Big News for Elder Williams!

This is what we did for P-day...it was amazingly amazing, unbelievable, and extremely awesome. We went to Villavicencio, I'll talk about it in the letter.

*If you were curious, Lawrence explains at the end why divorce is sometimes necessary for baptism.

Dear Family,

Thank you so much for your letters, love, and support!!! If things weren't amazing enough once again this week someone came up to us and said "Are you the missionaries? I was investigating the church a few years ago and my family and I really need your help." She wants us to teach her and she wants to come to church. It's really interesting because she works almost every day except Sunday in the morning and Monday which means we're going today to teach her and then her family will be able to come to church on Sundays. It's really exciting and it gets more exciting. Elder Swainston and I both got phone calls last night from President Lindahl. Elder Swainston is going to be transferred to be a District Leader in Estansuela over San Ignacio! He's going to be right next to my old area and will go on divisions with the Elders there so I told him to say hi to all of the people I know from San Ignacio. After President finished talking to Elder Swainston he told him to pass the phone off to me. President wanted me to go to the mission offices on Wednesday at 11:00 AM sharp because..........I'M TRAINING AND I'LL BE DISTRICT LEADER!!! I'll stay in San Miguel to train a new Elder straight out of the MTC, either Provo or Buenos Aires, I'm not sure yet. I'll also be district leader in my area which means I'll verify every week with the Elders in my district and report to the Zone Leaders. I'll also give a district meeting every Tuesday and go on divisions with the Elders in my district and occasionally with the Zone Leaders. It'll be a big change but I'm ready to hit the ground running.
In other news, today for P-day we went out to Villavicencio which all of the members said was a must. There's a water company called Villavicencio because they have a huge natural source of mountain spring water there which they get their water from. We rented a driver since there aren't any buses that go out in that direction and it was pretty expensive in Taxi. We actually asked if we could rent a car to which the Assistants said "Absolutely not!" The driver took us straight up to the hotel and then stayed there with us while we explored and took pictures. The hotel is huge and surrounded by various trails which have been formed by stone and brick which took us a little ways down the mountain into some beautiful foliage, trees, and ivy (but fortunately not the poison kind). The hotel has actually been closed since the '70s but they still take care of the outside as well as all of the land surrounding the Hotel. It's deep in the mountains and it took about an hour to get there but oddly enough it's technically still in our area (since the church doesn't leave empty spots in ward boundaries). We thought we had been there forever taking pictures and looking around and it turned out to only be about 2 hours in total. Unfortunately we rented the driver for the whole day but at least he took us all to our apartments and then to this Internet Café. Each way we only ended up spending about $20, which is amazing as well. It was just some company we found in the phone book too but it was really nice just to have our own group heading up to Villavicencio. I took probably around 100 pictures, all of which came out really well just because of how scenic the area is. I'm just lucky to live in a really beautiful part of Argentina. I hope everyone likes the pictures and has an amazing week! I love you all!!! Bye!!!

Love,
Elder Williams

P.S. the thing about divorce down here is that it takes about 5 years to get a divorce unless you pay an enormous sum to a lawyer. People who are living together and married to different people aren't keeping with God's law of chastity so they can't get baptized until their circumstances change. They can either move out or get married and they can't get married if they're not yet divorced from the other person. Since a lot of people here eventually separate from their spouses they tend to move in with other people before doing the divorce paperwork. Marriages take about a month but the actual divorce takes about 5 years.

P.P.S. Julie had a nice wisdom teeth experience. Elder Swainston told me he went to Wendy's after he got his wisdom teeth out and asked to talk to Wendy because she's "pretty." His mom got him a date out of it with the Wendy's worker.

Elder Williams enjoying the amazing scenery

Group shot of everyone that went.

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