Week 71 - Madison Tennessee

Hola mi familia!

This week has been great. I’ll start off with Javier and his progress. We taught him the word of wisdom this past Thursday and it went rather well. He asked at the end of the lesson that the next time we came over, if we could bring more info on their commandment and maybe some of the stories about it. So we taught him about Daniel and king nebakenezur. About how he kept the covenant of the Jews and how he was blessed with the gift of knowledge and dream interpreting. It really connected well with him, and he committed to living it, and asked for help to stop drinking. He’s really so awesome and i love him so much. He told us that his friend wants to start learning as well, and that tomorrow he will be in the lesson with us.we also helped him skype his son yesterday, so that helped build some more trust.

Not much else happened this week. Just a lot of service and food. I love the holidays haha.

Love y’all!

🇺🇸Elder Williams🇲🇽

Week 70 - Madison Tennessee

SPOILER:  There is a Recording of Elder Williams singing Oh Holy night in Spanish from yesterday.

Hola mi familia!

This week has been super awesome! So to start off, Javier is progressing so much still! Ever since his son left for his mission, he really noticed the difference in how he feels when we are teaching him and when he’s alone. We taught him about recognizing the spirit and he told us all the times he’s felt it since we’ve been teaching him. We then set a baptismal date with him for the 13th of January! And then right after, without us asking, he asked if we could come over more often so he could learn more. That was super cool. He came to church and brought a friend with him. That was super cool, he lives with Javier so we are going to try to teach him as well.

Other than that we had our branch Christmas party and it was a great opportunity for me to get to know some of the members, I know like less than half of them. Especially a lot of the less active/inactive members that came. Javier wasn’t able to come, but it was still a success. We helped a bit with the set up, and I got to help set up the du equipment, hence a few of the videos I sent. :)

I also sang oh holy night in sacrament yesterday, this one was in Spanish. Next week they want me to sing for the combined 3 ward sacrament. That one will be in English. I’m excited.

Also sorry for not telling y’all that pday would be Monday this week! We have zone conference on Wednesday so it got switched for today.

Love y’all!

🇺🇸Elder Williams🇲🇽

Week 69 - Madison Tennessee

Hola mi familia!

This week has been great. We had the baptism of Eduardo right before church and then he got confirmed and our branch president blessed their 3 month old baby. Then after church our branch mission leader, Miguel, got set apart as a missionary. So it was a super awesome Sunday. And Miguel’s dad, Javier, was able to be at all of the events. I think it’s really helping us. We had a great lesson with Javier this week. We taught him the plan of salvation by drawing it on our iPad. He really understood and at the end of the lesson, he said “no wait, what else, I want to learn more.” He’s progressing a lot.

We are also trying to start doing a family mission plan with each member in the branch to start building them up and using them as a source of finding. Hopefully this week we can really kick it into gear.

Hasta la próxima!

🇺🇸Elder Williams🇲🇽

Week 68 - Madison Tennessee

Hola mi familia!

This week has been super awesome. We found a ton of new investigators and we were cutting through our “potential” investigators that have been potentials for 500+ days.

But the main thing that happened this week was going on exchanges with the traveling assistants. We found a lot of new investigators through this, and they are all really cool. I learned that i need to be better at teaching right when I find people, and try to get in right then to teach then. It’s how we found and taught all of our new investigators. But overall a great exchange.

Also, Eduardo passed his baptismal interview, so he’s all ready to get baptized Sunday at 12 and then to get confirmed during church. And Javier, the dad of our ward missionary leader, came to stake conference this week. It was his first time at church, so that was cool.

Anyways, I love the new area and the companion. And it’s Christmas season, so that’s a plus as well:)

Love y’all,

Have a great week

 🇺🇸Elder Williams🇲🇽

 

Week 67 - Madison Tennessee

Hola mi familia!

Well this week has been awesome. I love Madison so much. We’ve been meeting a lot of members and knocking doors this week. Our branch president is the brother of my first ward mission leader. So while we were over for thanksgiving dinner, his brother came and it helped build some trust. It was great to see them again.

We helped set up and throw a farewell party for our branch mission leader. He’s heading out to Alabama in a week, so we will be getting a new mission leader here soon.

We’ve been able to meet with Javier, the father of our branch mission leader. It’s hard to communicate with him because he’s not super fluent in Spanish, but he said he was ready to come to church starting next week. So hopefully we can set him on date here tomorrow.

Most of the rest of the time was spent heading to different areas and knocking for awhile. We were able to find a few new good prospects, now just trying to make the second contact. But there is a lot of great areas to work with, a lot more than bowling green.

Anyways, I’m really excited to work with Elder Murdock this transfer and help him continue growing in his Spanish skills. He’s a great missionary! He’s from salt lake, and went to Olympus high. He’s been out for about 4 months now and he’s super funny.

Love y’all!

 🇺🇸Elder Williams🇲🇽

 

 

 

 

Week 66 - Curveball. Headed to Madison Tennesse

Hollar mi familia!
Well the subject line fits really well for this one. I found out yesterday that I’m getting transferred down to Madison, tn. It was way unexpected because I got here after Elder Hamilton and I’m leaving before him. But I know it’s because the lord has a need for me down in Madison. I’ll be serving with Elder Murdock, he’s been out for 3 months and is just getting out of being trained. Madison is a spanish branch north of my first area. It’s in the same stake as BG and it covers everything that BG doesn’t. I’m super excited, but also a little sad to leave BG so quick. The youth here are the bomb.

My new address will be
1208 Rivergate Meadows Dr Goodlettsville, TN  37072

This week has been a great week. We got to go on exchanges with the zone leaders and I got to go with Elder mecham. We had an awesome day, we set a goal in the morning to set one baptismal date and to find 2 new investigators. I thought the second goal was going to be a lofty one because we had no time to knock any doors, but I had faith that we could do it. And so we taught a lesson, in which we were able to set a first contact investigator on date for the 9th of December. Then after a few more lessons, we were going to meet one of their investigators at a place in town, but he got stuck at home watching family members. So we went to him and it was great. We were able to talk about some concerns he had and he was super excited to read the Book of Mormon, then right as we were about to leave, his younger brother came out and started talking with us. We set a return with both of them and hopefully some more of the 14 other siblings will be future investigators. But as for our daily goals, we were able to reach them!

We went to an area that some random guy told us that there was a bunch of Hispanic at, and we had some good success. We met a really awesome guy (drunk at the time) that seemed super promising. He told us how he wanted to stop drinking and to actually be a strong link in his family, and that somehow he knew that we would be able to help. He set a return appointment and told us not to miss it. It was pretty cool, I can’t wait to see him again.

Love y’all!

��Elder Williams��

Week 65 - Bowling Green

Hola mi familia!

This week has been pretty awesome!

To start off, the family that we found that speaks a dialect from Guatemala, they are now on baptismal date for the 16 of December. So that’s the mom and her two daughters. The dad hasn’t sat in on a lesson and it doesn’t sound like he really wants to, but we will continue inviting him in. They are great, but they weren’t able to make it to church yesterday so that was sad.

The two girls that we were teach that had questions about the prophet, we found out the older one is moving back to El Salvador, so we gave her the way to get in contact with missionaries there and hope she does. And we haven’t gotten in contact with the younger one recently. So not much happened there.

On Tuesday I went one exchanges with Elder Moran to his area, so we got to knock doors and bike all around south BG. Then that night we did a live church tour on Facebook and we have had awesome results from it. It’s already at 18 thousand plus views, and we are hoping that at least one of those was a non member. If so it was a success. If you haven’t shared it, do it and se what your non member friends have to say about it. The ones that comment/like it are the ones that are interested, just if you were wondering:) also because we are Mormon famous now, I’ll be signing autographs for my fans on Saturday, haha;)

Last night we had a missionary fireside with the youth from both wards here. It was like a Q&A for us missionaries. It was super fun and now all the youth love the missionaries even more. Now they will be good sources of finding:)

That was basically it for the week, can’t wait for thanksgiving next week! It’s going to be a crazy day because it’s also transfer day.

Love y’all!

🇺🇸Elder Williams🇲🇽

Week 64 - Bowling Green and the Hammock

Hola mi familia!

So this week was great. We went on exchanges after zone conference and I went with Elder Hamblin in the Spanish area. And it was a great night. We found a new family to teach. It is a little hard to teach them because she speaks a dialect and speaks broken Spanish. So there are certain words that we have to explain, but she is very humble and wants to learn. So we are teach her and her two daughters. The husband had been there, but doesn’t want to really sit in on lessons. We also began teaching a couple other investigators this week. One is in college and the other is in high school. During the lesson, after teaching about Joseph Smith, we asked what it would mean to them to know there was a living prophet today. And they said everything, there would be no more confusion for them. So they are super cool, it’s just hard to get face to face meetings with them because of school.

We got stuck in our apartment from 6-9 on Halloween so the 4 of us played signs. It was super hard but also super fun. I’ve also been able to start sleeping in my hammock every night again. It’s the best sleep ever.

We had zone conference on Wednesday, so we got up at 430 to get there by 720, then we were there till 3, then had interviews with President after. So we didn’t get back home till 730. It was a long day, but a great day for learning.

Otherwise this week just flew by. We got another set of senior missionaries here in BG. So now we have a total of 12 missionaries here. It’s a blast.

Love y’all!

🇺🇸Elder Williams🇲🇽

Week 63 - Bowling Green

Well this week was another crazy week! We went on exchanges with the zone leaders and that was super awesome. We had the best lesson I’ve ever been in. The guy established our purpose for us and he was just super awesome. He has such a sincere desire to know if it’s true, he’s just making sure that the feelings aren’t from memories of reading it with his ex-girlfriend and that they are really from god. But the member present was just perfect and the spirit was super strong. We also had a few good experiences with street contacting while we walked to tract. I learned a few really good things during that exchange.

Wednesday night we had the ward fall festival and it was great, there were a lot of non-members there. Sadly none of our investigators were able to come. But we were able to visit with a lot of less actives, so I thought it was a successful night.

Nothing else really happened this week, it got super cold and rainy so it was a slow moving week, but we made it!

Happy Halloween y’all!

🇺🇸Elder Williams🇲🇽

Week 62 - Bowling Green - Should I tell all the Catholics....

Holar mi familia!

Well this week was an adventure! Definitely made some good memories to tell after the mission.  But we did have some good success this week. While I was on exchanges with the elders in the other ward, Elder Hamilton set a baptismal date for Amy and Edgar Sanchez for the 11th of November. They weren’t able to make it to church this week so we are going to have to see why and resolve some concerns. And also push their date back a week. But I’m glad they had some success during that time. Because Elder persons and I knocked 100 doors the whole day and not a soul answered. It was still fun though. 

Christian was able to make it to church for the first time since he’s been baptized. And he was super happy. Also one of the members bought him a suit coat so he was on top of the world. 

During my studies this week I read a talk called “one lord, one faith, one baptism” and it was so good. I read this paragraph and it just really rang true to me. And the best part is it’s from another person of a different faith. So I hope y’all enjoy it. :)

“ “Many years ago a learned man, a member of the Roman Catholic Church, came to Utah and spoke from the stand of the Salt Lake Tabernacle. I became well acquainted with him, and we conversed freely and frankly. A great scholar, with perhaps a dozen languages at his tongue’s end, he seemed to know all about theology, law, literature, science and philosophy. One day he said to me: ‘You Mormons are all ignoramuses. You don’t even know the strength of your own position. It is so strong that there is only one other tenable in the whole Christian world, and that is the position of the Catholic Church. The issue is between Catholicism and Mormonism. If we are right, you are wrong; if you are right, we are wrong; and that’s all there is to it. The Protestants haven’t a leg to stand on. For if we are wrong, they are wrong with us, since they were a part of us and went out from us; while if we are right, they are apostates whom we cut off long ago. If we have the apostolic succession from St. Peter, as we claim, there is no need of Joseph Smith and Mormonism; but if we have not that succession, then such a man as Joseph Smith was necessary, and Mormonism’s attitude is the only consistent one. It is either the perpetuation of the gospel from ancient times, or the restoration of the gospel in latter days.’”

Now if the members of these 697 different churches could realize the consistency of that statement, they would want to know by what authority their ministers are performing the ordinances in their churches, because if the statement of this prelate is true, they either must be Catholics or Mormons. Then I always add that the Catholics and the Bible can’t both be right because the Bible definitely proclaims an apostasy from the original church and a restoration in the latter days.”

Let me know if you think that would be too much to share with all the Catholics we are  teaching. I’m leaning towards the yes it’s too much. Haha

Love y’all and have a great week!

🇺🇸Elder Williams🇲🇽