Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Family

The only e-mail I got this week was from the bank telling me how much money I have left for the rest of the month....So long story short I can not contain my excitement from all the updates ha ha.
(We were traveling along the West Coast in Oregon and did not have Internet...it was not from lack of trying to e-mail him!)  

I hope everyone had a well played Christmas. I forgot to mention in the phone call that the Mosses invited 6 of us missionaries over for Christmas. That is where I was when you called me. It was pretty exciting because they somehow got a hold of a Turkey, so we had a Christmas turkey dinner! It is safe to say that this Christmas was much more exciting than last Christmas.

Thank you very much for the presents that you sent. You have learned very well that when you send me a package you should include things for the others in the flat who do not ever get packages. I think about 50% of our zone got nothing for Christmas, and out of the other 50% that did, most of them did not wait until Christmas to open the packages. Elder Zondi and Elder Nxati (2 of the 4 in our flat) did not get anything, so it was good you sent multiple gifts.

Grant caught me off guard yesterday when he asked what the most exciting animal I have seen is. I answered snakes, but that is a false answer. I have decided that the answer to that question is definitely African Bugs. Every time I go to Molepolole (one of the other villages in our zone), I am welcomed in by HUGE bugs. For example, I was there last week doing interviews with my companion. We decided that we would have to stay the night, so long story short I was brushing my teeth when I looked out the window and saw a shadow of what I thought was two of the worlds largest spiders next to each other. Naturally I opened the window and a HUGE beetle started to climb through the window! I called for Elder Scanlan (the only missionary I know who is scared of bugs, so they put him in Molepolole) and he went crazy! This beetle was about 1/2 to 3/4 the size of my fist! As the beetle was climbing through the window Elder Scanlan was yelling "OH MY GOSH!!! DO SOMETHING!!!!". I caught it and the other Elders got some pictures. It was so big that you could see its facial expressions! So yea...I would have to say that crazy African bugs are the most exciting thing.

I also have a letter for Grant that I put together this morning. Keep an eye out for that.

Well, I don't really have too much to add sense we spoke last night, but It was good to talk to everyone! Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Love you all

Elder Blake Williams

In the words of Brian Regan "I Felt like my insides wanted to be on my outside".

Momma Llama,

Have no fear. I am alive and well. Sorry to give you a fright! We sat down to E-mail on Monday and the internet went down in all of Gabs! Then we tried to email on Tuesday, but we were helping the mosses move and did not have time to e-mail. Today, the internet is not super good so I do not know if I will be able to e-mail further. Just in case that happens. Details for Sunday call are as follows: XXXX

I was not able to get the Skype worked out.....I am pretty sad about that, so it will have to be a phone call like normal. I will need you to call my cell phone which is xxxxxxxx. The Botswana code is 0026 I believe, so my full number should xxxxxx. When you call is really up to you. Best times for me would be 3 or 5 which I think is 7 or 9 am for you.

Details on the call. We have been instructed to stick very strictly to the 30 to 40 minutes that the white handbook suggests, so I will only speak for 40 min. Please help me follow this rule. I would also like to depart from tradition a bit if possible. I would appreciate it if I could have a few minutes to talk to Grant alone, and a few minutes to talk to Cami alone.

Sorry once again for not e-mailing in so long!

Love you
Elder Blake Williams


Dear Family

FINALLY! As you saw from my e-mail to Momma. Internet did not work Monday, Tuesday we got caught between Gabs and Lobatse moving the Moss's and today right before I wrote this letter the computer decided that it did not like me...what else is new?

Well this has been quite the week. Mainly because I have never been so sick in my life as I was this week! I can tell you this without Mom worrying because 1) I am better now 2) We will be talking on the phone in a few days, so if you are still worried, then don't be.

I will try to condense the story for you. Sunday after church we got invited to a wedding where we were treated as the guests of honor, quite frankly because we are white and we have suits on. I had no idea who the bride and groom were, but I don't think 75% of the people there even knew the names of the bride and groom. ANYWAY! We got food. Monday it felt like something was a little unsettled in my stomach and then Tuesday I had to wake up at 4:30 in the Morning to make the 6 hour drive down to Johannesburg for 3 meetings. Elder Finlinson was quite sick when he woke up and I was feeling a little under the weather myself. After a few hours of him throwing up a lot and me throwing up once, we decided that we felt good enough to make the drive. Very possibly the biggest mistake of my life?

Elder Finlinson was feeling pretty good while I, in the words of Brian Regan "Felt like my insides wanted to be on my outside". Giving the code word to Elder Finlinson to pull over quite often, we made the treck down to Johannesburg getting sicker and sicker as we went.

When we finally got to the Mission office they were just dismissing a general missionary transfer meeting (not one that I needed to go to, but one where a lot of missionaries were there). Long story short I did not feel well enough to get out of the car and mingle with others, so others went out of their way to come to me and tell me I did not look good....Well thank you?

Sister Omer got word that I felt VERY ill and she took me to the mission home where I could steal one of the beds there and sleep it off. Too bad I spent my precious sleep time throwing up every last drop of liquid in my body. Then the climax of my story was when (don’t worry mom!) but I passed out on the bathroom floor.

Fast forward a few hours and a couple of the other zone leaders convinced me that I should go to the Hospital. I got there and they found out the reason I passed out was because my blood pressure was extremely low and they put me on a sweet IV to put liquid back in my body. The Hospital was not convinced that it was food poison because of how long it took to kick in (I am convinced that it was), so they took my blood sample and tested me to malaria and tested my kidneys for something, all turned out negative which oddly enough is quite positive.

Poor President Omer had to sit in the waiting room through all this.

I finally got out of the hospital at about 1am. It was pretty intense! But I guess it is a good thing that I was in Joburg through all of this because they took me to the best hospital in Africa. And then the Omers made me stay in the mission home for a while until I regained my health.

On to more exciting things: Because Africa does not do too well at celebrating Christmas our district decided to show them how it’s done.This week we took to the streets and went Caroling with our Christmas hats on! People were dumbfounded that we were actually caroling, but were quick to show smiles, and EVERYONE we sang to was quite happy after that. We also came prepared with presents to pass out. We somehow found Christmas wrapping paper and wrapped up Book of Mormons, DVD's (about Christ), and other Church stuff that we give out. So when we were done singing to one of the houses we would give them a present and walk away still singing Christmas songs. It was awesome! The rest of the branch is going to Join us Friday evening for some more caroling.

-We are teaching a SWEET family. I don't have anything too new to tell you about them, but this week when we were having a kneeling prayer after one of our lessons, the mother of the home prayed for my family in Texas. She must have forgotten about the Canada move, but I thought it was pretty cool to have an investigator praying for my family

-My companion and I thought this drunk guy was chasing us with a stone, I was thinking "not again!", but then after running away we found out that he wasn't really chasing us? I still don't know exactly what happened, but our investigator saw the whole thing and could not stop laughing.

-Finished the Book of Mormon this week. Love the Book of Mormon!!!!

-Also finished Grandpa's book. I am SO impressed with his mother!
She is the best of the Best.

-It was pretty hot this week. One of the tar roads my companion and I were walking on was melting...it was kind of awkward.

Well, I am doing well! Sorry for the delay in E-mailing. I wish all of you a very Merry Christmas. Hope our phone call works out.

Love you all

Elder Blake Williams

(editors note:  It is all I can do not to pack my bags and head to South Africa!  I have cried all morning thinking of my poor skinny , sick boy!!!)

The way we act, speak, look, and even think should be a reflection of him and his ways".

Dear Family

In two weeks we will have already talked for Christmas! It has not really hit me yet that it is Christmas, which I guess is a good thing because missionaries tend to get trunky if it does hit them. We are planning on going caroling soon though, which will be very enjoyable. Everyone laughs at us when we tell them we are going to do that, but its alright, we need to let people know that it is actually Christmas!

Speaking of Christmas. I am trying to get more details on the phone call. We have been quite busy lately with a few random things, one of which is getting a house for the new senior couple. Turns out that buying a house in Africa is not the same as in America. No one puts up signs or anything, you just drive around and look for empty houses that are nice enough for an American senior couple to move into, and then do some detective work to find out who the owner is (which is actually a lot harder than you would think). Funny story with that: We found the perfect house in Lobatse (which there was only one perfect house), so we did some investigating and found out that the DIS (department of intelligence and secret service) owned the house. Thinking that I was the big man on campus I did some more research and found out where the DIS is located (which apparently is not supposed to be known?). My companion and I walked into this DIS building and they were not impressed that we 1. learned that they owned the house 2. Learned where their office was. So long story short, they did not allow us to buy that house from them. But anyways! We found them another house and we should hear word today whether or not we can get that house. This affects you because IF we do get this house AND we can locate a nice internet company, THEN we should have skype up and running by Christmas day.

I don't know how it will work for your side, but I think that skype only allows you to video skype one person at a time (at least that's how it was back in my day...18months ago).

We have been busy with other things lately though, which is not ideal, but keeps us sane during the down time during the holidays. For starters we have been dealing closely with a certain district in our zone lately to help them improve on their obedience level. We love the missionaries that are there, and have built good friendships with each, but they are failing pretty hard when it comes to obedience. Because we are friends with them we tried all the soft correction approaches first by having zone meetings and then eventually by meeting with the district leader. I HATE giving correction, but it came that time this week where I had to give it very firmly. So this week I went on a two day exchange with a fellow Texan brother. I bring the entire district together and lay down the law pretty hard (which was not desirable), but it actually ended up going much better than I thought. It was also fun Spending time with Elder Texas (he is one of those too proud to be a Texan guys ha! He is about 1 month on mission and a recent convert to the church. Currently the only member in his family).

Other than dealing with that district, we have been spending too much time trying to locate a house (I hope we have finished that). And then yesterday I had to take another missionary from our zone to the airport to go home. He is from Uganda and they have not been able to get him residency in South Africa OR Botswana. Poor kid has to fly home to Uganda until they can figure something out. The church threw him a bone though and flew him home business class, so that was pretty impressive.

Other than that we have just been dealing with problems here and there. We have transfers tomorrow so I am going down to Joburg for a Zone leader meeting.

Alright well in other news:
-How come no one wanted to inform me that Zach Boyer is engaged!!!??? That is awesome! I feel like EVERYONE I knew back home will be married by the time I get home.

-Grant is the man! Good job on your piano!

-TIA of the week: This week the other Elders were having a baptism and inside the baptism faunt was a HUGE spider! It was this huge red thing and I was very interested in it because it was so big that I could see its crazy mouth and everything. Because it had nearly drowned it was out of energy and not moving. I asked the branch president if I could pick it up and he said "oh that spider is harmless!" So I picked it up and was fascinated by this thing. Once the spider got its strength back it started to strike at me and the SAME branch president said "make sure that thing doesn't bite you. Its actually extremely poisonous and can kill a person." I walked away speechless as I do with all TIA's.

-Why didn't you tell me Dillon Flake had his mission call!?

-Dad you asked me last week about my goals for my final 6 months. That is something that I have thought a lot about this week and I can still say that I don't know! But I only have a couple weeks until I need to settle on a couple goals. One quote that I have been studying a lot lately though is from Elder Christofferson. It goes, "People should be able to see in us something of Jesus Christ. The way we act, speak, look, and even think should be a reflection of him and his ways". This is a very true statement, and when we think about our purpose on this life we should be striving to bring our lives in line with this quote. While I was studying this morning I came across Moroni 7:48 which reads "Pray with all the energy of heart that ye may be filled with this love (speaking of charity)...that when he shall appear, we shall be like him." We obviously want to be like him and the scriptures stress charity a lot. I would like to work on Charity and Humility for the last 6 months of my mission, but it is hart to make "SMART" (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time bound) goals on those two topics.

Well family I have said a lot.

Thank you for all your support.

I am trying my hardest not to open my Christmas presents early, including the package from the Smiths.

Love you all

Elder Blake Williams

I have some bad news and good news...It's the same news, it will just depend on how you look at it!

Dear Family

It is the Christmas season! This season brings mixed feelings for missionaries, but I am very excited for it and plan to have a fantastic African Christmas.

This Saturday we had a branch Christmas party. Tradition from last year followed for this year. We assumed that someone else was planning the activity because we were never asked to do anything for it. Naturally it got dropped on us to carry out. Lucky for us we had about 3 days to pull it together. Because Christmas is hot as anything here we planned to play a lot of games with water balloons. We started the activity off with watching a couple Christmas video's. While the video was going on we were busy doing everything which leads me to one of my favorite T.I.A's of the week. We were having a braai, so I delegated the responsibility of starting a fire to a branch missionary. When I came back I saw this grown man throwing large plastic bags on our fire. I asked him what he was doing and he said that he was adding fuel to the fire. I gazed at the large stack of wood right next to him and whispered TIA to myself as I walked away.

The activity was very hectic because all the activities we planned were outdoor activities and then it started to rain. Probably the highlight of the whole activity was when we got our new senior couple (Elder and Sister Moss) to dress up like Santa Claus. It was awesome for a number of reasons, but mainly because Elder Moss looks just like the old man off of the Movie "ÜP". (Don't ask me why we had a full Santa suit in our flat...). But ANYWAY! The entire point of this whole story was to tell you about some bad news, and good news. Its the same news, it will just depend on how you look at it. Seeing as how we had a Santa, and I am sure the kids have never seen Santa before, we also needed presents. Now don't get mad momma but last minute we had to scramble to find something so I used my 12 days of Christmas presents as Santa's gifts to the kids. I feel bad because you put a lot of work into that, but the kids enjoyed every minute of it and we had just enough candy for each kid to get one thing. Sister Moss says you were inspired for what you put in the package. Thank you for that!

Speaking of the New Senior couple. We are very glad to get the new couple. They stay in Gabs and their assignment is to help strengthen the Kanye and Lobatse Branches. I have felt really bad for them because they arrived about 2 or 3 weeks ago and it is almost like the mission did not plan ahead for them and another new couple. They were almost forced to get a place in Gabs when they would have been much happier living INSIDE their area, Lobatse. On top of that the mission some how overlooked the fact that they and this other new couple would each need a new car, especially since they live an hour away from their areas. The mission is working on getting them a car, but that will probably take months, and their first 2 weeks were spent pretty much just staying in their flat. So this week we kind of just took things into our own hands. First of all we decided to arrange a car for them. Shortly after my e-mail last week I was privileged to make one of the most awkward phone calls of my life to Lobatse. It went as follows:

me: Hey Elders, how was your p-day?
Them: Oh it was great! What can we help you with?
me: Well, I have some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that I will be at your flat at 10 o'clock tomorrow to take your car....you will now be a biking area until you hear otherwise.
Them:...............
me: The good news is that I just purchased the two nicest bikes in the Country of Botswana for you. They will be here in a week and a half.....
Them: (Well, lets just say they were not too happy, but now the Mosses have a car and they are working closely with the Lobatse Elders so they don't even have to bike that much.)

Tto our great joy they have decided that they want to move from Gabs to Lobatse so they canceled their lease and we are helping them house shop tomorrow. They have until the 20th to get a new house, which is important for the family because we are planning to use their skype from their house. I don't know how the skype is going to work out exactly, but I am confident that I will be able to skype home for my first time!

In other news:

-Look up the Mormon message "The Voice of the Spirit". It is awesome. This video is like scripture to me. The first time I saw it I got nothing out of it. The Second and third and forth I continue to learn more and more from it.

-I solved an Rubik's cube (Elder Finlinson told me that is how it is spelled, so if it is wrong, blame him). I did not have that on my bucket list of things to do before I die, but I decided to do it just so I could say I did. Turns out it is not as cool as I thought....

-Whitney Flake on of my favorite cousins WOULD get married like 3 months before I get home. None the less, I am still very happy for her!

-Dad, you asked about my motivation level for my last 6 months. First of all I have not even hit 7 months yet, but I am getting pretty close. This is something our mission was very good at, and then became very bad at with the new mission president, and now we are working to fix it again. For myself, I feel that my motivation level is still high. Being in a leadership position, it almost has to be because people are always looking to you. They look to your area to see how you are doing and what they can apply in their area, and even more so it forces you to be obedient because if missionaries in your zone see you being relaxed on one or more rules, they assume that it is OK because "their zone leader does it". I do plan to work hard to the very end though if that is what you are asking.

-You asked about my goals for my final 6 months. I have a few Ideas, but I will think about this one a little more and then get back to you next week.

-Thank you for all your help with the ecclesiastical endorsement. I have not heard from my mission President yet, but I will send him an e-mail right now to see if he got it.
Thank you for everything. Love you all

Elder Blake Williams

ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS!!