December 30, 2013

Ola querida familia!!

Bom Dia Bom Dia!! Wow it was so great to talk to you guys this past week. I loved it so much to see all of those little darling grandbabies! They have gotten so big. That was the last time to!!! The next time that we all talk face to face will be at the airport!! well thats if it dont get robed:) ha ha jk mom and dad. So just to let yall know as well my date is set and i dont think i will extend more than were i am at. my return date will be on the 17th of march.

We had a pretty dang good week! Elder Wilson and I, on thur, went to go and teach on of our investigators. We got pretty close the investigators house when we saw a huge group of kids come charging us down smiling and gigling:) so we said hello and gave them all a fist bump when all of the sudden coming around the corner comes a kid running a full speed towards the group. his pants were falling down, didnt have a shirst on, and had one of the bigest grins i have ever seen. In his hand he had a stick, and on the end of that stick was this huge, dead, rat!! All of the kids started to run away as this one kid winded up and flinged the rat in our direction! The rat did a couple of flips in the air and landed right in front of my boot!! ha ha I really love the little kids here! ha ha

On satarday we were able to meet with all of the branch missionaries for the first time. All of the branch missionaries are preparing to serve missions so president marques decided to call them to help them in their preparation. We will be doing a mission prep with them and are going to start trying to turn some of the work over to them. Such as doing recent convert and less active visits. We are so excited to be able to do help out with the first ward missionaries here in lubango!

Yestarday we went to Adilsons house, who is preparing for baptism in january. He has been sitting with the missionaries for a long time now, almost two years, and has wanted to be baptised for such a long time. The only thing that has been stopping him was permission from his parents to be baptised. The parents have denighed all this time, so we were kind of nervous to go and ask their permission again. We talked with them once before and they werent sure about it, but this time when we sat down the dad just said if that was what his son wanted that he would support him and would allow to be baptised!! We were so excited!! The dad said that he would also like to learn more and sit with us to:) 

Anyways i love you all so much!!! have a great week!!!!

Elder Wilhelm

December 23, 2013

Dear fam!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS YALL!!! Oh it is good to hear about the christmas spirit flying around back home. Pretty soon good ol santa claus will make it down that chimny and please a bunch of those good boys and good girls! ha ha It makes me a little jelous to see all of the picture, but i will be a blast back home i can tell:) Thanks for the letter this week also!!

I am way excited to talk to you guys this christmas!!! oh man i am excited. Tomorrow the elders from huambo will be getting here to have chrstimas with us and to have a zone meeting while they are here! We all did a secret santa so it will be fun on christmas for us all. christmas day we are planning on havnig our meeting, exchange gifts, and mabey do a service project at the chaple pulling up a bunch of weeds. they will leave on thursday.

Well i am not quite else to tell you all, but merry christmas!!! i love you all so much and i will see you on wen.

Elder Wilhelm

December 16, 2013

Ola familia!!!

Wow it looks like that production ofthe living christmas tree was a ton of fun!!! I remember doing that and having a blast. sounds like this christmas all yall were converted into a singing group. haha i wish i could hear it all, be sure to record if you can:) Thanks everyone for your letters also!! I love hearing from you all so much!!!

Our week was so cool here!!!! Oh by the way last week was transfers:) ha ha sorry i forgot to tell you all!! There was no change between elder wilson and i. it looks like we are together till the end. This is wilsons last transfer and my sencond to last transfer! man time has gone by so fast!!!! we did recieve two other elders though, elder money and dunkley, here in lubango. They are a ton of fun! they came down with president and sister on thursday, so we are trying to help them out with their area and t get to know it.

President and Sister came down for only a few short days. It was more of a check up to make sure everything was all good here in lubango. On friday they wanted to have comp study with us, so pres went with money and dunkley, while sister came in with us. I will admit i was a little nervous at first;) haha but that soon left and we all had a really good conversation about some gosple principle. I love sister merrill!! ha ha she is so funny!!

On that same day they retured backto our house and made us this big dinner with turkey, ham, mashed potatos, and just a bunch of good stuff!! I think they felt ban that we couldnt come up for thanksgiving, so they made us a big christmas dinner:) i was so thankfull to have some actuall home cookin!!! 

After the dinner we had a little devotional with pres and sister. President talked a lot about christmas and the gift that we are giving to people during this christmas season. he also encouraged us to find servise projects to do. To be a little honest president made me a little trunky:) ha ha he also talked a lot about christmas and our families so i was thinkin a lotabout you guys. haha after president spoke president showed us the chrismas devotional that the church does! It was way cool tosee it and hear it. Pres and sis left the next day to huambo

On satarday we had our branch christmas party!!!! ha ha It really wasnt all that long, so i was greatful! It was so much fun though. During it all of us missionaries sang and did a little skit! the skit was way funny, we werejust showing them the life of a missionary:) it was a ton of fun!!!

Well i love you all so much!! Have a great week!!!!

Elder Wilhelm

December 9, 2013

Howdy yall!!!
It was so great to hear from you all this week!! It just lifts my spirits to hear from each one of you this week. I truly am grateful for the letters!!

This week was awesome!!! As i told you last week we were in
Luanda for a zone conference with all of the elders of Angola. So we had the privilege of riding in that wonderful chicken express(the bus) for 18 hours to go and watch it:) Don't worry this time there weren't any chickens on the bus:)

On Tuesday we got permission from president to do some divisions with the elders from Huambo. I walked with elder Tilley in Terra Nova, an area that we both had served in, to go and see a few people for probably the last time. It was a really sweet experience to walk back in that area and see what had become of the area. It has grown and now has many very strong members. We only were able to see three people, Guilheirme, Danilson, and Lorenco. Guilheirme will be going on a mission in January to Mozambique so this was the last time for Tilley and I to see him. We hope to pass by more people when we are getting ready to leave.

The zone conference was on Wednesday for most of the day. It was such a good conference!!! Elder Hamilton, a member of the second quorum of the 70, came and spoke at the zone conference. It was such a neat experience as he spoke to us and taught us. At the very beginning he did something that I had never really seen done in a conference. To start it off he just asked us what the biggest challenges we had as we worked. We named off a list of 10 or so items from helping people make commitments to getting people married, to how to work with the members more closely. Through the whole conference he discussed about every one of the worries that we had and helped us to understand how to teach more efficiently.

Elder Hamilton used a really good example for helping people keep commitments. He said that when we find people and we start teaching them we are trying to help them make huge changes in there lives that seem almost impossible. Kind of like jumping over a 10 foot brick wall without any help. So somthing people will run head on at the wall and jump as high as they can and just end up slammming straight into the wall. So as we are teaching we need to make "stairs" for them to easy their way up to the top by giving smaller and easier comitments such as reading a chapter in the bofm or somthing like that. The he went on and explained that when we teach and invite people to do something we need to ask them in a very straight, yes or no answer. such as "will you...?" and if they start to make excuses to be a little persistent by testifying and promising blessings and then asking them again. kind of a don't take no for an answer type thing. Ha ha but I really enjoyed the whole conference!!! I learned so much!

Well I love you all so much!! Have a marvolous week!!!

Elder Wilhelm

December 2, 2013

Dear Fam

 

It sounds like thanksgiving was awesome!!! ah há i will admite that it made me a little jelous:) but its all good. Ya we didnt do anything, it was pretty much a normal day. It is so good to hear all the temple stuff is going good!! i am glad that you are enjoying it mom and dad.

 

Há há ya I really dont know exactly what to write today! All i know is that it was an amazing week and that i am very tired!!! Elder Wilson and I were in and out of lessons all week. we had a goal to get like 30 lessons this week and have them be good meaningful lessons. We fel just short by 2 lessons, but boy did it pay off. We were so busy and didnt ever get borde down here in Lubango by ourselves:) It was one of the funnest week i have had on my mission, and we had a lot of wonderful experiences that came from it.

 

There is this one lady,lizet, that we started sitting with this week. When we first found her she didnt show all that much intrest in us, in our message, or in anything that we were doing. But we dicided to call her anyways. When we got to her house the first time she wasnt really paying all that much attention, but as we got to know her a little be we broke the ice and she really started opening up to us. On our second visit she was very excited to see us and to hear from us. we taught her the restoration and it was so good!! she understood it great!!! and she accepted to be baptised.

 

Well sorry i didnt write a whole lot this week, but i love you all and thanks so much for everythign you all do!!!

 

Elder Wilhelm

November 25, 2013

Ola Familia!!!

Hey, whats up!!! Sorry, just to warn you, today the internet is very slow
and I am not sure how much I will be able to write because it took
awhile to load it all. Thanks for all of the letters though!! I really
appreciate it!!!! You guys rock!

Our week was totally awesome!!!! This week we were working our tails
off. It was really sad though, because after having a sweet week with
our investigators and some recent converts, like none of them came to
church! DANG YOU SATAIN!!!  It rained a lot on Sunday so a lot of
people used it as an excuse to not come to church...

During this week though we had a couple of visitors. The first was the
assistants, Elder Mariquele and Hyde, and the other was Elder Lopes,
the 1st counselor in the mission presidency.

The assistants were down here for a couple of days and did some
divisions with us. One of the divisions I was with elder Mariquele!!
Ha ha, ya it felt really the same to walk with him, ha ha, we only
separated like 3 weeks ago. It was a very good division though!

The other visit from Lopes was less for us and more for the branches.
Although he did participate in our district meeting and gave us a
training. Elder Lopes was so fun!! He is just a crazy old Brazilian
man that likes to tell stories, but I learned a lot and he really
helped the branch out with his visit. He left just this morning so we
will miss him.

Actually this week we lost a dupla here in Lubango. We are not sure
for how long, but for the mean while it is just elder Wilson and I for
all of Lubango. Wish us luck!!! :) Ha ha, this next week should be
super busy just because of that, but we are pretty excited!! Pres said
that probably here in a week or so we will get another dupla to
replace the other ones so it won' be for too long.

This week while the assistants were down here we went out to eat at
this really fancy restaurant because this was elder Mariquele's last time
coming down here and he always wanted to eat there! This place is
called Kimba de Soba. There they sell really exotic foods and an array
of other things. When you first get there you just see all of these
big huts, some for sleeping and a few for the actually restaurant. All
around within the property there are a bunch of crazy animals like
monkeys, alligators, andicondas and just a lot of animals. When you
walk into the eating hut you pass by this glass container that has all
of the exotic meats that you can eat. We chose to eat crocodile, oryx,
javelin, and alcatra. The later I don't even know what it is:) ha ha, I
think it is some kind of deer. Anyways it was some of the best meet I
have ever had and the crocodile was actually very sweet and not fishy
at all! ha ah but we had a good time.

Anyways I love you all so much!!! Have a wonderful week!!!

Elder Wilhelm

November 18, 2013

Ola querida familia!!!

Thanks everyone for the letters this week!!! I really appreciate them and am excited to hear from y'all next week:) Just a side note for mom and dad, you guys are really getting old:) ha ha

Well this week was just a nice solid week of work!! It is so nice to not have meetings or anything:) although this next week will be chalk full because the APs will be down here to do divisions with us and Elder Lopes(the first counselor in the mission presidency) will be coming down to give us some training and to help out the brach a bit.

Anyways back on subject. This week was awesome!!! Yesterday Elder Wilson and I, as it was starting to get dark, we were walking up to another appointment by the railroad tracks. As we were walking along the road this guy on his motorcycle turns around and stops to talk to us. He had a friend that had received the book of mormon and that he wanted to know more.

While we were talking to that guy another guy stops abruptly and asks us what we are doing, so elder Wilson continued talking to the first guy and I went over the second guy. I explained to him that we were missionaries of the church and that we had a message that we would like to share with him. So I grabbed his number and elder Wilson got the other guys number.

As soon as those two guys started their bikes yet another man stopped us on his motorcycle. He knew that we were missionaries of the church and started explaining that he needed help to stop drinking and to start going to church. So we explained that would could help him the best we could, and then asked for a number. The man put his head down and said he didn't have one, but he really wanted us to pass by. So we gave him our number and he was about to take off when, low and behold, his brother and his cousin drive up on their motorcycles to see what we were talking about:) ha ha! It turns out that they all lived in the same area and those two guy had telephone numbers:) ha ha!  It turned out alright. Angolans are so curious some times:) ha ha! I love them so much. So hopefully we will get to talk to these guys this week.

Anyways we are teaching this guy named Carlos. On friday Carlos invited us over to his house so that we could teach him and clear up any doubt that he had. When we got there we found Carlos, but he was not alone. He had like 5 of his bodies, all of them from his church that wanted to listen in on the lesson. (So I have had this happen to me before and when you have a room full of 25 year old men that are strong in their faith normally it turns into a bible bash and we just try and leave them with pamphlets and leave).  This time it was different. We went in there and we explained about the restoration. All of these men were understanding it perfectly, except for Carlos. So whenever Carlos got confused about something, all of these other 5 guys would explain it to him perfectly from what we told them:) ha ha! At the end of the lesson when we got out the book of mormon they were all intrigued and wanted to know more. Sadly we only had two copies on us, so they started playfully fighting over the books:) ha ha! It was a lot of fun and they were are super  intelligent guys. Later we went over and brought the rest of them books of Mormon. It was a very good lesson though and some of them ended up coming to church on Sunday!!!!

We also had an investigator that got bit by a dog this week. His name is Junior. We have been teaching Junior for a week and a half now, but he is sick! When we taught about the restoration he just wanted to know for himself, so we gave him the Book of Mormon. He just has not had that much time to read it, because he is always working. So in one of our lesson we read the intro with him and he really liked it. But because of his dog bite, this week he has to stay home:) I know I am a little selfish in thinking this, but now he has time to read from the book of Mormon!!!! ha ha He has already read the first couple of chapters.

Anyways I love you all so much!!! I sure do hope all goes well this week!!!

Elder Wilhelm