Texas Williams Family: South Africa: Well Hello Family 9-18-2010

Elder Williams and his companion Elder Onsongo
from Kenya

Well Hello Family!

It is good to hear from everyone! Sounds like your trip to the states was a success and I loved the pictures! Especially the one where Carly, Cami , Grant and Joel are jumping and Grant's face is priceless. The one where he is on Michael's shoulders looking down at the long fall down is pretty good as well.

I was able to get mail this week, so thank you for the letters and I look forward to when I will get the packages. Before I forget I must mention the second most exciting thing for this week! When I was in the office this past week they had a scale so I weighed myself and it said I was 74...Not knowing what 74 was I didn't get excited until I found a converting calc. Turns out that 74 is 163 lbs!!! That means I have gained about 15 lbs since I have been in Africa for 3 months! I'm super excited about that because that is the first time in my life working out has worked for me. Since we get so much pop, rice, and chicken, Elder Kelly and I work out twice a day...and now I'm 15 lbs heavier! So just get ready for my disappointment next time I get on a scale and find out that the one at the office was just inaccurate.

I'm sorry about the pictures. I usually use my companions little gadget to get pictures onto the email, but this time I put it directly from my camera to the computer. I will try to use his gadget today, but we got transfer news Saturday and he is being transferred on Wednesday, so I will have to use what I used last time from now on. Let me know if you can figure out how to open them, if not I will just buy a converter thing. Were you able to see how much those usb sticks were? I just bought a 32GB one 2 days ago for about 14 American dollars to back up my photos, but it is straight from china so I am not sure how much I trust it.

So the highlight of the week was DEFINITELY seeing Elder Holland! He had some visits he had to make here in South Africa so he set aside an hour to come see us on Friday morning. To be very honest with you we were all pretty worried before he came here because there is a rumor about Elder Holland visiting the Johannesburg Mission. The rumor goes something like this: Many,many years ago when he came to address the mission (which was supposedly not so obedient at that time). He gave his talk like normal, and then at the end of his remarks he told all the missionaries to get into a line. When the missionaries were in a line he went down and looked at them for a moment and assigned each missionary either a 1, 2, or 3. most the missionaries got 3's, a large number got 2's and only a couple got 1's. After numbering them he said, alright, if you got a 1, your doing well, keep it up. 2's you need to talk to your mission president and sort out whatever you need to sort out. 3's pack your bags, your going home. (Just a reminder, this story is rumor not fact, but this is where our worry was coming from ha ha)
Friday morning we woke up early, and quickly got to the mission office about an hour and a half away. Only 2/3 of the mission was allowed to come as some of the missionaries are located to far from the mission office. We were all seated about an hour before he arrived and so the mission president took some time to tell us how big of a hurry Elder Holland was in. He flew into Johannesburg at about 10pm Thursday night, probably got to sleep around 12, woke up and is on his way to walk through the Johannesburg MTC, then he would address us, then he needed to quickly drive to the area office where he was to address others. Then he had to quickly get on a plane, fly to Durban and address the priesthood there. ALL in ONE DAY! So it was really nice of him to address us. When he arrived one of his security people came in and told the mission president Elder Holland wanted us to line up so he could shake all of our hands, so we did it QUICKLY. When he came out of the MTC we all got pretty excited but he looked so, so tired. He shook all of our hands but quickly because he was short on time. So yes, I shook the hand of Elder Holland, Pretty sweet!

When he was on the stage getting ready to address us I thought he was going to fall asleep he looked so tired, but once he stood up, this all went away and he was all over the place! He opened up by telling us about how he visited our mission many, many years ago and he had never been madder in his entire life. That this was the worst behaved group of missionaries he had ever seen, but that he was not going to go into details about what happened. (It was kind of funny though because he was getting angry just thinking back to that time). Following this anger story, he then followed it up with how impressed he was with us. He said that he has spoken to missions literally thousands of times and that we were probably the most impressive group of missionaries he had ever seen (pretty big complement).

I absolutely loved his talk to us. He talked a lot about self conversion. He said that the main purpose of Preach My Gospel is solely to convert yourself and then the rest follows. He then got back to his animation when talking about missionaries that go home and then become in-active. When I say he was getting animated, I am understating how it really was! He was getting SO into the talk! It was so funny! He is so talented at balancing humor with seriousness and spirituality. EX: "When I hear about missionaries coming home and thinking Oh good I put in my 2 cents now I'm done! I get so angry I start bouncing from wall to wall and then hit the sealing! People just stand back and say "Elder Hollands at it again, someone call the fire department!" It just makes me want to get out my cat of 9 tails (which is apparently a whip) and just (this is where he did a whipping motion with half of his body going over the pulpit ha ha)" He then left by saying "I leave you the best compliment I know how, you missionaries seem to know what your doing"

It was just really funny! I hope I can get a copy of this talk some how, it was that good! All of Africa is watching General Conference on the 30th and 31 of this month so I will get to see all of the sessions at that time! I am pretty dang excited for that as well.

I only have a couple min. but I will throw in some updates: Our garden is doing fantastic! I will send some photos when we get the entire thing planted. We transplanted most of the plants this week but we still have to transplant the cabbage. As well it is almost fruit tree harvest time so this week we are going to a members house and helping him pick peaches. The apple tree and some other fruit tree need some time.

A new investigator named Salo also has a blackberry bush and it is pretty delicious... I'm going to use some of those berries to put in my Jello!

Well I still have updates on Investigators because we are having baptisms this week. I will give updates next week, I have less than a min left.

Thanks for everything!
Love you all,

Elder Williams

(Carly or Tyler next time your at an electronic store can you look for a photo printer. Like one of those really small printers that only prints photos? And let me know how much they cost in the states. I have been thinking about buying one here because its expensive to print pictures off, but the printer is also expensive here)