South Africa: Crazy Week 8/16/2010

Hello Family!

How is everyone doing? Why are Carly and Joel in Canada? How is everything? The mowing of the yard still going well? How was your birthday Cami?

Well This was a crazy week. We got a call from the Mission President a few days ago and he told my companion and I to go to the Temple this morning at 10 am, and to not tell anyone where and why we were going. It left us in question all week because the temple is closed until tomorrow! Well we got there this morning and there were about 10 other elders. There was a high class meeting going on with some high ranking government officials, area presidency, members of the 70, and some other well known people from South Africa that the church was honoring for helping with humanitarian things and for helping the fight against pornography. We Elders were used as traffic control ha ha, I'm assuming it was so secretive because of the security and high ranking people that were there? Who knows, but that almost took over my chance to email this week!

Anyway! This has been a pretty exciting week! I debated telling this story until I got back, but It was not to dangerous, so I will go ahead and share! A couple days ago my district (the 4 of us) were on our way to a service project and on our way we passed this shack/house that was on fire. Like...flame out the roof on fire! No one was outside doing anything, so naturally we flipped around and hurried over there to make sure no one was inside. The SWEETEST part was when my companion ran up to the door and kicked the door down with flames and smoke going EVERYWHERE! It was a seen straight out of a movie! By this time there were others around, but only a couple were helping us, but we got a bunch of buckets of water and were rushing into this building to put out the fire! (no one was inside) but we were still rushing all over the place to put out the flames! It was SWEET! and mother do not stress it was not THAT dangerous only a 3 on the scale of 10, but we became neighborhood hero's and then once the fire was out we walked away like nothing happened. It was SWEET!

But moving on, Our district is starting a garden! The church has a bunch of land behind it for gardening and we have a half hour to an hour every day in the morning where we cant do to much, so We are going to start gardening and then when we get food we are going to give it to some of our investigators that could use it! I'm pretty excited for that, but that's not the most exciting part of the week. Our companionship has come to the conclusion that before I am transferred we will have opened up a branch in our area! I was telling you earlier that alot of the area is poor and very far from the church, and yet we are getting many people interested out in that area, so we are going to start holding small meetings every Sunday starting this coming Sunday and then when we have enough people regularly attending we will have sacrament there. Once it grows a little more we will make it a Branch! I'm way excited for this and have already made drawings for our future building! ha ha

This Saturday we have Mormon helping hands and we are also marring two of our investigator couples. That will be a full day. Sunday we are going to have about 5-7 baptisms. 3 of the people we are baptising is that family I sent you pictures of! I'm so excited to see them baptised because they are so excited about the gospel! He will definitely be the branch president some day!

Tomorrow is mission tour. Honestly I don't know what that is so I will have to fill you in later.

Things are going well here! Africa does not cease to amaze me. It is a different world. When I get home make sure you re teach me driving skills, hygiene , and how to properly shake hands. All of that went out the window the second I stepped off the plane.

How is everyone doing? Mom and dad how did your talks go? OH! before I forget, one of the priests here is asking for a BYU shirt? is there any way we could track one of those down? and then My companion once one of those scripture marking rulers/squaring thing that I have if you can track one down and put it in the package. (Caroline will know what that is....hopefully ha ha) If not no worries at all. And no rush for that package. You can probably just send it for Christmas? I can't have the others feeling jealous. They literally don't get letters, accept for email.

Alright well I need to go! Let me know if there is anything I can do for you! Scripture of the week: The entire last chapter of 1 Nephi.

Love you all!

Elder Blake Williams

Oh PS Cami, We just started teaching this girl your age yesterday because her parents are about to get baptised and she is being rebellious and not listening to them etc. So we talked her into meeting with us and I felt like I was talking to you and telling you to listen to your parents ha ha not saying you DON'T listen to your parents, but if you DON'T then you SHOULD!

PSS. I got my first African gift for myself. I found a guy on the side of the road who carves wood and he made me a cool giraffe!