HELLO FROM BOSTWANA FAMILY!!! 1-16-2011

I SAW A WILD BABOON!!!!! No, none of this cage or game park nonsense, but a wild baboon just taking a stroll on the side of the road!

I have a lot to tell you in this email so I will just get started, well as I am sure you already know I got transferred to another COUNTRY! The country of Botswana, which I had never even heard of before I came on my mission. So Tuesday was transfers and I found out at the transfer meeting that I will be serving in a place called Lobatse in Botswana with an Elder Albertson from California (my first American companion. He is old on his mission, but he is the man). Lobatse is also sweet. It is so productive they just split the area, so now we have 4 missionaries here. 3 new ones, and then Elder Albertson, but he will probably be kicked out of the country on Wednesday due to visa problems so we are pretty much white washing the district and I will most likely be companion less for a while.

Oh man where do I start!? My area is sweet because it is on the South African/Botswana border and although it is still desert it looks a little like a jungle. Not fully like a jungle, but coming from my last area, it is a jungle. And not to worry you parents, but we do have wild life. Not the elephant/lion wild life, but baboon/every kind of snake wild life. In fact, my companion tells me that it is black mamba season at the moment, although they also have green mambas, cobras, and pythons. Even though all of those are pretty much the most deadly in the world I have been told that I won't see any unless I go hike the hills (which is a bummer because I really wanted to hike the hills), but to save Momma from a heart attack I will stay away from the hills and not die from a snake.

OH! I bet your wondering about my phone call home this week... It's actually quite a story. So Tuesday we made the 6 hour drive from Johannesburg to Botswana and stayed the night at the zone leaders HOUSE. Then Wednesday we were trying to deal with residency issues because Botswana is not too friendly with missionary residency at the moment (speaking of, if I do not get residency, which I probably will not, then I will be back in South Africa in 90 days. If I do get a miracle and get residency I will most likely be here the rest of my mission). So we were in the immigration office for a solid 2 days, but during that time Sister Morgan (President Morgan of the mission presidencys' wife) was trying to get all of our paper work passed out properly, while the immigration office was trying to talk to her, and her phone was ringing off the hook. Seeing this I just took the papers from her and started doing the paper work for the missionaries, and before I knew what happened, she gave me her phone as well to deal with everyone calling. Pretty much I turned into her personal secretary while we were in there. The only reason I mention this is because once we got back to their home (also the Botswana mission home), she was still feeling stressed and was like oh man, now I have to call all your parents and get birth certificates! Seeing as how I had been her secretary all day, making all sorts of calls for her I made a joke saying "fine Sister Morgan, if you REALLY want me to call my parents I guess I will". When I said this she was like "Yes Elder Williams, that would be great, call your parents and get that for me." At this point I started breathing deeply and looking around awkwardly because I didn't know what to do. Seeing this she said again "Elder Williams, I give you permission to callllllll your parents using that phone." If you have ever been a missionary you know how intense that would be, so as I was calling and no one was answering I just thought "oh dad, momma is going to kill you if you do not answer that phone". Its good to hear that you were out of town though, or else I sure mom really would have been angry for quite some time.

Anyway, my new housing is SO BIG! We have an entire house to us 4. And you know that it was inspired for me to come here because apparently our house has the biggest yard out of the entire mission so we have a LAWN MOWER! I was pretty excited to hear about that, and I haven't seen the mower yet, but apparently it is electric which is embarrassing as anything, but it will do. As well, our grass is about knee height at the moment so the Morgans bought us 2 "slashers" (pretty much machetes) to mow the lawn with before we get our mower back. It is weird as anything here, people don't mow with mowers, but they just use slashers for everything. Just imagine mowing your lawn back home with a slasher! Anyway, that's enough talk of the mowing here. We have so many rooms in our house that we turned the living room into a soccer court, so we have a 2 on 2 game every morning for exercise.

Its good to hear that you did some research on Botswana. In terms of the Church here, the church is very new to Botswana. You mentioned that the first missionaries came in 1990. The entire country of Botswana is not even a stake yet, but that is the push is to make Botswana a stake by the end of June, so If I get residency I will be able to witness that event which would be very nice to be here for that. Lobatse is also small. Yesterday for church there were about 12 people at church when it started. This is lower than usual because it was raining, but I am told that attendance is usually around 50-60 each Sunday. We meet in a little portable chapel building, and the house next to it has been renovated to fit the class rooms. As well we had a very memorable baptism yesterday. Because the building is new , we have an outdoor baptism fount. And as I mentioned above it was raining pretty hard, so we had an outdoor, raining, baptism. It was definitely the coolest one that I have ever witnessed!

Oh! As well I have a village in my area!

For my birthday, I forgot that it was even my birthday until the Morgan's called to wish me a happy birthday. They had to drop those slashers by our place so Sister Morgan also brought me a loaf of banana bread and some cookies. It was highly delicious and very kind of her. Other than that I didn't really do anything for my birthday.

Well time is up, so I must be off to my sweet area!

Hope all is well back home.

Dad I laughed pretty hard at your story of the Asian kid on the bus!

(Insert from Steve's Letter)I thought you two might enjoy this.

My seat is next to an 8 year old who is travelling to Edmonton by himself.

He talks constantly, lays all over me, and now is trying to rub my face to

feel my whiskers. What a trip! We could make a movie out of this. Even

the on board movie (polar express) does not keep him entertained.

And mom, don't worry about those scripture markers. I'm sure that letter just got stolen, but don't worry about sending others.

Thank Aunt LaNae for getting the packages together for those 2 elders for me!

Love Elder Williams

Blake's new address:
Please forward this letter to your parents as the address they will need for sending anything to you while you serve in any of these three zones is:
Elder Blake Williams
Botswana Mission Office
Postnet Kgale
Box AD 172 ADD (ph:7132-0394)
Gaborone, Botswana