is related to less actives and this other cool guy who is 25 has a wife and kid and he grew up in Japan. So we are finding some cool people.

But yeah the mission keeps getting better. Its a fun time, lots to do, lots to say. 

I gotta keep my tagalog up haha. Most people would think thats all we would be speaking but English is a very common language here so its really easy to speak english and a lot of people can understand it. 

I hope you all have a great week and are having lots of fun in the promised land of the world! I love you all:)

Elder Webb

Holy crudddd its hottttttt

YOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Magandang umaga sa inyo lahat!!! Grabe soooooobrang mahinit dito ngayon. Parang mamamatay na ako.

Yeah its waaayyyyyyy hot here now hahaha. Summer is coming and it is just soo humid. Man I have not experienced this yet. I am just so freakin glad I am not in the city because it would be ten times worse. So this was a really fun last week. Elder Ubias one of my kabahays (roomate) is gone now. He went home today so we did a lot of fun stuff this last week before he left. The best part about this week was our 3 baptisms we had. Mar, John Carlo, and Rovin. The other companionship in my ward which are my kabahays also had 3 baptisms. So that means our ward had 6 baptisms! Pretty awesome eh? They were all youth but they were all strong converts and they really make a great addition to the youth in our ward. 

Too be honest I do not have a ton to say this week. So hopefully the pictures will make up for it.

So we had transfer announcements yesterday and I am staying up here in San Miguel. Which I like it here so thats good. But my companion Elder Lorenzo is leaving. So that means I need a new comp... 

......this is where it gets good.......

So in my last area in Caloocan I had a few different kabahays. Elder Bermoy, Elder Christensen, Elder Kirifi, and Elder Guiellermo. Elder Kirifi was like my favorite kabahay and like my best friend in the mission. I went on exchanges with him once as well and we had a lot of fun and worked hard. So the good news is 

ELDER KIRIFI IS MY NEW COMP!!!!

Man when I heard that news I was soooo excited! Man it will be so awesome to have a foreigner companion. I love the filipinos but having someone outside the philippines as a comp will be a fun change. I am worried about my Tagalog though ahaha because we will be speaking English a lot so I will probably slow down my Tagalog a bit but I will keep doing my best at it of course. 

So yeah that has been my week. Today we arent gunna do anything too special, maybe just go eat, shop, maybe go pick some mangos sooo yeah!

Love you all so much!

Elder Webb

February 29, 2016

Na sa iyo na ang lahat, minamahal kita agad

Hey what up mga kaibigan.

SOOOOOOOO this week was good. Had a lot of great experiences. So I might just cut the small talk and jump right into that. Sooo the good stuff started this last Wednesday. I did exchanges with Elder Uhler from Virginia. He is a cool guy, he is still in his training so he has been in the field for about 3 months, so he didint really know Tagalog that well so I was kinda in charge of the speaking most of the time, which was cool. It wasnt hard at all. I finally feel comfortable speaking, I am not perfect but its still good. But yeah exchanges were really fun with him, we had this cool experience while we were working. So we were looking at our ward directory trying to find a less active. (thats a big problem in the Philippines, less actives) Our ward has about 500 less actives... So yeah we were looking and we asked this lady at this little store and she said she had no clue so I kinda just looked up and saw their neighbors house and the number 102 and then I looked at the paper again and I saw 102 and turns out a different LA lived at that address so we went and knocked on the gate and a guy came out and I asked him if the LA lived there and he said no not anymore so then I said oh okay, but were missionaries and then he said come on in haha so we went in and taught him. He is way awesome and has a wife and a kid. Turns out the LA used to live on their lot but she moved away but he knows a lot about the church but he was never taught by the missionaries. So we taught him and it was a great lesson. Then a couple days later we went back to teach him and he had read the intro of the book of mormon and took notes haha dang it was cool. 

As a district leader I have the pleasure of interviewing the candidates for baptism by the missionaries in my district. So I had 3 interviews last saturday and it was a really cool experience and the spirit was really strong. One in particular was this 12 girl who is a part member of an inactive family. She is really special, every sunday she comes to church by herself and stays the whole time. In the interview she was bearing her testimony and she began to cry, and I started to tear up a bit then as she continued I was so amazed by her testimony that I began to have tears too. It was really one of the coolest moments of my mission. 

So in our ward we have 4 missionaries and the 3 I just interviewed are from the other companionship but me and my comp have 2 investigators that were interviewed as well, so this upcoming saturday on march 5 we have 5 baptisms in our ward so that is awesome! Missionary work is hard but fun.

Earlier today we had an activity with our whole zone and we just hung out and did an obstacle course. I cant believe how out of shape I am hahaha. I almost collapsed. It was the hardest I had worked out in my whole 8 months hahah man i was weird. Its like I am an old man. Oh yeah I have to shave like every other day now. I am man now. 

But hey I love you guys!! Keep it realllllllllllzzzzzzzzz

Love EW   

A visit from President Russell M. Nelson and Sister Nelson!

February 21, 2016

Hey everyone! 

Hows everyone doing? Awesome. So yeah this week was really interesting but it was way fun. A lot going on and we were super busy. So people were saying they like the the day to day thing so maybe I will do that again:)

Monday- Monday again was just the pday and we kinda just hung around, read, it was nice. Had a couple of lessons at night then went to bed nothing too special.

Tuesday- Today was District Meeting, it was my first time giving a workshop. Because I am the District Leader I have to give workshops to my district. So my topic was better understanding the God Head so we can help our investigators become more converted. But I was focusing on the Holy Ghost. I realized that here in the Philippines that everyone believes in God but they all believe that he is only one. But its important for us as missionaries to teach and testify that God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost are all different and they all have different roles but have one purpose. So thats what I did and it was pretty good.

Wednesday- Today we had exchanges with the zone leaders which was pretty cool. I went there Tuesday night and slept there. We spent the whole day in the Baliwag area which is the zone leaders area and it was cool to see another part of the zone. I went with Elder Goodwin and he is a cool guy he has been our for a while I think he goes home in November. 

Thursday- today we had weekly planning and then we had a cool service project at members house. (thats the picture of me on that termite hill) The project was just to take down termite hills hahas, it was actually pretty hard. It took us like 2 hours to get one. The filipinos have this urban legend thing that some believe that dwarves live inside the termite hills, sometimes they are black sometimes they are white. If they are white then they are good and give you treasure and if they are black they are mean and hurt you. Hahah kinda funny. So yeah we tore down some hills. Then on the way back we took some pictures in this really cool field and thats where I took the picture with the Carabao. (the black cow looking thing). Then that night we got ready for our big day on friday.

Friday- This was the day we got to hear President Russel M Nelson speak. So my area is like 3 hours away from where we went to hear him speak, so early in the morning our whole zone piled into a jeepney and we took off. So we got to the meeting place at this HUGE chapel. Bigger than anyone I have ever seen in the states. It was 3 floors, and yeah it was just big and awesome. So there we got to take a picture with our whole mission and President Nelson. So we gathered into the culteral hall and got our spots then waited for President Nelson to come in. When he came in everyone got silent and it was just so cool. I I felt the spirit when he came really strong and I just thought, "Wow, I wonder what he has seen" But yeah it was just really cool. Then we all got to shake his hand and gather in the sacrament hall. I was looking at him a lot and he just looked kinda strange, just looked like he wasnt in this world. But when he got up to speak and his whole demeanor changed. And he was funny, happy, and just spoke so well. He called up our APs and told them to ask him questions and he just based all he talked about from those questions. It was amazing that he talked with such power for 2 hours having no preparation. He talked a lot about repentance and how a lot of people focus on the PEN in repentance, the penalty, penitentiary haha, stuff like that haha. But then he broke down what repentance really was. It was way good. Then he told the story of Gideon in the Bible, in Judges. At the end of all the tests he was left with 300 men and they fought 150,000. That ratio turns out to be one man against 500. So he related that to our membership in the church. We have 15 million but then he said for the sake of numbers lets just say we have 14 million active, and we have 7 billion on earth. So that ratio turns out to 1 to 500 as well. Then President Nelson said "its just perfect" and everyone laughed haha. But yeah it was funny but true. He said that Lord wants us to do impossible things. That is how its supposed to be. It was awesome.

Saturday- Today was just a regular work day. But I had a cool story to end off that day. So it was getting to be about 7:30 and we were going to go to our last appointment at a recent convert. We had plans to go to this other investigator Do-dong but we didint have time. So we called the rc and told her we were coming but she said she wasnt home so we headed to the investigator instead. So the investigators name is Do-Dong and he has a hard life, he works as a truck driver and makes 135 pesos a day which is like 3 american dollars. And he works 13 hours a day. But he really really wants to come to church but he just cant because of work. But when we got there we were just talking to him the first few minutes someone knocked on his little bamboo door. It was his brother in law Ramil who looked at us and said youre mormons right? We said yeah, and he said yeah I was baptized there but I just moved here and I havent been to church in a long time. So it was just really cool that we met him there at that time. So we were talking to Do-Dong about hopefully finding a new job so he could come to church and he agreed so were gunna help him find a new job. But yeah it was also way cool because Ramil came to church the next day for the first time in a long time.

So that was my wrap up for the week. It was a good one. Hopefully I didint bore you guys. I love all you and hope you have a great week:)

Love Elder Webb