Oh Be Wise, What Can I Say More

This week was just incredible!   Jacob 6:12 simply says, "Oh be wise, what can I say more?"  I feel like I could just leave it at that and say love you all, have a good week. But so much happened this week and I learned so much!

First, I have always known in my heart that this church is true. I have just always believed it. I've also believed Christ is real and near me. But this week I came to KNOW that Christ is there.  And I know with even more surety that this church is true.

On Monday we had the special opportunity to meet Elder Cook and hear him speak.  At the end, he bore His apostolic testimony saying, “I know His voice, and I know His face." His testimony touched the center of my heart and I have been thinking about what he said all week!  The next day, my mission president shared a scriptures with me:  D&C 93:1  “Verily, thus saith the Lord: It shall come to pass that every soul who forsaketh his sins and cometh unto me, and calleth on my name, and obeyeth my voice, and keepeth my commandments, shall see my face and know that I am;"

This is a very sacred but real promise. I never realized or felt the truth of this before. You really can develop this kind of a relationship with God. I haven't imagined getting to the point in my life where I could “see [His] face” or hear His voice, and while I haven’t had this happen to me literally, perhaps we can receive this promise in powerful, personal ways as we serve others and watch Chirstlike people around us. 

As I have tried this week to find ways to come unto Christ, I have felt his presence more than at any time in my life. My prayers are becoming something more than just a prayer.  My scripture study is more than just reading the Book of Mormon.

A wise person once explained that I love my family because I know them and I've developed real relationships by learning about them, listening to them, and spending time with them. How can we truly love the Savior if we don't know Him?  So this week I've been trying to get to know Him, to recognize His voice in my head compared to my own voice, and recognize His love that He shows me every second of everyday.

Everything I'm doing on my mission is helping me more easily and quickly develop this relationship with Him.  It’s difficult to express in words the love and closeness I've felt with Christ and Heavenly Father this week. I know we can all have this! Find Him in your life, talk to Him in your prayers. I testify He's listening and His voice in your mind will become louder and more clear.  You know how to develop this relationship now, so do it. Be wise, what can I say more? (:

We also had the opportunity to hear form Elder Cook and his wife at a special stake conference.   They both emphasized the importance of teaching the gospel in the home and making your home a safe place for your children. It was super touching to hear some of their experiences that came through keeping the gospel the center of their home. I know from growing up in a gospel centered home, and teaching the gospel to others, that there is nothing more important than building a strong foundation for people who are young in the gospel. That foundation is everything for their future, so parents, KEEP GOING! Don't give up and just have faith that the foundation you build will hold up the walls they will start to build. 

We called our old investigator, Sara, the other night to see if we could visit her before sister Gomez goes home, and she was not very nice. She said some really rude things that were hurtful.  She questioned our love for her and our love for God.  She said she wanted to see us acting on what we were teaching her.  We felt we had been acting out of love and trying to exemplify what we were teaching her.  We were able to stand as witnesses of God and tell her about the sacrifices we were making to be in Hong Kong by serving as full-time missionaries.  We also shared our witnesses with her of the truthfulness of this gospel.  Sadly, she was not able to receive what we were trying to tell her and we left in tears.  It was really hard.

Afterward though, we talked about what had happened.  We both agreed that our faith hadn't moved.  Because of a strong foundation that we had both been given from years of living in gospel centered homes, we “ . . . could not be shaken", as the Book of Mormon prophet, Jacob teaches.  So to all the parents out there,  KEEP BUILDLING THAT FOUNDATION AND BE AN EXAMPLE TO YOUR KIDS OF HOW TO STAND FIRM AND UNSHAKEN FROM THE WORLD! 

Love you all so much! Praying for you all!

Love, Sister Webb

An awesome family in our ward that fed us dinner

English Class

Our sweet investigator, Shelly

Sister Gomez's birthday celebration with our district

It's crooked, but we decorated the apartment and threw confetti all over her when she walked in on her birthday!

My roomates.  Love them!

The Snowman In The Snowglobe

I have thought a lot about skyping my family last week.  It was so fun! I loved seeing the family and hearing about all of their lives. The next day though, I felt like that snowman from the short Disney Pixar film. If you haven’t seen it, find a way to watch it (: It’s about this little snowman in a snow globe.  He’s trying to escape, and when he finally gets close to escaping the globe, he finds himself right back where he started. That’s how I felt after Skype. It was like a little escape, then we got back to work and I was back in the snow globe. But I think God noticed how down I was feeling because he started throwing miracles at me like nothing else!

Wednesday we went to Crossroads where we do service each week.  They took just a handful of us in a car to this place to paint fences. The miracle in this is that it was a change from the “normal”.  I got to ride in a car! I haven't been in a car since my first night in Hong Kong driving from the airport to Kowloon. So that was super fun and exciting AND we got to paint! Who doesn't have fun when they're painting?!

 Then I was able to pass off two parts of “language pass off’s” in one day!  Probably doesn't mean much to you guys, but that was a miracle. I was able to remember so much vocab and grammar and the people who passed me off were very impressed! So yay!!

 Then the day before that I was on exchanges with one of the sisters I knew in the MTC and we had to teach a lesson!! Neither of us can understand or speak very much Cantonese, but the Spirit was SO SO present in that lesson and the gift of tongues was given to us as we attempted to speak and as our investigator spoke to us!  Yes we struggled, but it was a powerful learning experience to just really rely wholly upon God and trust in His ability to help us.  We know He understands and can speak Cantonese perfectly, so we patiently waited for Him to help us.  (:

 We also had a Korean activity that we and a few ward members put together for the ward, investigators, and less actives.  The turnout was a miracle! So many people came, and we were able to get phone numbers, lessons scheduled, and invite people to church!  Its success alone was a miracle and it was a super fun evening, so that was a tender mercy as well.   At the activity we learned a little taekwondo, Korean, and ate Korean food. Over all it was a good week to be a missionary!

 Then I had a moment to sit down and study a bit, and read some really hopeful words. I was reminded that we don't know what will happen 7 years from now, or even 4 months from now. If we're being honest we don't even know everything that will happen before the week ends. But God does know. That’s where our faith needs to take over. We need to show God that we have faith by not stopping.  To have fear for the future is telling God we don’t trust His plan for us. His plan is happiness not fear.

One of my favorite scriptures about not fearing is 2 Timothy 1:7:  “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power and of love, and of a sound mind." How powerful!  Through God we can have power and have a clear conscious. Yes, the future can look scary. This week I felt that fear really strong, especially on Tuesday, but when I was able to study the scriptures and these wise words, I was filled with hope and happiness. I know that as we turn to the future with eyes of hope, focusing on what we CAN do, we will have overwhelming peace and blessing without number.

I love you all so much and I hope this next week all of your days are filled with miracles like mine was.  It makes you realize that God really is in the details of our lives!

Love you all!

Love Sister Webb

All of these apartment pictures were taken right after we deep cleaned!!

Sister Rodriguez and I  on exchanges.  Yes, we taught a lesson in Cantonese and neither of us speak it well, but we were helped!.  We rewarded ourselves with M&M pancakes.  

We are trying to get you to think this is all sweat.  Reality is that we layed down on the grass to do situps and the grass was wet!

This planning session took us 3 hours.  We went a little crazy!!

Walk With Christ!

I LOVED talking to my family!  It was fun to see Jessica on the other side of the camera and it was fun to laugh with them!  I told them that I’m understanding about 20% of Cantonese conversations now.  It’s coming!  I also told them how much I LOVE the food in HK!  We definitely get fed WAY too much by the members!  We don’t have much luck finding new investigators, but we keep trying.  To put this in perspective, our district goal is 2-3 new investigators to teach per week.  We struggle to meet that goal.

We do spend a lot of time with the members in retention and reactivations efforts.  We are not allowed to proselyte in our area.  We can only teach referrals and people who approach us and ask questions.  Surprisingly, we stay plenty busy though.  We teach English class 3 days per week, we spend one day doing service.  My trainer, Sister Gomes, leaves for home in 4 weeks.  She has been an amazing companion, and become like a sister to me!  I also LOVE my mission president and his wife.  They are so loving!  I feel like they are my parents in HK!

This week I’ve been thinking about the story of Peter walking on water.  I’ve thought about Peter’s courage to get out of the boat and come to Christ.  We’ve been working with an investigator who “won’t get out of the boat”.   She believes Christ is real, she’s coming to church, and reading the scriptures every day. She believes everything is true . . . which you then would think would lead her to be baptized. But no, she denies the invitation every time we extend it. So this has reminded me a lot lately about the need to get out of the boat.

I've found it really helpful in hard times to ask myself, "Where do I stand? Am I in the boat or on the water with Christ?"

Last week I talked about how simple Christ’s invitation to “Come Follow Me” is.  We have to decide if we will stay in the boat and watch him from a distance or walk with Him?

I love something my mission president said about the straight and narrow path in the scriptures.  He told us that it says “straight way” but it sounds like “straight AWAY”.  Perhaps the Lord is urging us to obey and follow Him quickly!

I am so grateful for the ability to gain and strengthen my testimony. Sometimes we don’t realize how important a testimony is.   We should always work to strengthen it and make it our best friend. Without a testimony in any of the principles of the gospel, we have no way to progress or muster enough faith to get out of the boat.

Finally, a quick message of love to Mothers!  I want to first thank them for their gentle chastisements. Thank you for your gentle and loving ways of teaching us how to change and improve so we can live in harmony with the Spirit. Thank you for being there every step of the way . . . for making us laugh, laughing with us, watching us cry and crying with us, and guiding our steps so lovingly. I am so grateful for the mothers that have surrounded me throughout my life. You have each taught me something and I hope to emulate your examples someday!  I love you all and hope you had an amazing Mother’s Day!

Love, Sister Webb

This little thing everyone is doing with their fingers is super popular in HK!  It is suppose to look like a heart:)

This is pic looking up from our flat. The building is 34 stories high and we live on the 32nd floor

Our district

Yummy dim sum at a members home

This is Helaman, a member that helped us Skype today from the church

70 x 7

God is amazing and real!   I love God’s promise of 70 x 7 in the scriptures.  He will always give us another chance if we are repentant!  I have felt His love and forgiveness this week many times.

 Lately I've felt like I was kind of failing as a missionary.  During this time, the words of a wise MTC teacher came to my mind, “You will flail but you won't fail!”   And that has been more true than ever!   I am flailing all over the place here in Honk Kong, but I know I'm not failing. God's hand is always ready to help and will always be there to catch us. His love will always be there to comfort us, and his words are 100% accessible for us to use so He can guide us.

This week we taught a man named Ben.  Ben is an interesting one (:   So he always wants to meet at McDonalds, which is hard because worldly songs are always playing and there is just lots of noise (and it always makes me and my companion want ice cream! The struggle!!). But anyway, we were teaching him and by the end of the lesson I was starting to get really impatient.  Then a song that I loved came on, and I just couldn't hold back the frustration anymore and started crying.  We got on the hing tit and my companion started crying too.  There we were, these two crying American missionaries on a public bus in Hong Kong.   We got off the bus and walked home, but that night we evaluated ourselves, our companionship, how we were spending our time, and how we could improve.  We made 4 sticky notes of goals to improve on ..it pretty much included everything.. BUT I want to testify of the importance of making plans to achieve the goals you make! You can set as many goals as you want and feel super good about it! But if you don't make a plan on how you will achieve those goals, it will become almost impossible to accomplish any of them. Thank goodness Heavenly Father is patient and forgiving as I try and sometimes fail in my goals here!  I have made so many goals in the last 3 months and  I can honestly  say I've only accomplished a handful of them!  The moral of the story . . . make plans to accomplish your goals!

This week I also read D&C 121 and learned a lot about relationships through it. Yes, that section is about the priesthood, but if your replace the word priesthood with the word relationship, BOOM, God gives you answers to improving  relationships!

First let’s look at D&C 121:5   Let thine anger be kindled against our enemies; and, in the fury of thine heart, with thy sword avenge us of our wrongs.

This verse makes you acknowledge that fact that there might be a problem in the relationship, and that you need to stop having anger toward the other person in the relationship.

Now  verse 7:  My son, peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment;

This verse  teaches a powerful lesson, not only for relationships,  but for any trial you face in life. Have peace and turn to God because all your trials hardships and pains shall be but a moment. I love this one A LOT!

God is so simple and his doctrine is so simple.  In a talk I read this week, I learned that He is always there with arms stretched out, but he won't force us into exaltation and happiness. He INVITES us to "Come unto me." (3 Nephi 12:23) " turn to me" (Nehimiah 1:9) and  "draw near unto me and I will draw near unto you". (D&C 88:63)

His gospel is simple, His love is simple and everlasting. Turn to Him, trust Him and He will be there 70 x 7.

A mission is hard, but so far the best thing I've ever done with my life. I've learned to turn to God in so many different ways and I pray all of you will turn to Him too. He's there and He loves you and He is willing and desirous to help all of His children!!

Love you all.   Have a good week!

Love Sister Webb

The Sister on the right is Sister Curtis.  She has been one of our roomates and just finished her mission.  Her parents came to HK to pick her up and visit some of Southeast Asia.  I will miss her!