We are determine to make it feel like Christmas though so the four of us in the flat are knitting Santa hats at the moment and we are going to spend all day Christmas eve caroling. Elder Kelly just finished his hat but I decided to knit a rosta/Zimbabwe Benni first so I am only getting started on my Santa one. I am excited to carol though. The members and investigators here LOVE the hymns/Christmas songs, but most do not know them so we missionaries have to do a lot of teaching the hymns.
I started my 14 days of Christmas slightly early, but it is so sweet! I love the little scripture that goes along with it. Elder Masovya is especially into those scriptural jokes so he is enjoying it ha ha.
Well I'm sorry to say I do not have full details of this call yet, but I am thinking that you can call about 4 my time, which should be 8am (plus or minus) your time. I will give exact time and phone number in the next email.
Dad, what is the FY2011?
Dad, I am glad to hear you are working a bit with the home teaching. That is something I have definitely gained a testimony of while here in Africa. I am sure I will go into detail of why in another email but I can not stress the importance of Home teaching. Not because your sharing a doctrinal point with the family but simply making sure that you are looking out for the family, and doing everything possible to help them out where needed.
Yes Momma, I know OF Elder Johnson. That's pretty funny... it IS a small world. He went home this last transfer, so I got to hear his final testimony.
So, I just got an email from the Mission President (which by the way we are doing interviews on Wednesday with him) but he was saying that next Monday is our "Christmas Party". I put it in quotes because party is not exactly the word I would use. President Poulsen is all business so we are to show up to this "Party", during our P-day, Wearing our finest suit, looking our best, fasting, and ready to share a testimony. We will receive missionary training for half the day and then have a four hour testimony meeting. ha ha, So before you ask what were doing for Christmas...I just answered it.
So I'm not going to share any intense story this week (sorry), because this has simply been one of those weeks. Teaching did not go that well, appointments ditched at record numbers, we invited investigators to the Christmas First Presidency devotional broadcast yesterday only to show up and find out that none of the leaders of the church showed up and no one set up/knew how to set up the broadcast... So long story short, it was just one of those weeks and it caused me to take a step back and look at missionary work in general and see the large impact it is having as a whole.
I was talking with Elder Kelly this week and he was talking about how in his trainers day, it was rare to have even one African companion your entire mission because there were just so few Africans serving missions. That was only about 2 and a half years ago and today there are so many that 2 out of 2 of my companions have been African., I am the only American in my district and it is now semi rare to have a companion from your same country. My point in all of this is that the church is growing very quickly here in Africa. Our missions goal for 2010 was to have 2010 baptisms and we are on target to reach that goal. As well, our mission made history last month for having 2, 200+ baptism months in a row. 200+ baptism months have been done in the past for months with 5 weeks but for October and November we had about 210 each month.
The Church is so true. The more I learn about the church and the more I learn about other churches, the stronger and stronger my testimony is about the truthfulness of our message of the restoration. This kind of success would simply not be possible if the message we share is not true, and if it did not bless the lives of millions around the world each year.
Although the South East Africa Area is the highest baptising/retention area in the world our Mission President has made it clear that 2000 baptisms a year is nothing compared to what the Lord wants to see. And we will not be able to Satisfy what the Lord wants to see if we are only using the +170 missionaries in our mission. We need to involve the members. There are only 50,000 missionaries around the world and if we simply wait for them to take the gospel to the world it will not happen quick enough. But if we involve the +14 million members around the world we will have a much greater success. The past couple weeks my companion and I have worked 99% with members and only about 1% on our own. We are teaching the members how simple it is to have a missionary oriented family. We go around doing "Family Mission Plans" with the members. I am not sure if this is in the rest of the world, but the concept is simple. Make a list of the family's friends and those the family is in contact with. Then leave that list with the family to pray about and ask the Lord for at least 4 people from that list that are prepared for the gospel. From there you make simple steps to introduce them to the blessings of the gospel. These are meant to be simple steps such as giving out a DVD about Christs life (the missionaries can get you that for free), inviting them to dinner/family night, introducing them to the Book of Mormon, etc. then the key is to constantly update these action steps and follow up.
This is one of the many ways that the gospel is being taken to all the world. If I spend my entire time in Africa and only baptise +40 people I did not do my part. I need to create missionaries out of the members so that I am not limited to only my efforts. I have already had +-15 baptisms in my first 4 months on mission, but I hope that my influence through the members will create a number much larger than a tiny 15. The gospel is too important to keep to yourself. Share it at every opportunity you have. One thing we have been counseled to do as missionaries is to pray for miracles every day as we work toward them. It has worked and I council all of you to do the same.
For those preparing to serve a mission. DO NOT wait to learn the gospel in detail. Start STUDYING the entire Book of Mormon now. It is not enough to simply read it but to ask yourself why the page you just read was so important that it made it into the Book of Mormon and how you can apply it into your life.
Well I typed to much and am out of time
Love you all!
Elder Williams
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