Texas Williams Family: It is weeks like this that Satan is laughing in your face waiting for you to get discouraged. That however is not allowed, there will be no discouragement!

Hello Family,

I guess my mention of fewer emails sparked everyone to write this week, so thank you for that. I really appreciated getting updated on things back home and I hope everyone continues to do well.

This week has been a bit of a trial/growth week. The start of the week looked promising with the potential of 3 baptisms on the 19th, many new investigators, and many teaching appointments. When in reality it ended with a possibility of zero baptisms on the 19th, many new investigators dropping us (you don't drop investigators in Nelspruit...they drop you), many ditched appointments, and long hours being rejected while tracking. It is weeks like this that Satan is laughing in your face waiting for you to get discouraged. That however is not allowed, there will be no discouragement!

Something happened this week that requires a bit of background on the story. Missionaries gossip. Members of the church think that the Relief Society is the only ones who gossip and I can promise you that this is not true. Missionaries gossip like 13 year old girls and for those of you preparing for a mission, acknowledge that this happens and don't let yourself get involved in it. In every flat I have been in thus far I have heard story after dreadful story about an "Elder X". Elder X this, Elder X that. To make a long story short, I have over heard so many stories about an Elder X that I could tell you his life story before I could pick him out of a line up.

Imagine my surprise when during transfers I took my bags to my new car only to see an Elder X also bringing his bags to the same car. Elder X is in my district and I spend a lot of time around him. I resolved to not let any of these past stories affect how I would view Elder X. Although he is weird as anything, I resolved to be kind to him, and show interests in what is going on with him. Although Elder X is not perfect by any means and some truth could be found from the stories about him, it is possible to get along with him.

I have however been worried ever since I got here about his companionship and whether they could get along or not. This week after arriving home from a day I do not wish to remember, I was welcomed home by Elder X and his companion telling me that there was a problem. I asked them what was up and it all went down hill from there. They were ticked at each other. Flat out, ticked. Each of them came to me (speaking at the same time) telling me why the other was so hard to get along with and telling me about something that happened in their area that sparked this feud. A small mission rule was broken that night, both thought it was the others fault and it sparked a large yelling argument and now they came to me to solve it.

I hadn't a clue what to do, but I went into a room with them both, said a prayer and had one of the most intense inventories of my life with them. It was hard. My first instinct was to do the natural man approach and just point out the faults that each of them had and tell them to fix it. However, that is not what happened. I started by making them list of their companions strengths. They then took turns "spilling it out" and telling what the other companion does that they hate and I made them end the "spilling out" with one clear action they would like their companion to work on. I then left each of them with homework for the night to think about one strength they like in their companion that they would like to work on implementing for themselves.

By the end of the inventory we all walked out of the room laughing and joking with each other and they have not had any other conflicts for the rest of the week. The learning experience I took from this experience is that the only reason any of this worked was because they both highly respect me. Not as a district leader, but as a person and a friend. I have thought back to that night many times this week and tried to work out what would have happened if I had allowed the Elder X gossip to influence the way I viewed him. It would not have been the same.

I am sorry I took so much time on this story, not allowing any time for other stories, but I am out of time.

Love you all,

Elder Blake Williams