March 25, 2013

Hey fam!!!!

Thank you so much for the letters this week. Your words and love truly do radiate through your letters:) thank you. It appears you all had a great week. So many people are getting mission calls!! Oh It just makes me so happy that so many have responded to the call to serve. keep up the good work y'all!

On Thursday we had a zone conference. It was a very well needed conference for me to relieve me of some stress and worries. The conference talked a lot about being a virtuous person and how it is the Lord molds us into the kind of men he needs us to be. One of the points that I really enjoyed was a talk by Elder Christoferson of the 12 apostles. I actually think it was in mormon message:) but Elder Christoferson makes an analogy of a little berry bush that was growing big and tall as if it were a tree and not giving a whole lot of berries. The Gardener seeing this went to the bush that was growing so well and pruned it until it was almost all the way back to the ground with just a few branches sticking out. The bush on each end of the branch dripped out a liquid that looked like it was a tear, and yelled, "why are you cutting me down, I was growing so big and tall how could you do this to me?!" ~then the gardener replied "I don't want you to be a tree that gives shade. I what you so be a bush. I know what I want to you be."  After time the bush started to give off, in abundance, more fruit. For me This story makes me think about everything that has happened concerning mission and before. We go through these experiences so that we can grow. At times we don't know why we have these problems, but the Lord does and he know who he needs us to be. That was just one point that I like about our conference:) I love these leaders we have, they rock!!!

This week, for all of our investigators, is going great though. Right now we are doing a bit of weeding in the vineyard, but we are finding some really cool people.

Sorry this letter isn't all that long, but I love you all so much and hope you have a great week!!!:)

Elder Wilhelm

March 18, 2013

Caro familia!!!

Hey y'all what going on!!! Thanks for the updates of everything that is going on back home. It is always so nice to here whats going on. Sounds like the play went great!!! I hope you recorded it so I could see it in a year:) haha Karen congrats on the job!!! It just makes me so jealous:) haha you will love it so much.

So this week was a great week. There where quite a few setbacks and a lot of people dropping but all in all I have my faith and my health, unlike my companion:) I will explain that. But before I explain that to you, I have a quick little story for you. So during this past week we have been getting just a ton of rain and I have been loving it!  One of the days it was raining so hard with just tons of lightning. It was just such a cool experience, but as missionaries rain or shine we went out to work. So we got in a taxi and were coming up to this big statue of the first president. This statue is located in the middle of a huge round about that is tilled and is really quite pretty. As we get closer to it, I notice there are a lot of these little boys running around and sliding on the tile. I thought to myself,  "well they must be using card bored of something to be sliding, because they were sliding fairly far." The I noticed as the taxi nearer they didn't have any card board  but had pulled their pants down and were running and sliding on the bare bums:) ha ha Oh I love Angola!! It gave me a good laugh.

So this week we had a lot of fall through and a lot of people not keeping their commitments. It was fairly discouraging, and our next baptismal candidate for next week fell through because she is still having some problems that she didn't tell us about until we did a pre interview with her. sadly she will be delayed... It is just so frustrating because people just keep lying to us and say they are obeying when they really aren't... I really hope this next week goes a lot better. The same thing happen with a few people this week.

Ok so to tell you about my companion... So about 3 or 4 days ago he started to get these really bad head aches, and a bad fever. He keep insisting we went out, so we did, but the conditions got worse so sister Thompson told us to go in today to get some blood test for him. The test came back positive for malaria. So I have a sick companion for the next couple of days while he takes some medication. He has been taking his anti malaria piles too. it just goes to show that it doesn't always work.

but other than that that is how the week was. I love you all so much.  Have a great week!!!!

Elder Wilhelm


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March 11, 2013

minha querida familia!!!!!

Hey y'all!!! It was so good to here from you all this week!!! Thank you so much for all of your support and your letter:) It just melts my heart. Just for your information also, we just received a notice regarding our email policy. It was been permitted that missionaries communicate with there family, friends, our recent converts and priesthood leaders. So If anybody asks for my email you may give it to them.

But it sounds like this week was great for you all back home. For us to it was an amazing week full of work:) We had a ton of really cool crazy and plain out stupid experiences this past week! As I had talked about during my last letter, we had found a really cool family of Candito. Well so this week we were able to teach them about the message of the restoration. I have never seen a family so prepared to receive our message. During the whole time the parents and the kids stayed extremely attentive and interactive. They asked amazing questions and when we asked questions they responded so humbly just trying to understand our message. It just clicked for them:) Seriously one of my favorite lessons I have had on my mission. They weren't able to go to church this week because they went house hunting, but this upcoming week they promised they would be there. Hopefully tonight we will be able to talk to them.

EDSON GOT CONFIRMED!!! Oh man I was getting worried he would never make it, but he made it. We had to arrange a ride for him because he is still on the mend but we was able to make it!  During church this past week we got 8 of our investigators to come to church!!! It was a really good Sunday.  People that we have been working of for awhile came. What a blessing!

On sunday as we were heading to one of our appointments there was this guy that was honking his horn behind us wanted to talk to us so we stopped and waited for him to pull up(no I am not about to get robed). With a startled look on his face he asks us who we are and what we are doing. I explained that we were missionaries of the church. Then he look at me and asked "do you guys have anything to do with the movie the other side of heaven?" startled I said "ya." then he started explaining with how much he liked it and how he wanted to know more about the church. ha ha what a great contact!
Well that is pretty much it for the week. Thanks a ton:)

Elder Wilhelm

March 4, 2013

Hey there family!!!

Wow it is so good to here from you all! It just brings so much joy to
my heart to hear all is good back home:) This week for us went great
also!

It was just such an amazing week for us in our area. Once again,
we are dropping a lot of people that are not progressing and trying to
find more investigators. So we did quite a bit of contacting again.
Just so you all know there is a better way to work. That is through
members and church!! It is just because we have just a few members that
we do a lot more contacting. The member are probably sick of us asking
them for references.

We were not, however, able to see Edson confirmed on sunday... We
passed by his house several times this week and his health just got
worse and worse to the point where he couldn't talk. On about friday he
was able to communicate with us as we where talking to him and looked
better, but still was not well enough to the point where he could go
to church. Slowly he is getting better and will be confirmed during
the coming Sunday. This Saturday the Lord has also blessed us with
another baptism. He was supposed to be baptized on the last Saturday,
but we felt it better to delay it until this week. Now he is a
hundred percent prepared and already had his interview and passed.
His name is Alex. He has about 16 years and has plenty of family and
support in the church.

We have another man that we are working with but he can't get
married yet. He just doesn't have a job yet so we invited him to fast
with us during fast Sunday. He did and he is just so determined to get
baptized!! We hope that he will be able to get a job during the coming
week.

We had another women named Luzia, and her daughter made it to church
yesterday. Luzia is one of the nicest people I have met and has
excepted and prayed about everything we have talked to her about. She
pretty much treats us like her two boys:) haha she has a baptismal date
on the 23rd of this month. She doesn't have a husband because he passed
away about 2 years ago, and her brother passed away a few months back.
She has just been looking and looking for the truth for so long, and
when she found it she just took off:) we are so happy for her.

Well I love you all so much and I hope you have a great week!!!

Elder Wilhelm