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