September 9, 2013

Querida Familia,

Hey fam!!! Wow it was so great to hear from you all! Thanks for the letter and the pictures of the cute babies that got blessed on Sunday! Man, they are so adorable!!!! Its good that Karen and mom didn't get the bends or anything:) Ha ha, but thanks for all of the letters!!

This week was so awesome for us! I am absolutely loving life! Our area is growing, missions going great, and there is not room for complaining on this boat:) When I say our area grew, I mean literally it did. In our branch we lost a dupla of missionaries. Why? Well so a little over a week ago in Terra Nova, there was an elder that got robbed and got stabbed in the arm at around 7 p.m not to far from their house. Don't worry though, he is fine.  All he needed was 3 stitches. In result of that,  president issued an order to those missionaries to be in house at 6, but to leave their house earlier until they could find another place for them to live. During this last week the elder that got stabbed got sent to one of the safest areas in Angola, in the cassquele branch with another elder (who lived with us). Sadly, in the end, the area in benfica a was dissolved until we get those new missionaries. So, in our district, we had to divide up the areas and now we have a lot more area with a lot more investigators and recent converts!! I was a little stressed at first, but then we got to visit with some of the people and just kind of got attached to them:) aha ha! So we are working really hard to keep that area going good so that when it opens back up again the elders will not have to start with nothing.

On Thursday, Elder Mariquele and I were walking in our area doing some contacting when this lady stopped us. She was kind of a poor lady and didn't look like she was all there, but she told us about her friend that was really sick that need some help. Mariquele and I kind of looked at each other and decided that we would go. We followed the woman up to what she called her house, but it was more like a 5 by 5 cement block. There in front was a woman, laid on a cloth, on the ground. The first thought that popped into my mind was that she is dead.. but as we got closer, we saw that she was breathing and started talking to her. She was about 60 years old, or at least looked it, and didn't have any help or money. We started to talk to her family that was there and they said that they didn't really want to help her.  At that, elder Mariquele and I got a little firry. In the end, we convinced someone to help us take her there and we got ahold of a family member that could pay for her. The problem was just getting her to the hospital. We called our branch president and he was far away and couldn't get anybody to come so we called president Merrill. President said that he would love to help us so off we went  with him and took this lady to the hospital with 2 of her family members in that back of the car. We got to the hospital and let them all off. They was very thankful for the help. I really don't know how much good came from the whole experience, but we got to know her family a little bit and hopefully one day they will want to talk to us more to find out more about the gospel.

This week we are way excited because we get to travel down to Huambo to have a zone conference. We will go by bus again:) my favorite thing!!! I will remember not to drink so much water. Lubango elders will meet us there and we should have a great time!! President will be going too, but they didn't want to go by bus, so the old folks will be going by plane:) ha ha! I sure hope president doesn't read that! But, it should be a ton of fun!

Anyways I love you all so much!!! It is always great to hear from you all. have a marvelous Week!!!!

Elder Wilhelm

P.S. I totally forgot to tell you!! We got a truck this week to use for divisions and stuff! Ya, probably the scariest driving I have ever had to do:) If you think Mesa is bad then you are badly mistaken:)
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