Thank you for your e-mails and encouragement and love and support. I am so grateful to have that in my life. Few people do. Also, HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHARLOTTE AND CLAIRE!!!!!!!! (tomorrow) I love you both so much and I am proud of all of your achievements and progress in school, life, and most important the gospel. I hope you have an awesome birthday :)
A lot happened this week, so hopefully I can manage to communicate it all. I don't have any pictures to send, but there should be a few on the blog with me in it.
On Tuesday we went on exchange with the Sunset elders, so I got to spend a day with Elder Schaffner again, on bikes :) It was a fun "reunion" since I trained him. He's doing very well and loving Tacoma. He's lost a lot of weight too, which he's really excited about.
On Friday President and Sister Weaver took us, the Bateman house (mansion) crew, out to dinner. Us, the APs, and the Office Elders. We went to Boathouse 19 this fancy restaurant on a dock on the Puget Sound. It has a nice view of the Tacoma Narrows bridge. I felt all special to be with them at dinner. This is the best mission in the world. And I love the Weavers, they are so much fun. President Weaver is really a funny guy.
There was also the Silverdale fireside last night. Elder Anderson served his first 3 transfers in Silverdale, so he got to see some familiar faces. That makes the 9th of the 10 missionary musical firesides for this year. The last one is in Olympia on June 22nd. (See Tommy conducting Sunbeam song - Note Sec 7-12)
After Centralia Musical Fireside |
From Friday afternoon to Sunday evening (at the Silverdale fireside) we also had a temporary companion, Elder Augustine. He had to come to Tacoma for a doctor's appointment and he's serving currently up in Port Angeles. So we had three of us for a few days. It was very fun.
Friday morning we met with a new investigator named Junior. He has had a long career in the military (there are a lot of military people in the Tacoma - Lakewood area). He has a lot of doubts and questions about God because of the bad things he's seen and been through, but he's very open. He accepted a baptism date for June 21st. But he wasn't at church... We'll see where that goes.
Another new investigator this week is Renee. She's this sweet older lady who's lived in this old house in Tacoma for years. We met her knocking doors. Well, we met all of these people knocking doors, ha, ha. She had this tent thing outside her house with a bunch of old junk in it that needed to be moved. So we set up a time and went over and did about an hour and a half of service :) She was so very grateful for it and told us she really wanted to hear what we have to say. Perfect :) So we invited her to attend a baptism service on Saturday (there were 4 baptisms in the Zone just that evening, so we had some options! One was with sisters in our ward, and he was confirmed Sunday). She came to a baptism at 8:00 and loved the feeling there, and the nice people. We took her on a short church tour afterwards. At first she said she would try and make it to church next week. We talked about the sacrament, and a church service. By the end she told us, "I think I really want to come tomorrow." And she did! She loved church! She is also preparing for a June 21st baptism. A lot of these are tentative, but so was Syreeta when we started and as they progress in faith, they start to become converted. So we are extremely excited about what is to come this month!
The crazy news came Sunday, third hour. To all our surprise we were combined in third hour and the whole stake presidency is there. They changed the boundaries of the Soundview ward!! They took out a chunk of Soundview which contained the Betteridge families (our former Bishop and his brother who is in the stake presidency) and the Bateman family (our assistant ward mission leader) and the Wells family (former stake president, mission president, and temple president) and a few other strong families. They all live in the same area. In fact, this is where we live in the mansion. The Bateman family owns our house and donated it to the mission. That area is now part of the Highland Hills ward. They also called Brother Bateman to be the Bishop of the Highland Hills ward! The members had a good attitude about the boundary changes. Unfortunately we lost also Avery, our investigator with 5 kids. But we will pass them off to the wonderful missionaries in the Highland Hills ward. The work is pressing ONWARD!!
Lastly, an exciting update from Steilacoom. I talked to the Steilacoom sisters. Sister Sandau is training her new missionary there from Taiwan. Her first language is Chinese. President Weaver asked them to visit Haopeng and Tiffany and they are in the process of teaching them again. They told me that a few weeks ago, they got married!!! They will be coming again to church soon. Thanks God :)
Love you all,
Elder Webber
Scriptures:
Helaman 5:12 (we love scripture mastery! A popular one, but a good one, teaching us that our foundation is Christ. Satan's trials will come, no doubt, but when we are well grounded in gospel soil, we cannot fall.)
Hebrews 12:1-2,6-9 (lay aside our sins, run with patience. I love that. Think about it. Run with Patience. And looking unto Jesus, again our rock and Redeemer and Savior.)
I tried to then find a scripture from each book that starts with "H" but could find no helpful scriptures from the books of "Hosea," "Habakkuk," or even "Haggai"... oh well.
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