South Africa: Hello Family! 10-25-2010

Sorry for posting this letter late.  I have had visitors this week!  (Yeah!! ) Plus computer problems.  I will post the pictures with this letter when I get the computer out of the shop. Life is crazy even in CANADA! 


How is Everyone Doing? That's pretty exciting that you have visitors in Canada this week! Sounds like you turned into party animals when I left!

Well first of all I am attaching photos that i am not sure if you will be able to open or not. I am using the Camera cord again so I just thought I would try one more time, but I will probably just buy an SD card reader soon..so keep me posted on that. The Pictures are of 2 of my favorite activities of the week. This week we went to a members house and harvested peaches! It was so sweet, just climbing to the top of trees picking fruit, just another day on the mission. As well I was taken back to my landscape roots this week when we were asked to trim a tree. This was quite an adventure because here in Africa they don't like their trees to grow tall, but they cut the top off and make them grow out so that it provides more shade? and it just looks pretty cool as well? So elder Kelly and I showed up to this giant bush looking thing, turns out it was actually a tree. So we got the clippers and climbed through the branches to the top of the tree, poked our bodies out the top and started cutting. I know this doesn't sound very interesting to anyone else, but it was very fun!

So this week was transfers. My companion got transferred to Johannesburg central (ha ha, downtown Joburg). But he is pretty excited because the temple is in his area. I got a new companion from Zimbabwe, his name is Elder Matunya and he is THE MAN! This is my second, 22 year old, convert to the church, African companion. So its pretty sweet! I love Elder Matunya, he was serving in Botswana (just above South Africa) before this. A little bit about him: He comes from a large African family of 6 children, he was introduced to the church and baptised at the age of 17. He is the only member of the church in his family. He is a very humble person and we get along very well. He is ready to work hard, and I want nothing more than to work hard, so we are pretty much going to baptise the world this next month. Fun Fact about Elder Matunya, two of his siblings live in Botswana, although it was about an hour from his area, but because they are not members he got special permission from the mission president to go teach his family once a month!!!! I can honestly say I have never heard of that in my 19 years in the church.

Another Fun Fact is that this is Elder Matunya's first time serving in a township (he has been out about a year). It is pretty funny because he has only been here for about 4 days and he has already had a lot of memorable township experiences. The one I liked the best was when we were walking through a new section of our area trying to find some families to teach when we passed these two girls our age (rule 1 for township is DO NOT contact ladies your age. They might mistake your intentions). Well we just kept walking, but these girls pretty much contacted us. This happens all the time but you usually just get out of the situation and move on. Well I guess he didn't know this because he started telling them all about what we do as missionaries, how we share a message about Jesus Christ, Gospel blessing us, etc. As he is in the middle of his sentence one of the girls sighed really loudly and said "UH are you NOT interested in girls!?" (ha ha) I had to laugh pretty hard, but then I had to show him how to get out of the situation and we were on our way. Lets just say the journal has no shortage of "first time in township" stories.

Well moving on, we also had 3 baptisms this week. Brother Peter: A great guy. He is about 41. His father was a preacher but passed away about 20 years ago and Peter has not been to church sense then. He is however very knowledgeable in the Bible and loves the Book of Mormon.

Brother Tshepo: He is the man. He's about my age, but you would never guess because he is pretty much a body builder (he didn't fit into his baptism suit because his traps were to big, the trap is the muscle between the shoulder and the neck...I think). Tshepo is in the Young Single Adult ward and loves it, although he doesn't seem to know many people in the ward yet. He is very simple, so it was good teaching him because we as missionaries are always working on simplicity.

Sister Matabala: She is the mother of the little girl that died when I first arrived here. She actually does not speak English so we had to teach her through a translator. She was watching her sisters little boy for the past month or so. His name is Prince, he is about 2 or 3, and he and I are best friends. When I come over he runs over to me and shakes my hand, but then acts like my companion is not even there. While sister Matabala was being interviewed, Prince waited outside with me and the rest of his family and he just came and sat right next to me while I wrote a letter. But its a sad day because my friend Prince has gone to....some other African country for a couple months with his real mother.

Well that's about all I got for now, my emails are getting to long! Ill try to slim it down so I don't bore anyone.

Alright family Hope everyone is doing well! What else is going on in the other side of the world? Love you all

Elder Williams

South Africa: Well Hello Family 9-18-2010

Elder Williams and his companion Elder Onsongo
from Kenya

Well Hello Family!

It is good to hear from everyone! Sounds like your trip to the states was a success and I loved the pictures! Especially the one where Carly, Cami , Grant and Joel are jumping and Grant's face is priceless. The one where he is on Michael's shoulders looking down at the long fall down is pretty good as well.

I was able to get mail this week, so thank you for the letters and I look forward to when I will get the packages. Before I forget I must mention the second most exciting thing for this week! When I was in the office this past week they had a scale so I weighed myself and it said I was 74...Not knowing what 74 was I didn't get excited until I found a converting calc. Turns out that 74 is 163 lbs!!! That means I have gained about 15 lbs since I have been in Africa for 3 months! I'm super excited about that because that is the first time in my life working out has worked for me. Since we get so much pop, rice, and chicken, Elder Kelly and I work out twice a day...and now I'm 15 lbs heavier! So just get ready for my disappointment next time I get on a scale and find out that the one at the office was just inaccurate.

I'm sorry about the pictures. I usually use my companions little gadget to get pictures onto the email, but this time I put it directly from my camera to the computer. I will try to use his gadget today, but we got transfer news Saturday and he is being transferred on Wednesday, so I will have to use what I used last time from now on. Let me know if you can figure out how to open them, if not I will just buy a converter thing. Were you able to see how much those usb sticks were? I just bought a 32GB one 2 days ago for about 14 American dollars to back up my photos, but it is straight from china so I am not sure how much I trust it.

So the highlight of the week was DEFINITELY seeing Elder Holland! He had some visits he had to make here in South Africa so he set aside an hour to come see us on Friday morning. To be very honest with you we were all pretty worried before he came here because there is a rumor about Elder Holland visiting the Johannesburg Mission. The rumor goes something like this: Many,many years ago when he came to address the mission (which was supposedly not so obedient at that time). He gave his talk like normal, and then at the end of his remarks he told all the missionaries to get into a line. When the missionaries were in a line he went down and looked at them for a moment and assigned each missionary either a 1, 2, or 3. most the missionaries got 3's, a large number got 2's and only a couple got 1's. After numbering them he said, alright, if you got a 1, your doing well, keep it up. 2's you need to talk to your mission president and sort out whatever you need to sort out. 3's pack your bags, your going home. (Just a reminder, this story is rumor not fact, but this is where our worry was coming from ha ha)
Friday morning we woke up early, and quickly got to the mission office about an hour and a half away. Only 2/3 of the mission was allowed to come as some of the missionaries are located to far from the mission office. We were all seated about an hour before he arrived and so the mission president took some time to tell us how big of a hurry Elder Holland was in. He flew into Johannesburg at about 10pm Thursday night, probably got to sleep around 12, woke up and is on his way to walk through the Johannesburg MTC, then he would address us, then he needed to quickly drive to the area office where he was to address others. Then he had to quickly get on a plane, fly to Durban and address the priesthood there. ALL in ONE DAY! So it was really nice of him to address us. When he arrived one of his security people came in and told the mission president Elder Holland wanted us to line up so he could shake all of our hands, so we did it QUICKLY. When he came out of the MTC we all got pretty excited but he looked so, so tired. He shook all of our hands but quickly because he was short on time. So yes, I shook the hand of Elder Holland, Pretty sweet!

When he was on the stage getting ready to address us I thought he was going to fall asleep he looked so tired, but once he stood up, this all went away and he was all over the place! He opened up by telling us about how he visited our mission many, many years ago and he had never been madder in his entire life. That this was the worst behaved group of missionaries he had ever seen, but that he was not going to go into details about what happened. (It was kind of funny though because he was getting angry just thinking back to that time). Following this anger story, he then followed it up with how impressed he was with us. He said that he has spoken to missions literally thousands of times and that we were probably the most impressive group of missionaries he had ever seen (pretty big complement).

I absolutely loved his talk to us. He talked a lot about self conversion. He said that the main purpose of Preach My Gospel is solely to convert yourself and then the rest follows. He then got back to his animation when talking about missionaries that go home and then become in-active. When I say he was getting animated, I am understating how it really was! He was getting SO into the talk! It was so funny! He is so talented at balancing humor with seriousness and spirituality. EX: "When I hear about missionaries coming home and thinking Oh good I put in my 2 cents now I'm done! I get so angry I start bouncing from wall to wall and then hit the sealing! People just stand back and say "Elder Hollands at it again, someone call the fire department!" It just makes me want to get out my cat of 9 tails (which is apparently a whip) and just (this is where he did a whipping motion with half of his body going over the pulpit ha ha)" He then left by saying "I leave you the best compliment I know how, you missionaries seem to know what your doing"

It was just really funny! I hope I can get a copy of this talk some how, it was that good! All of Africa is watching General Conference on the 30th and 31 of this month so I will get to see all of the sessions at that time! I am pretty dang excited for that as well.

I only have a couple min. but I will throw in some updates: Our garden is doing fantastic! I will send some photos when we get the entire thing planted. We transplanted most of the plants this week but we still have to transplant the cabbage. As well it is almost fruit tree harvest time so this week we are going to a members house and helping him pick peaches. The apple tree and some other fruit tree need some time.

A new investigator named Salo also has a blackberry bush and it is pretty delicious... I'm going to use some of those berries to put in my Jello!

Well I still have updates on Investigators because we are having baptisms this week. I will give updates next week, I have less than a min left.

Thanks for everything!
Love you all,

Elder Williams

(Carly or Tyler next time your at an electronic store can you look for a photo printer. Like one of those really small printers that only prints photos? And let me know how much they cost in the states. I have been thinking about buying one here because its expensive to print pictures off, but the printer is also expensive here)

In front of the Johannesburg Temple

Do You Really Care to Read This?? HA :)

Dear Family and Friends,

So....I am thinking of making the blog private.  I looked the other day and I have hits (several) on my blog from far away places like Japan,Mexico, Netherlands, USA and Canada.  OK so the last two are OK but it gives me the eeebbbeee's (is that a word?) that people I don't know are reading about us.  SOOOOOOOOOO if you care and would like to read about our boring lives...send me your e-mail address and I will invite you to be a reader of the blog or just post a comment if you want to be invited.   I will close the blog this coming week.  And if you are from Japan , Mexico or the Netherlands I can't imagine why you would even want to read this because I don't even know you! ha

Stacey

Our First Canadian Thanksgiving ;) Oct. 2010



I had no idea that Canada celebrated Thanksgiving as well.  It is embarrassing how little I really know about Canadian history. (I am learning) But I was thrilled to find out that they do celebrate it and the kids had time off school.  Their Thanksgiving is Oct. 11.  We took a couple extra days off and headed to see family in Idaho and Utah.  On our way we passed the little historic site called Frank's Slide.  It is worth reading this and is so amazing that this town was literally buried by boulders and rocks.  The pictures do not do the site justice.  It is overwhelming to think about what happened here.

We passed through the town of Sparwood BC and Steve had to pull over to get a picture of this mining truck.  I must admit I think it is biggest truck I have ever seen!  Grant's head barley touch the front bumper!

The first night we stayed at this great little place in Dover, Idaho.  We got there late at night but look what we woke up to.  This is a place I would love to come and spend more time in.  I feel so blessed to be surrounded with such beautiful things at this stage of my life when I can truly appreciate it. 

Looking off the back porch over the lake.

They have these little airplanes taking off and landing on the lake.  I felt like I was in the movies. 

We got to my sister Dana's house and the first thing Grant wanted to do was gather the eggs.
He loves to go to Idaho and see my family as he loves all of the things you can do on the farm.
He can never get enough.

This is Grant and my baby brother Scott.  Scott and his wife Vivian have a beautiful place with
 lots of horses.  Uncle Scott is always on the top of Grant's list of things to do. 



Petting the goats at his cousins house.  I can honestly say that goats have

never been an animal I have enjoyed.  I am not really sure why people

have goats!  Ha



This is the BEST picture of the trip!  Carly had made appointments for the girls to get scalp massage's
 in Utah. The boys saw what we were doing and decided that they wanted in on the action.  We
 about died laughing(silently) when Steve's hairdresser stepped up to get to work. Notice darling
 little Grant. This really was wonderful and felt so good!

The girls stayed a bit longer for pedicures.... 



We all loved being pampered!  Darling Camille.




Micheal Yeck got us tickets to the BYU homecoming football game.  It was the highlight of the trip!

I was a little late taking this pictures as it took me a second to realize that this was

Coach Bronco Mendenhall.



The team coming out of the locker room.  Grant loved this!

Steve, Grant and Micheal cheering the team on.  It was alot of fun to spend some time talking to
 Micheal. He is Red Shirting this year and will suit up next year for BYU.  Go Courgers....#77

It was a beautiful day for a game and as the sun set it was truly stunning! I always feel such a feeling

of pride and gratitude when I am at BYU.  I feel so blessed to have experienced this great University.

All of us after the game.  We all had BYU shirts on until it got chilly!
BYU WON!

Grant and BIG MIKE..:)

After the game we went to Cafe Rio (a must on our list) We had hoped Caroline (Blake's good friend...:)
could join us as well but she is the party planner at BYU and was busy hosting the party of the night.
We dropped Micheal off after dinner.  It was fun to see these two kids from home.  I love Carolin's
house....It always makes me smile.  Who chooses that color of pink to paint a house?  I am sure there
must be a story behind that but one thing for sure is that it is easy to find!

Steve with his brother John and sister-in-law Diane.  They are always so good to us.

My crazy kids taking crazy pictures.

It is fun to see the kids together.  They have so much fun playing.  Grant said his favorite part of the
trip was playing Mario and football with Joel!  Ha We sure missed Tyler, Kaylee and Blake!

Grant snapped pictures on the way home.  This is an action shot he got of Camille sleeping! Ha

We pulled off in Waterton on the way home.  I loved this little village. 
It was so beautiful.

This is the hotel that is overlooking the village. 
I have a note to come back here in the spring.

Elk, Elk and more Elk.  They were everywhere.

It was a fast trip with too much driving and not enough time spent anywhere but we all LOVED it. 

 It was fun to get away  to see family and just relax. 

Now what can we do for Thanksgiving in the US?!  :) 

Darn...the kids do not have time off school then so....

maybe someone could come visit us!?

Boys and Football! 9/2010

Grant's buddy Jordon invited Grant to his first Calgary Stampeders football game.
They LOVE their Stampeders here! I asked Grant who they played and he said...
Oh I can't remember...do you want me to look it up and so he did! :)
I think it was BC if that is right but the important thing is...
is that they WON!


The boys also came home with these footballs.  What a hit it has been. 

 It is the new favorite football!



These boys are so darling and so funny together.  They both breath football.  Grant asks me daily if I can check on football teams for his age.  I tell him he has to be a bit older to play. He reminds me that they had kids his age playing during half time at the game.  GREAT!!

Thanks Jordon for the fun night and fun memory. 

South Africa: Hello Family! How is everyone doing!? Oct.11, 2010

I was not able to open up the pictures Blake sent this week!  So bummed.  I hope he can re send them next week..

Hello Family! How is everyone doing!?

So your in the US this week? I am definitely jealous about that! And you went to Cafe Rio!? You can't tell me about that kind of stuff! I am going to have pop and chicken for two years, the thought of Cafe Rio gets me too excited. Before I forget, if you're at Temple Square, look for some of the sister Missionaries in my MTC district (Sister: Smith, Wilson, Paravato, Manaugha? I don't know how to spell the last two). Elder Robinson's parents ran into the sisters a few weeks ago and they said it was quite the reunion! I hope they are doing well.

Sounds like a lot of fun...do send pictures if you can. I attached a few pictures today of our Legacy of Love Temple trip which I will talk more about below. And the first picture is of one of our new investigators on baptism date for the end of this month. This is a picture of him going to church for the first time. His son went to the temple with us and he said that this was the first time he has ever seen his dad with a tie on! His dads name is brother William, a mechanic, his wife and son have died within the past 3 years, and he is just a good person! he is the man, I am very excited for him!

So Elder Alder already got his camera stolen? I have not heard that yet but I am sure he will have a story for me later. That is why I asked for the memory stick so I can have something to back my photos up so it wont be a huge blow when my camera gets stolen as well... I do have a couple photos of Elder Alder, but they are all in the MTC. I have told you a bit about him, he is the man, I love elder Alder. He is from Idaho and although he is a bit quiet at times he is very cool. I hope we have the opportunity to be companions some time.

Thank you for sending packages ha ha. Someone make sure mom is not spending to much money on me while I'm on the other side of the world. I will be able to check mail at the end of this week for the first time in about a month, so I'll get updated on everything that has been happening. Elder Holland comes on Friday! We are all very excited about that. I just got my hair cut as you will see in the pictures, don't mind the military look, I don't have to many options when it comes to places to get my hair cut. It is either at a black person hair shop (which...would leave me with no hair) or the Muslim shop which is where we go....that's always fun.

So as I mentioned earlier we had what we call a Legacy of Love temple trip this week for our recent converts. It was very fun, but a very hectic week to get ready for it. First a little background on what Legacy of Love is: Simply put, when we have recent converts we get them into family history, so they research their family that has passed away (usually back to their great great grandparents). When all of this is in the names are taken to the temple and we take the recent converts and let them do the baptisms for the dead. In America, saying baptisms for the dead is a very strange concept to most, but it just makes sense and for some reason people seam to just understand the concept of it here. As we read in the Bible, especially in 1 peter (chapter 3:18-20, and ch 4:6) It talks about how people who passed on before they were able to hear the gospel, are able to hear the gospel in the spirit world. BUT as you read in James 3:3, a person cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven unless they have been baptised, SO what happens to all the good people of this world who have died without hearing the gospel and being baptised? that's where 1 Corinthians 15:29 comes into play where the Baptisms in behalf of the dead is mentioned. Seeing as how a spirit cannot be baptised, the Lord has commanded that baptisms for those that have passed on without baptism, can be baptised for on this earth.

Anyway, So we gathered all these names from our recent converts and they were super excited. We got the names to the ward so they could enter them into the family history website and submit them to the temple by Thursday so the names could be printed out by Saturday. We have worked with the ward a lot in making sure this gets accomplished, but it continued to be delayed for whatever reason. Tuesday night my companion gave up on figuring the trip out and came to the conclusion that we were just not going to have the temple trip. I continued to have faith in the ward until Wednesday at lunch when I found out that the ward had Canceled the trip after running into a problem with entering the names (they had a couple month notice on the date of this trip and they still could not figure it out). Wednesday my companion was also sick, so I was looking at a canceled temple trip, a sick companion, and a full day of appointments...Naturally I got really excited because this meant that I had to figure out this entire temple trip, go to all my appointments, (I went on Exchanges with the District Leader Elder Kelly so I could do all this since my companion was sick), and we had to fit in all of his appointments as well, in only half a day because the deadline was tomorrow! I don't know why but I get really excited when there is a problem (like the temple trip) that no one can get figured out and then I have to figure it out so I decided that it was game time, and I went to work figuring out the problem. I called the temple to see if we could just scrap the names and use temple names from other parts of the world instead, but they refused for a couple reasons, so I came to the conclusion that we were going to have to enter the names on the family history, get the names printed at the temple, organize transport, make sure that everyone has money for transport, and re schedule a time since the ward had already canceled it. Long story short it was by far the most hectic day of my mission so far. Elder Kelly and I were literally running from car to appointment back to car, to appointment, while at the same time calling every leader in the ward to get the problem worked out, then calling the temple, then calling the ward, etc. It was SO hectic and I loved every second of it! It was probably about 3 days worth of things to do smashed into half a day.

The solution that got worked out was that the elders of our district would go to the temple in the morning and use their family history program to enter in all of the names and get the request forms turned into the temple by that day as well. I was blown away at how intense the churches family history research is! And even more surprising was that it was SO fun to do! Even though I was doing the family history for OTHER families it was still very fun. I would definitely encourage EVERYONE (member or not) to do their family history. The church even has it set up for non members to do their family history, and of course its all free. We have decided that we are going to take a p-day to go to the temple and look up our family history, so my question is, I know our family history has been done, but how far back does it go?

That day, everything was finalized accept for a little problem with finances, but I spoke with the bishop and that got sorted out. Saturday morning we went to the temple with about 7 recent converts and it was simply amazing! As horrible as it sounds, baptisms come and go here in Africa. This month we are shooting for 6 baptisms and they don't bring the level of excitement as I sometimes feel they should. The reason for this is that too often the recent convert gets attached to the missionary and not the church, so when the missionary leaves, so does the recent convert, BUT this all changes if they set their sights on the temple. When Recent converts can experience the temple and the spirit and joy that comes from the temple, that is when they are fully converted to the Gospel and not the missionary. I have decided as well that I would like to make sure regular ward temple trips, and ward family history is going strong before I leave this area. If this can happen then the many members and recent converts we have will be strengthened.

I will try to attach another picture of Brother Johannas and Sister Sibongile (the family I sent a picture of in one of my first emails) I love that family so much and they are so strong in the gospel already. They went with us to the temple and she said that words cannot express how she felt while we were there, and Brother Johannas said that it was the most beautiful place he has ever seen in his life! THAT is what brings joy for me as a missionary. Setting individuals eyes on the temple. I hope that I will be able to see this family enter the temple in one year from now to be sealed not just for this life, but the life to come.

Oh darn, my companion just told me the picture I am looking for is on his camera in the car..but if you look closely you will be able to see them in some of the other pictures.

Alright family. Thanks for all your support and love!

I hope all is going well with your trip back to the United States, and ask Elder Alder's mom if she wants the pictures of him in the MTC. Thanks for everything!

Love

Elder Williams

PS: Mom did you forward that email to Carly that I sent two weeks ago? I tried to send it directly to her but it sent it back to me.

South Africa: Day After Conference 10/4/2010

Hello!

How is everyone!? Hopefully amazing because its conference weekend! We (missionaries and investigators) have been SO excited for conference! As we were eating dinner last night we were like.."Sunday morning General Conference starts...NOW!" We were not able to watch it though because most of it goes on in the middle of the night. It has been recorded and copies of the sessions are being shipped right now, and then everyone in Africa will be watching it on the 30 and the 31 of October! Hopefully the mission president lets us watch all the sessions, but let me tell you, it is a dream of dreams of some of our recent converts to attend Conference in person!

Anyway, this week was pretty exciting. We were not able to go hiking because our car brakes took all day to get fixed, but I did get to see my first wild life this week! I was on splits with the Zone leaders (which is SO fun) and they have a GAME PARK in their area! Its a pretty week one, but I still say a flock of those deer that lions like to eat...no lions though. I was on splits with an Elder Mcombes. He is a goofy kid but we get along really well...it has never occurred to me until this point, but maybe that's why we get along so well...? Nope, cant be. But anyways, I went to Springs which is a "town" area. I was so excited and their schedule was booked! they had one to two appointments scheduled every hour for the entire day! It turned out to be a rough day because every single person ditched their appointments accept for two, one of which was correlation meeting. I didn't mind to much because I was in a new place, so It was still a really enjoyable day for me. Elder Mcombes was obviously very disappointed so he took us out for ice cream at the end of the night to cheer him up. We had Dip cones, a favorite. Other than that It was a pretty non eventful exchange.

This week we also had Mission President Interviews. (Probably because the mission is getting ready for Elder Holland in a week and a half!) But the interview went really well. My mission President is the best and it is really easy for us to just talk about life. He is awesome.

Yesterday while everyone back home was enjoying conference I enjoyed my first African rain. It was exciting to see rain once again, but the rain quickly left and there was a dust storm! I felt like a Texas not knowing how to deal with a dust storm because I was blinded within taking one step outside! Wow I'm sorry, other than that it has been a pretty un-eventful week.

Maybe I could answer some questions. Dad, In a recent letter you asked about missionary work. I was reminded of your question in my studies of Preach My Gospel this week. I would direct you to page 84 of Preach my gospel for a good answer, but my advice would be to keep it simple. Often we stress about finding opportunities to share the gospel with others. This is good because the lord promises us that as we strive to share the gospel, our understanding of the gospel will grow and we will be able to feel the spirit more often. But to my comment about keep it simple, Don't be awkward about it. Missionary work does not mean that you need to show up on the doorstep of everyone you know with missionaries. Rather, you can simple include others with your "church activities". For example, you mentioned that you had people from the ward over the other day. How many people over were your neighbors, or friends outside of the church? This gets your friends involved with the church in a simple way. As well you could have a BBQ with friends and invite the missionaries over to grill the meat or something. Invite them to a church Christmas activity. Its not weird to invite someone to church. I am amazed at how often I am invited to other churches and the invitation is not weird at all but it shows the care the other individual has for you Just suggestions, but the main part is getting the ones you want to share the gospel with, involved.

Preach My gospel teaches that the lord will help us as we strive to share his gospel. And in Jacob 5:75 we read about the joys that come as a result of sharing the gospel. It has also amazed me while I have been here how simple the gospel is. The lord wants us to follow him by: 1. Having faith in him. Faith includes not only believing in Christ, but striving to do what he wants of us. (keeping his commandments) 2. Repent 3. Be baptised by someone holding the proper authority. 4. Receive the gift of the holy Ghost (this is what my personal study consisted of today. The difference between the light of Christ and the Holy Ghost). and then 5. He simply wants us to endure to the end. Continue keeping his commandments, doing what we are supposed to, serving others, etc.

Another insight I had from studying lately was the family Unit. I believe its the next page in Preach My Gospel pg 85 there is a sentence that I really enjoyed. "Heaven is a continuation of the Ideal Home." this led me as well to D&C 130:2 where it mentions how important the family unit is and how the same family unit we enjoy here on earth will continue with us to heaven, coupled with a joy that we cannot comprehend. We need to continue strengthening the family unit. Spend time with your family. The prophet did not tell us to set aside Monday night for family home evening because he was running out of things to say. It is important, spend that time together, do something fun together, go enjoy a smoothie together (because I wont be able to for 2 years), do something fun together!

Well family my time is running out. I need to go now!

I hope everyone is getting my letters and enjoying conference!

Love you all

Elder Williams

PS. Above I mentioned being invited to other churches. This week we were invited to a Rrostufarian church! I can safely say that's the first time that has happened for me.