Well my week went pretty good but it was a bit long. We’ve been able to have a couple of great new investigators. One of them is named Misgana (it means praise in Ahmaric) and he comes from our investigator, Mulu. Mulu is ready to be baptized but she wants to wait for her friend Genet who she runs a shop with to be baptized with her. Anyways, Mulu saw this guy, Misgana, preaching across the street and she told her about the church and bore testimony to him about the restored gospel. He’s very interested and said he was looking for the church of the New Testament but hadn’t found it so he was just teaching from the Bible on the street. We hope to continue teaching him.

We also started teaching a guy named J. He’s the neighbor of Bereket who we’ve been teaching and hopefully will be baptized this week. J is actually a Rastafarian and moved to Ethiopia from Jamaica when he was 5 with his family. He is a DJ and father of three children. He’s about 35 and said he wants to stop smoking weed and stuff but has been struggling to find the strength. I told him with the Book of Mormon he would find the additional strength, with the Bible, to be able to kick the habit and live the commandments. He was also worried about his occupation as a DJ and being able to live clean. I told him about this DJ in the United States named Kaskade who is Mormon and keeps the commandments and is also the father of three kids. He was pretty happy to hear that it was possible to be a DJ and stay clean at the same time. We hope he keeps loving the Book of Mormon like he has been so far.

We’ve also not been attending the P.E.C. or any other meetings for the church down here since the Branch President didn’t want us there. The sad thing is that now those meetings don’t take place at all. It is a bit frustrating having to be told to just sit by and watch this train wreck and told we can’t do anything. I really hope when President visits this Branch this week that he can do something that will bring immediate results.

Saturday and Sunday were good as well. J, a guy the other missionaries in our district, was baptized. He’s a great guy and I had to get a picture with the guy. Sunday only 32 people were at sacrament and I think 10 of them were investigators and the 4 missionaries. The old members are slowly falling away and won’t come anymore. It’s starting to become a huge problem. I have faith things can change, but faith without action by others will be in vain.

And now I’m emailing. That’s the week. Hope all continues to go well in your neck of the woods. . Keep it real and keep the faith!

Your servant in Christ our Lord and Savior,

Elder Welch

Yes the Christmas season is different here, I know at the very least that it is different because of the day but I don’t know too much about any other traditions they have here.
it is very hard to get people enduring to the end when they have a philosophy like ‘no worries’. People seem to endure for a time , and than simply forget why they are doing it and kind of backslide. They need to be constantly reminded.

I simply cannot tell you how annoying flies are here. They are the worst thing about Ethiopia. The flies in Uganda are nothing like here. The flies here seem to have a different mindset and have absolutely no caution when flying around. In the U.S. the flies will hover kind of before landing on you but here they just fly right into your nose or ear or whatever else. It frustrates the crap out of me. I think people must think I’m mad when they see me flinging my arms all around my head trying to keep them off sometimes.

I miss snow so much! Here the wind isn’t bad but I do like sitting behind our house and having the wind just blow nicely on me. It has this suction behind there between buildings that just allows the wind to flow through there like a wind tunnel and it feels amazing. I really can’t wait to be cold again. The power even went out the other night and my fan didn’t work so I went outside and sat in the back for like 10 minutes to try and cool off.

The week has been good but another quick one. We have been spending quite a bit of time working with the same people we’ve had baptismal dates with. They keep wanting to wait on baptism but I’m not going to push them faster than they are ready. I just don’t know what the exact reason is but we will keep working with them. Most of them are coming to church every week but I guess I too want to make sure they are ready to make such a decision.

We went to Chooko (sp?) this last week and we have been seeing some two older gentlemen there who are friends of a recent convert. They have big families and we are planning them to be baptized this month. We did find out that the one has 2 wives right now though so we instructed him on what he should do at this time and we hope he can find the strength to do it. We just told him he should legally divorce one if he’s married legally and to not live with or have any relations with that one. We told him he should still provide for her and any other kids though.

We had a lot of investigators at church too. It was awesome seeing our recent convert, Genet, with 5 other women whom she has been able to start bringing to church and to be baptized. The whole relief society is being built on that woman. She is seriously one of the greatest recent converts I have been blessed to have.

It’s pretty much the same old same old here but the experiences are great and I love the people I’m able to teach. It is a little hard for me to say I love everyone in this country, but I can say I love the members and investigators very much! It’s a little hard to love those that yell at me all day. Sorry for that weakness haha.

Elder Welch

Happy post-Thanksgiving! I’m glad you guys had a great Thanksgiving. Ours was great too and yes I had the basic Thanksgiving dinner that I always dreamed about. The only problem is that the food was too rich (and clean) for me so I had a little tummy ache for the two days following. All is well now. I think they imported the Turkey from the U.S. or something because that’s not an animal they have here. There were like 35 people there probably? I didn’t get any pumpkin pie but I had a slice of banana pie.
The families here do pretty well. The members are taught a lot about self reliance and stuff and to have a bit of self respect so they can depend on themselves and not need others to provide for them. It reminds me of the scripture from Paul where he said if a man can’t provide for himself or his own house, he’s worse than an infidel. A little harsh but it’s true.

Well my week was good. Pretty basic with the trip to Addis for the Thanksgiving dinner aside. The dinner was awesome and the people who had us come, the Leischman’s, have one of the biggest houses I’ve ever been in. It was like 5 floors and more of an American home than anything I’ve been in here before. There were quite a few people there and it was great to meet some of the Americans who were there. There were probably about 24 missionaries and another 20 Americans.

Other than that we’ve just been teaching and trying to get people prepared to make sacred covenants. The only problem is people these days are wanting to wait for their wives or to learn more or whatever other excuse they can think of. Hopefully the one’s we’ve been preparing will be ready by the end of this year.


The pictures I sent are of me, and my hair haha. I also sent some pictures of camels on the way to Addis Ababa and some pictures of the flies I was killing while I was in Wendo Genet waiting for interviews. The flies there seem like more than the sands of the freaking sea.

Keep it realsies and stay faithful! I love you all!

Elder Welch

The week on my part went pretty well. We’ve been focusing on the referrals we’ve been given and most of them have been progressing very well. The work is going well for the zone but the only little downfall for the other companionship in Awassa had their bikes stolen. Whoops! It’s kind of slowing the work down for them but they should be getting some new ones this week.

On Saturday we had 3 baptisms in Awassa, one from us and two from the other companionship. On our side Brother I( was baptized. That man is powerful! He knows great English and like I said is a bit of a traveler. He’s been all over Africa and even knows Portugese. I remember like 5 months ago when he knocked on our door in Shashemene looking for somewhere to rent to stay and he told us yesterday at his baptism that when he saw us he just felt something very powerful. Well apparently the Lord wanted him to join his church because we than again contacted him several more times and even his best friend Grume was baptized in Shashemene about 4 months ago. Sadly I had gone to Kenya for a couple months but when he moved back to Ethiopia to Awassa instead but guess what, the Lord really wanted him to join the church at our hands no matter where he was. It’s weird how certain people get seen by the missionaries in so many occasions that it goes beyond coincidence into being Divine. G was able to baptize him on Saturday (kind of awkwardly but the things that mattered were there) and he was so happy. He was confirmed on Sunday and looked very sharp. There are only a few of my recent converts who are extremely powerful and this man is one of them. G happens to be one of the other ones as well.

Well that was a highlight as well as that Sunday was orderly and there weren’t awkward mistakes or disorganization at church. It was great. Yes, the Branch President was away on some business haha. His counselors organized the meeting great and the 1st counselor conducted the meeting very well. The 1st counselor is actually a young man of maybe 19 or 20 but he’s been a member for a few years and knows how things need to be done.

We also had a meeting with a few Jehovah’s witnesses on Sunday and that was interesting. Their Bible is very different I noticed and I was asking them if it bothered them that their Bible had things removed from their scriptures that weren’t in harmony with their doctrine. They believe every one else’s Bibles are wrong actually. To each is own I suppose.

Well the week has gone quickly and another quick one ahead I’m sure. On Thursday we will be heading up to Addis Ababa for a Thanksgiving dinner with all the other missionaries at a member’s home who works for the American Embassy. All the members from the Embassy will be there. There are quite a few members who work for the embassy so it will be cool to be with a bunch of other Americans again.

So that’s the past week as well as some future plans. I hope your thanksgiving will be awesome and you can all appreciate the blessings in your life as well as one another. I’ll be thinking of you all and will be missing you. Keep the faith and know I love you!!!

Elder Welch

Well my week was another busy and quick one. We’ve still been teaching the referrals we’ve been given. The referrals given from the strong members are of course great referrals. We’ve been blessed to receive them. T is still doing well, we just need to see his wife and family but only on weekends is she free and we haven’t been able to get a good time.

G’s friends came again on Sunday and are awesome. This week when we were teaching them they said they knew the church was true but needed time to separate from their old church. The one said she was only going to be able to come every other week and said she wasn’t coming to church but going to hers this week. Well, great thing was that she came to ours again anyways! That’s a good feeling when someone tells you they won’t come, and you don’t expect them, but they come! Better than when everyone else says they are coming and none of them show… Haha.

It was nice this week because I was able to do two interviews for the wives of men I baptized a while ago. The women would have been baptized with them but the one had doubts and the other didn’t have money for the travel. Well they were both baptized on Saturday which was awesome. When I interviewed the one I asked her who she wanted to baptize her and she said me. I suggested her husband but she said that since I was the one who was teaching her in the first place, I should baptize her. So I did! It was cool. The other guy baptized his wife even though when I was in the font he tried getting me to baptize his wife too but I refused and made him do it haha.

Sunday was a little bit better of a service. The Branch President is learning. I think I’m going to tell him this week though that he should have his counselors conduct the meetings instead of him doing it every single week…. I don’t know why he likes to do it since it’s always kind of a mess haha. He really is getting better though and we had a lot of people finally set apart to their specific assignments.

Today we had a good activity and we hiked a mountain. Pretty tiring, and a little painful with all the little pokey things that were everywhere but the end is always worth it, just like life! I took some pretty sweet pictures as well.

Peace and love!

Elder Welch

Well the week has been good. We’ve been focusing a lot on all of the referrals we received last week. They are all pretty awesome and we’ve been teaching them with the members who gave them to us. We’ve also been doing contacting but that really almost never proves to be fruitful. The president has a goal for us to contact 24 people everyday so we do it to be obedient to that request. At least it’s getting the church word out there, but I would say the protestants who are now attacking our church are making people more aware of the church.

We also had the Parrish’s down here this week which was cool. They also took us out to Haile resort again and I had a nice yummy steak. Not as good as last time but still better than anything I ever eat these days.

Sunday was more organized and we actually had enough women to have a small relief society. Our recent convert G gave us two older women referrals and they came to church and really enjoyed it. They were one of the few people who came to church with their actual scriptures. They are pretty awesome ladies. G is an awesome missionary and she is so converted!

We are still teaching T, President A’s friend (the 3rd Counselor), and he’s very committed to everything we teach. He has a motorcycle which is cool but he’s only got one eye since a student stabbed him in the eye a while I guess. Pretty morbid. I also don’t know if that’s good on his depth perception while riding his motorcycle or not?

Well that’s about what’s going on here. Nothing too eventful again this week. Just doing the work and praying for more good people to teach. I love you all so much and pray for you daily. I will keep those specific needs of yours in my prayers and hopefully things will start working out well in all things. Love you all! Keep the faith and keep being awesome!


Elder Welch
P.S. The pictures are of our guard. The church is going to stay safe!

This missionary is doing well. The week has been great. A lot more teaching this week and we were blessed to have a lot of great referrals from some great members. Sister Genet, our recent convert, gave us a couple of women who seemed pretty interested so we taught them and gave them some Book of Mormons.

President A, the 3rd Counselor in the District Presidency (I know, that’s a weird position) gave us a few of his friends who are teachers like him and fathers of some families. One of them actually was attending the church before they had a building. He was attending with President Ammanuel and his family in their home before they ever sent missionaries here. He’s back to investigating and we gave him a baptismal date for next month.

We also went out to Chucko, which is like an hour and a half taxi ride, to see a member and his family as well as two fathers of some big families who were interested. We also gave them baptismal dates for this next month. They seemed very interested and are pretty old. I think they are the fathers of families of 8 and 7 kids. I tried explaining how the Book of Mormon is the scoring goal in a tie soccer game and how it helps us know the one true church, and makes it so we don’t have to bash with people. I hope the analogy landed.

On Sunday we didn’t have many people at church, nothing was organized, but it wasn’t as chaotic because the Branch President was in Addis Ababa. Nothing was planned but the 1st counselor did a good job of kind of improving the meeting. We did have a great referral after the meeting from a guy who is investigating in Addis but was passing through as he was going to his village in Southern Ethiopia. The guy is very interested but he brought his friend to church who lives here. We gave him a baptismal date.

Another great thing on Sunday was one of my recent converts from Shashemene who moved to Awassa came and brought his friend who I had given a baptismal date to months ago when I was in Shashemene. The guy now lives in Awassa as well. He missed the baptism before because he went to Kenya for two months but he was excited to be back and to be retaught. We gave him another baptismal date as well so this next month will hopefully be a good one.

The work is going well. I miss you all so much and you are always in my thoughts and prayers. I hope all is well and all of you are being examples and faithful to what you know to be true. Keep being awesome. I love you all so much. See you soon!

Elder Welch