Landon’s Letter
Hey Family,
You would not believe this week. It has been such an awesome week! But first to you.
Rachel are you all horsed out? Hey don't worry it's not anyone elses fault that you can't go down, that is alot of time to spend down there and they just want you at home. Remember you are the only one left when Natalie leaves. Also I can understand about how church speakers can be boring. But that being said, Church is always a time to learn not something new. You have been in the church for 8 years and have continually learned since then about the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Restoration, and etc. Church is a time to learn a new way to apply these things in your life. Go to church with a question. In fact go in to Preach My Gospel and read in there. There is tons to learn. Someone else just might answer that question.
Natalie, How come I didn't get a letter from you this week? I hope work is continueing to go good and I hope that you are getting more and more excited for school? Hopefully you will have fun while you are there. That is the biggest thing you will only get out what you put in. So if you stay in your own little world and don't expand to more than that you will not get anything more then just yourself.
Annie, How is my favorite sister........Missionary! ya my favorite Sister Missionary. I hope that things are going great for you. Congrats on the Baptismal date that is very exciting. Keep me updated on how you are doing with everything. Keep that light of Christ in your eyes!
Megan & Justin, I hope all is going well for you! Megan howly busy. Mom told me about your shirts that you are making. That is really awesome. You will be and are blessed for fulfilling your callings. You are doing what you have been asked and for that you will receive many wonderful blessings in your life. Maybe not now but you will. I can promise that. Keep up all the hard work. Oh hey I still want pictures. Annie and I can't stress this enough!
Mom & Dad, Thank you for the support. I am really grateful to have wonderful parents like you in my life. I hope that I can be just as good as you two. I have so much to thank you for. As I have been out here I can see just how much you care for me not by just helping me out but also showing me by example the right way to go. I wish every kid could have parents like you. When I read that you named the house the Sunshine House I laughed. It's not yellow is it? and you didn't paint it that color did you? Ha Ha i'm messing but still is it yellow?
I love my family you are all a blessing in my life!
So this week was crazy and I have 10 minutes to explain. First off we went to Sudbury for interviews with President Scott. He is such an inspired man. He is just so awesome. He actually came up to North Bay to give a talk. We didn't get to hear it :( but they said that it was really good! Remember what I told you last week about no investigators? We'll right now we have 3 and 1 got baptized. Ya the very next day, we met with him once and he was so ready to get baptized that we dunked him the next day. (he needed to be rebaptized because his baptismal date was missing from his records). So ya a baptism which always lifts our spirits. I have learned so much from this week. We started out with the same bad drought as the wek before. Our numbers were 0's for the first days. Then after we went to Sudbury we exploded, 1 baptism & confirmation, 1 other investigator with a date (8 year old boy), 3 new investigators (picked up another), 2 refferals, and a total of 16 lessons this week. Our goal as a mission is 20 per week. But still pretty good. We are excited!
We have 3 or 4 families that have children 8 years of age that need to be baptized and we have a couple of other people that could be great to work with. These are pretty much gifts from God to us. But really they are children of our Heavenly Father that need to be baptized and fallow the Gospel.
We continue to work hard by trying to bring others to Christ.
Sorry I have to go but remember I love you all and am so grateful for all of you in my life.
Love your favorite Elder, Son, and Brother,
Elder Landon Webb
Annie’s Letter
when mom told he the new house was called the Sunshine house I just laughed, like Landon. haha. I though "the sunshine room wasn't enough? He needed a whole house?" bahaha. I'm glad that everything is going well and that you have a renter! And that you will possible bet getting Sister Shelton's house...that's awesome! I think renting is much better than stocks as well. Good luck!
Mom you asked about dinners. We have a dinner calendar that is always full! We have dinners every night. sometimes 3 a night! One day last week we had 3. One (actually lunch) with the ward mission leader, Brother Vandiford then we went to Sister Black's and she has us cook (Sister Finefeuiaki and I made delicious fried chicken, mashed potatoes, country grave... mmm), and then we had dinner at an investigator's house. Marcia's. I love Marcia. But none of us felt very good after this night. (remember she is the house with catpoop and cockroaches) We had dinner again with them again this week though and it was great. Vegetable soup. It was actually REALLY good :-)
Thank you so much for sending me letters! I did get one from Mom on Saturday and I look forward to getting more this week! But...don't send any more letters to Derr until I tell you if I'm being transferred or not. I will find out tomorrow night if I am being transferred or not. So I will tell you next PDay :-)
sorry to scare you all last week... I really didn't mean to. We decided to go to the Temple after the previous P-Day so we weren't able to email until...Thursday. And we only write letters on PDay as wel (there just isn't time!) My pains are still very active. and spreading. They are in my wrist, ankles, fingers, toes, knees, shoulders, and now moving into arms, calves, chest, and back. Not all of them all the time but enough that it drives me crazy. and hurts. It's just like... not like my muscles hurt but like my bones hurt. I don't know. But I don't like it. C'est la vie. I'm doing okay, I am still able to work despite the ouchieness. :-) No worries.
hutch and carrie are coming! I'm so jealous!! Please take lots of pictures of them and their girls and henry and tell them all hi and i love them! I'm bummed I won't be there to see them! But I'm sure they'll understand :-)
Rachel I am so proud of you for almost being done with your Personal Progress, that's awesome! Congrats girl keep up the good work! I can't wait for you to have a beautiful necklace too!
Also, we get to go to the Temple quarterly
Landon- CONGRATS ON YOUR BAPTISM BUD! AND MORE INVESTIGATORS...THAT'S SO AWESOME! Your week sounds incredible! The Lord really blesses you when you do what you are supposed to be doing. I am so excited that you have had such a wonderful week!
So let me tell you about my week.
This week has been super incredible! The Lord is very involved in the work in Springfield!
Most importantly: We met with Josh twice this week! We dropped in on his family on Friday and it was not super awesome. We surprised his mother... she was smoking and just stared at us when we walked in. I feel so bad for her. She is going through a lot right now. She is off work because of a surgery, her work is not paying her what they are supposed to while she is on leave, they are struggling with finances especially because they have had to buy some plane tickets for their kids, and she has cancer. She is just feeling really overwhelmed which is why she went back to the cigarettes. But she was just bawling because she knows she shouldn't have smoked and she is just overwhelmed, but she is strong and I know she can get through this! Sister Finefeuiaki and Teina taught Josh on Saturday and they said it went really well! Josh is praying about a baptismal date. We wanted him to pick his own because we extended one and then it got postponed and then another but he was still in Arizona that day. But he is still progressing and it's just going great! :-)
We had 3 lessons with Marcia. She is just growing so much and learning so much. She has a testimony and she is sticking to it! When we asked her what she read she just goes into it. She really is reading and picking up a lot of good things! One thing I really love about Marcia is that she is working so hard to turn her life around. Not just spiritually (although that is most important) but we have been doing service with her to help her get her house in order. Every time we come over she says "look at what I did..." and shows us the cleaning/sorting/organizing she did since we were there last. She really is trying! She is going to miss Sister Va'asili though. They really connected very well.
We also had a lesson with Heather and Don this week! Sister Finefeuiaki taught that one with a member while Sister Va'asili and I went tracting. She said it went very well. I am concerned however because it has been a while since they came to church. Excuses, excuses, excuses. We have the kids, we were out of town, we didn't have gas..." :-( They have been progressing so well and they can see the blessings that the gospel will bring and they want them... I just don't know how to get them back into coming to church. Any suggestions?
Braelynn... we had 3 appointments with her this week but they were not home for any of them. That was really disappointing. But she did come to Zoey's baptism yesterday and to church so that's good. Hopefully we will be able to see her this week. She was on date for the 15 but that didn't happen. Bummer.
Saturday was a great day! We were able to go out, as you know, with Teina Hazleton. It was so good to get to know her! I briefly met her the day I got here and she left...but it was fun to be able to work with her. We made sure we had a marvelous plan and great backups! We wanted to be sure we worked hard all day! We had 3 member present lessons and an RCLA. Plus we had some great tracting time! 2-2-5 is the best! 2 of us would go to visit the less active member (most of them weren't home or had moved) and the other 2 would start 2-2-5ing and then the other two would join in the tracting fun! It worked great! We were able to do a lot of work!
Yesterday we had Zoey ‘s baptism! She is 8 years old, daughter of a less active member. Because of Zoey her grandma is active (and soon to be marrying a very nice member I think) her grandpa is active, her great grandpa is active (actually baptized her) and her great grandma is active as well! This little girl has had such a far reaching effect on her family! Her mom has even been to church twice (which is a super big deal!) So we are very excited about her and the wonderful example she has been and will continue to be to her family.
As for Sister Webb, she's doing pretty well. I am going to miss Sister Va'asili when she leaves to go home this week! But I am excited to keep the work progressing in Springfield...or wherever I go. I had a wonderful study this morning all about marriage/families. Elder M. Russell Ballard's talk about finding the lost one... I forget it's title...from last conference... WOW! It's basically amazing. Read it when you get a chance. I absolutely loved it! Then I was reading in True to the Faith and every topic that I read about today said something about marriage/family. It was a very wonderful study this morning. I love personal study. It is always so inspired.
Oh, about the subject line... we went to Young's dairy today with a member and I got ice cream there called cow patty. It was SUPER DELICIOUS! It is such a fun place! Look it up! youngsdairy.com we had a great time! Sorry this letter is crazy random and nuts I am out of time! I'll tell you more later!