Texas Williams Family: Happy Halloween Family!

Dear Family,

It is Halloween! I actually didn't remember that until after breakfast this morning. There is a lot going on in the zone this week so all of us were down in Gabs and Elder Finlinson, Jacobson, and myself went out for a delicious muffin that cost way too much. Not sure why I mention this at all accept that it was AFTER the delicious muffin that I realized it was Halloween. But no Mom, they do not have Halloween in Africa. I don't blame them though. Their entire culture revolves around the spirits of their ancestors and all this dark spiritual stuff so people would probably go crazy and allow themselves to get possessed by the devil if they brought Halloween to Africa...so we will just keep that holiday back home and make missionary work slightly easier for us.

Well as I mentioned in my last e-mail, I have been in Molepolole this entire week. Molepolole is the BEST! And I was with Elder Jacobson who I thought was kind of weird at first, but we got along very well and even had 4 baptisms together. Dad asked if I have done Baptism interviews before. I thought I mentioned this a couple times but I guess not. I have been doing Baptism interviews since I was in Nelspruit. I think I have done roughly 25 of them. Because of some technical stuff I was actually able to interview the 4 that I also saw get baptised (it usually does NOT work that way), but it was a little bit sad again. Out of 4 interviews, none of them even knew the name of their father and none of them stay with their mother. BE SO GRATEFUL FOR HAVING A FAMILY!!!!!! And if you are blessed to grow up with a father and a mother (Which is becoming SO rare in this world), then LISTEN to them! If sister little and Grant do not read my emails please make sure they read the previous lines. It blows my mind how hard it is to find a Mother and a Father with kids that stay together and are married. AND if you are blessed to find a family like that you can just assume that all the kids in the family have different fathers. Pretty sad reality here in Africa. It makes our work of finding full father led married families to baptize quite difficult.

I have failed to tell you for a very long time, but everyone in Botswana thinks I am Asian....Not much stresses me out in this life, but a street full of little African kids yelling "mu china! mu china!" will definitely do it.

This week has been a week full of crazy Africa Bugs! Like HUGE African bugs! It is pretty cool. I think the best one was a bee probably 40 times the size of a USA bee. This bee was literally inches long and so big that you can see its facial features as it gets mad at you. I thought it was so cool so I caught it with a plate and a tea cup and then tried to get it into a drink bottle to save for elder Finlinson to see. Once again I just tell you this as a lead up to a funny experience for the week. I will tell you in advance it is one of those things that you had to have been there for, but I will tell you anyway. Elder Jacobson was supposed to lift the tea cup and then I would put the bottle on the bee. So right before this takes place he looks at me and says "k, man, don't spaz when I take this off." and then RIGHT after he said that the cup slipped out of his hand and he started SCREAMING and running away. HA Naturally I took this opportunity to catch the bee with the bottle and it is now on my desk...

We didn't have water or electricity for most of the week...

On a more spiritual note I read the best general conference talk ever this week. It was a "gospel classic" (not sure what it takes to make it into that category, but that's pretty cool). It is "The purifying Power of Gethsemane" by Elder Bruce R. McConkie given in the April 6, 1985 general conference just a few days before he died. It was a very good talk and a must read for this week (for you, because I have already read it a couple times).

I learned a little more about the situation with Elder Ferinho this week and it sounds like he could potentially come out in a couple weeks. So be on stand by for the Christmas material. If he is going to come out at all it will most likely be in the next week or so.

I got some sad news that a Sister Joyce from Lobatse passed away this week. I need you to inform Elder Albertson who is in Joel's home stake in California. Elder Albertson and I baptised sister Joyce at the beginning of this year. I unfortunately do not have any details other than that for him right now, but I was sad for her 15 year old son when I heard the news.

Well, Because of the lack of residency permits given to missionaries, many are being kicked out of the country. Our zone is tiny and getting smaller. We were dropped from an already small zone of 6 areas to 5 areas just last week and as of today we only have 4 missionaries covering those 5 areas. Tomorrow is transfers and we are staying in Botswana to cover the areas. My companion (who I have not been with for about a week and a half now) goes home in 2 weeks and is spending his last 2 weeks in South Africa which means I will pretty much have to white wash my Kanye area AFTER I help the new Molepolole missionaries (3 more should be coming for that village on Wednesday) on their area (which I don't really know too well myself. So I am under the impression that we should be getting 6 more missionaries on Wednesday, and our first senior couple sometime after that. Because of the residency issues these new missionaries will have 90 days to learn the area, train a new missionary on the area, do as much work as possible, and hit their baptism goals before they get kicked out of the country. There has not been too much progress on getting residency's so I may have to spend the rest of my mission in Botswana, although that would not be my desire ha ha. But that is good news for Mama Llama because all the "danger" stories come from South Africa.

Well I am out of time, I hope I answered most of the questions this week.

Be sure to give me important updates from others missions.

Love you all

Elder Blake Williams

PS. Carly, President said he did the Endorsement that you needed. Can you check to see if it submitted?