Week 101 - Columbia Tennessee (9 days left)

Hola mi familia!

This week has flown by as well. We were able to find about 4 new investigators. One of them was a bit weird because he found us! We just got a text on WhatsApp the other day saying that “this is my new number, I’m rodolfo.” So we ask him who rodolfo is and he called us asking if we were the missionaries. Short story short, we have a lesson planned with him on Saturday.

Other than finding a ton so we could find the other 3 investigators, not much else happened with our other people. Most of them kept cancelling. So we put even more people on pause a couple of days ago.

I’m excited for this last week here, and I know there will be a few more miracles if i put my hear into it.

Love y’all!





🇲🇽 Elder Williams 🇺🇸

Letter from President Stone

Elder Williams will soon complete his service as a full-time missionary in the Tennessee Nashville Mission.  He is scheduled to return home on 03 Aug 2018.  It has been a blessing for us to know him and to have been associated with him in this marvelous missionary work. He loves the Lord and has seen the gospel change the lives of many people. He has a strong testimony of the gospel and has had many rich spiritual experiences while serving here.

We understand how happy you will be to be reunited with Elder Williams. He has matured and grown in many important ways during his term of missionary service. We trust he will continue to be a blessing in your family and that the strength of your support will help him through the transitions he will face as he returns home. We encourage him to stay involved in member missionary service by assisting full-time missionaries throughout his life. We appreciate your letters of love and encouragement to him. We hope that you have been blessed as you have shared this mission with him.

During these final weeks of his mission, Elder Williams is completing the "My Plan" course, including creating his "My Plan" in his own words.  Elder Williams will return home with a copy of this document, which outlines commitments and goals for the coming weeks, months and years.  Please review this "My Plan" with him, and please encourage Elder Williams to regularly review his "My Plan" as a reminder of these commitments and goals.

Sister Stone and I have grown to love Elder Williams.  We are eternally grateful that the Lord assigned him to the Tennessee Nashville Mission.  We also appreciate the service you have rendered by supporting and sustaining your missionary.  May the Lord be with you and bless your family always.

With love,

Jared W. Stone
President, Tennessee Nashville Mission

Week 100 - Columbia Tennessee

Hola mi Familia!

This week has been super quick. We’ve spent most of our time knocking doors up in Franklin, because that area had been being neglected. So that’s been something to pass the time really well. Nothing goes by faster than teaching and knocking doors. We’ve also spent some time helping our recent converts get ready to move out. They head out for Mexico this weekend. It’s sad to see them go, because I wont be able to visit them as much there. But its for the best for them.

Besides that there hasn’t been much progress this week with any of our other investigators. We had to put a few on pause for awhile because they weren’t making it a priority. But i have hopes that a few will still want to get baptized here soon. Just a matter of getting in contact with them.

Love Y’all!





🇲🇽 Elder Williams 🇺🇸

Week 99 - Columbia Tennessee - 2 Baptisms

Hola mi familia!
Well this week was pretty awesome. We had 2 baptisms on Saturday.
Danna and Sophia. I had the privilege of baptizing Danna. It was so awesome to see the huge smile she had on her face when she cane down the stairs into the water. Because before I was a little worried she didn’t fully understand what was going on, but after that I knew she at least could feel it was right. Then on Monday we had my last zone conference in the mission. It was a 1 zone, zone conference. So I was a little sad I didn’t get to see as many of my buddies. But it did mean I only had to give my departing testimony in front of 20 people instead of 70.
Last week we also met with Angela and it went great! We set her on date for the 28th of July. We are also set up to meet with an investigator that has wanted to get baptized for years, but we just got permission from president to baptize her. So we are going to meet and set a date. I’m super excited for these last few weeks here.
Love y’all!

�� Elder Williams ��

Week 98 - Columbia Tennessee

Hola mi familia!

Happy 4th y’all!

Well this will be a short one, but it has been an awesome week!

We set two baptism dates....... for this Saturday! They are both kids in part member families. One is the daughter of Lariza, she was baptized my first transfer here. But we are super excited about both of them! We are scrambling to get things ready, but it will be a blast.

We have found or gotten in contact with a lot of potential people to get baptized in the upcoming weeks. I’m excited to finish this last month swinging!

Love you all!

🇲🇽 Elder Williams 🇺🇸

Week 97 - Columbia Tennessee

Hola mi familia!

This week has been great!

I dropped off elder bringhurst at the mission office and picked up elder Salinas. He’s awesome. He’s from Arizona and his mom is from Mexico and his dad is from Peru. He’s a really funny guy and I’m excited for this transfer with him. He’s been out for almost a year.

This week during ward council, they just kept giving us referrals. It was kinda awesome. One of them is a girl who has been coming to church for forever, but they just realized that it would be a convert baptism and not a child of record. So we are going to teach her for a little bit and hopefully she will be baptized in a few weeks.

This week not to many Hispanics showed up to church, which was a bummer. By it freed us up to be able to teach gospel doctrine. 2 years of preaching and I still get nervous to teach a Sunday school class, haha. Mostly because it was in the Old Testament. But it went great.

That’s all the exciting stuff from this week, hope everyone’s doing great!

Love y’all!

🇲🇽 Elder Williams 🇺🇸

Week 96 - Columbia Tennessee

No Email

Week 95 - Columbia Tennessee - Birthday

Hola mi familia!

This week we had a lot of success in finding new investigators and potentials. But most of the week we did a bunch of service. We started off with giving baths to chickens, then we did some yard work for a member the next day, then we helped a non member family move the next day. I was so wiped after it all it wasn’t every funny haha.

We haven’t been able to get in contact with Adrian and he hasn’t come to church for a few weeks, so we are going to have a last try lesson with him before we drop him for awhile. But we have a lot of investigators to sift through right now, so I hope to see a few more progressing here in the next coming weeks.

My birthday went well, I had a few dinners with members over a couple days. Had tons of cake and cupcakes, and got my face slammed into one.

It was an eventful weekend.

Love y’all

🇲🇽 Elder Williams 🇺🇸

Week 94 - Columbia Tennessee

No Email

Week 93 - Columbia Tennessee

Hola mi familia!

This week was great! The most memorable thing was definitely zone conference. My mission President was speeding through his trainings in the morning and kept saying he had a lot of ground to cover, so I thought it was just going to be a super long conference of just getting loaded with trainings. But then after lunch, instead of continuing, we set up our chairs on front of the stage and one of our senior office missionaries did a one man play. He is actually super talented and it was quite funny. It’s called the Farley family reunion and he does the part of everyone in the family. Then after we went into the chapel and the Nashville tribute band was sitting up on the stand. So we got kinda a musical fireside from them and it was awesome. It was definitely one of my favorite zone conferences haha.

Other than that, the works been continuing. We found out that Christian, a son from a part member family that we’ve been working with and set a baptismal date for June 16th, is actually a child of record baptism and so he will have to wait until July 7 at a stake baptism. It was a little sad, but he’s getting baptized so still good!

That’s it for the week!

Love y’all!

🇺🇸Elder Williams🇲🇽

Week 92 - Columbia Tennessee

No Email this Week

🇺🇸Elder Williams🇲🇽

Week 91 - Columbia Tennessee

Hola mi familia!

So I forgot to write this until 5 minutes before 6 so sorry it’s going to be a quick one.

We didn’t get to see Adrian at church this week or meet with him. So hopefully some better luck this week. Lariza finally made it to church and stayed all 3 hours.

We also had one of our investigators reach out to us and ask us to come over and visit his member family that was going through a hard time. That was pretty cool.

Well I’m doing good, I promise I’ll write a little more next week!

Love y’all!

🇺🇸Elder Williams🇲🇽

Week 90 - Columbia Tennessee

Hola mi familia!

Not gonna lie, it gets harder and harder to write these. I feel like I’m saying the same things every time, haha. But that’s probably just on my end. But I’ll keep writing them to make my parents happy:)

This week, while I was on exchanges with an English Elder. We were working in Spanish, so I was riding solo. But we got a referral from another area of a guy who wanted to meet with us. He was a really cool guy. He is blind, so It was interesting to teach him. I realized how much I depend on visual aids when I teach. But it still went great.

Then last Friday we got to cook for a member family, and it went great. We made Hawaiian teriyaki chicken skewers and then I made som orange Julius for dessert. It was a hit. It was nice to be able to cook for the members for a change haha.

We are working with a few investigators, one of them is an 8 year old from a returning less active family. It’s fun trying to keep his attention haha.

But that’s about it for this week. We found out that we are going to stay the same another transfer. So I’ll most likely be ending here. I’m super excited to see what the next 3 months have in store.:)

Love y’all!

🇺🇸Elder Williams🇲🇽

Week 89 - Columbia Tennessee

Hola mi familia!

Well this week seemed to just fly by. We decided to go to Franklin for church this week, so we could start to meet all the people that could come out to teach with us up there. And it was really good. We have a good idea of all the Spanish speaking members up there, so we will most likely be working there more often.

Then after church, Bro Smoot, our now ward mission leader in the Franklin ward, smoked us some ribs. It was by far the best meal I've had on the mission. Best part is it was cooked by someone who's only been here for a year from Utah and he cooked better BBQ than I've had the whole two years. But I definitely picked up a few tricks of cooking ribs and chicken on a smoker from him.

We also had zone conference this week and the focus was in getting investigators to church. And after talking about the blessings and reasons we clone to church for a few hours, it really made me think about how much u really do love going to church and how much it has changed me. And that now makes it easier to relate it to people to invite them to come.

Otherwise we've been working hard still with all our peeps. We still haven't met with Adrian because of work, but he keeps saying he wants to get baptized. But we need to meet with him one more time, then have an interview for him. So it can't happen till after that. We're going to make that clear to him the next time we talk so that hopefully it's easier to set up a time.

But that's about it for the week!

Love yall!

🇺🇸Elder Williams🇲🇽

Week 88 - Columbia Tennessee

Hola mi familia!

This week has just flown by! The most important thing that happened was that we were able to go to the temple with a member, hermana villaverde, and her daughter to do baptisms. It was the Hermana’s first time, so it was really cool. All of us did my family names and so we got 24 baptisms and confirmations done. I’ve still got a ton more to do, but looks like it will have to wait till I’m back:) It was definitely weird getting in water again, especially because we had to wait for someone to be a witness. So Elder Bringhurst and I just chilled in the water for like 10 minutes while we waited. We enjoyed it while we could, haha

Other than that, we also went on exchanges with the English elders and I got to do English work for a day. But the one people that opened their doors and listened ended up being 2 hispanics, haha. So we got new investigators in an area we definitely wouldn’t have ever gone to. It was pretty cool.

That’s about it for the week!

Love y’all

🇺🇸Elder Williams🇲🇽

Week 87 - Columbia Tennessee - Family

No Letter.  But Chaz did run into a Relative of his Grandma - Kent Haslam and his Son Jared

Week 86 - Columbia Tennessee

Hola mi familia!

This week went by really fast. Mostly because we had a few things this week to do that we normally dont have. The first one was moving in an investigator's (Joe) wife (Leslie) from Utah. She is a member and so it will be good for him now that she's here. It was basically just elder Bringhurst and I moving in the largest uhaul. It was a blast, haha. But then a few days later he showed us his car collection and I was in heaven. He had about 12 classic cars, my favorite was the 69 super sport camaro.

The other thing we had to do was a choir practice Saturday and a musical fireside Sunday. It was so good! It was called "I believe in Christ" and there was a bunch of recent converts who gave their testimonies. And then a ton of musical numbers. David Archuleta sang a few solos and it was super good, like usual. Joe was able to come and he really liked it. He's basically already a member, he explained the ministering better than all the other members in church. He was also quoting general conference from memory. He's a really cool guy.

We found out that Jim ended up heading back to Virginia for awhile to finalize a divorce. So he's not on date right now, but he'll be back at the end of the month. But he saw conference at a members house and is reading in the Book of Mormon. So he's doing good still.

We didn't get to meet with Adrian very much this week, but he's still coming to church and planning on being baptized next Saturday. He just works a ton so it's impossible to find him at home.

Then we saw lariza a bunch during the week. We will have to push back her date a week, because she didn't make it to church. But we met for awhile with her last night, with a member, and now she has a huge desire to come. She is even going to start taking her daughter to mutual! But she is really passing through a hard time, so keep her in your prayers.

That's all our progressing investigators, we're working with a ton others, but nothing is really happening so far.

Hope yall have a great week! Love ya

🇺🇸Elder Williams🇲🇽

Week 85 - Columbia Tennessee

Hola mi familia!

This week has been good. We’ve been working really hard with the investigators that are on date right now. They are all really progressing well, and should be ready for their baptisms here in the next week or so. Our president called the whole mission last night in one big conference call, and told us how he has a goal for every companionship to baptize in the month of May. And We are definitely going to need to find like crazy though if we are going have anyone to baptize in may. I think our best option will be franklin, TN, because the spanish there haven’t been touched for a solid year and a half. We’ve picked up some really solid former investigators from there that show a lot of promise. But With all the moving and conference and just being busy in columbia, we haven’t had the chance to go up to franklin that much, but we are going to start spending more time there starting tomorrow.

I felt like conference was especially awesome this time around, i cant wait for it to be on gospel library so i can read them. My favorite quote was “Are we active in the gospel, or are we just busy in the church?” I cant remember who it was that said it, but it really made me think. It relates to the Mormon message ‘the music of the gospel’ that until we are doing the actions of the gospel with our heart, then we are just busy. But we are active and converted when our heart is in it.

Love yall, have a great week!

🇺🇸Elder Williams🇲🇽

Week 84 - Columbia Tennessee

Hola mi familia!

I’m super excited to be here in Spring Hill with Elder Bringhurst. This area just is really moving right now. We were able to set 3 really solid baptismal dates this week for the upcoming 3-4 weeks, and on top of that there are a few other investigators that could be on date soon. And Elder Bringhurst and i get along really well, he’s such a great guy. I’m just all around really excited to see how we can be tools in the hands of the lord this transfer. It seems like even though this is the area that has had the least amount of hispanics in it, it’s the one that has the most that are prepared. It’s really awesome to witness.

I’m starting to feel the urgency of the work even more than ever. With just three transfers left, i know its some of the the most important transfers. Because it’s the only time I’ll have my best Spanish to be able to relay the lessons that I’ve spent 2 years practicing. So i cant fail now. I owe it to the lord to put my best foot forward and let him do the rest. Because i know that without his help, there is no way that i could possibly do this by myself. The visit from elder holland was definitely a major inflexion point for me. It gave a major boost in desire to work as hard as I can till the end.

Love yall!

🇺🇸Elder Williams🇲🇽

Week 83 - Headed to Columbia Tennessee

Hola mi familia!

This week has been awesome!

I found out yesterday that i will be heading down to Columbia, TN with Elder Bringhurst. He has been out 1 transfer longer than me, so he’s got 2 transfers left. Columbia is about 40 miles south of Nashville, in the Franklin stake. I’m super excited to be going there, we will be covering an English ward and a spanish group. So ill be doing english work for a change, as well as Spanish work.

This past weekend i had the blessing of being able to hear from Elder Holland 3 days in a row. It was one of the coolest experiences ever. On Friday we were able to go to a young adult meeting with one of our investigators, Liz. It was set up as a Q&A type of meeting, and it was the fastest 2 hours ever. Then the next morning we had a missionary meeting with him, where the whole mission got together to meet with him. That’s the first time the whole mission has gotten together since I’ve been out. That was an intense meeting. Then on Sunday we had a 7 multi-stake conference. I got a ton of notes from it, so I’ll share a few of my thoughts that I got out of it. Hopefully it helps you like it helped me.

The first thought was started when Elder Holland asked “What made the prophets of old be able to go on, knowing that their efforts would be almost wasted because of certain apostasy?” Because if you think about it, back then they didn’t have very much missionary work, they had 1 temple for centuries, and the temple at the time of Jesus lasted from about 30 ad to 77 ad. So why did they not just give up out of depression? It is because they saw our day, they saw when it finally did succeed, they saw a day when missionary work was worldwide. They saw when there was 160 temples and growing, where the people they couldn’t reach can be reached. That is what kept them going through the dark times. That being said, we owe it to them to live up to what they saw. Because we are blessed to live in the days that the gospel is working. We have the responsibility to save the human family.

During the YA meeting, someone asked “what is the way to best establish Zion in nashville, tn?” And he responded that it is the same way you can establish Zion anywhere. It is through a personal, consecrated life. Maybe that is started by the little things. But there is never going to be a day that we can establish a worldwide Zion if we cant do it in our own lives.

My last thought is one of my favorites from this weekend. It’s from Mark 4. After Jesus finishes teaching some parables, he is extremely exhausted so he turns to his apostles and tells them they will cross to the other side of the sea. During this trip, is the story that everyone knows. 9/12 apostles grew up fisherman, they were very comfortable with the water. But even with that, there was a storm that came upon them that caused even those fisherman to fear. Now if you can imagine how exhausted Jesus was, to be able to sleep through this storm. Now the apostles must have been contemplating for a really long time, whether or not they should wake Jesus. But they eventually did, and they asked whether he cared if they all perished. Then Jesus came back with kind of a harsh rebuke. He said “Why are ye so fearful? how is it that ye have no faith?” Now do you think he was justified in this rebuke? I mean these fishermen were scared out their minds of perishing at sea, they were even bailing out the boat. But if you look back at the beginning of the journey you find his justification. He told his apostles that they were going to cross to the other side! If Jesus Christ himself says it will happen, then you can bet your future that its going to happen. And do you think that Heavenly Father would let his beloved son, who still had a mission to fulfill, go down in a sinking ship? No! Now tie this to our day. Don’t jump ship as the future days get rough and scary. We will receive persecution, we will feel as if we will fail. But if Jesus is on the ship, and i promise that he is, then this ship is not going down! But we must also do our part to stay in the ship and not get tossed out.

Ill end with a Japanese quote that has become one of my favorites. ““If not I, then who? If not now, then when?” Hopefully while reading this, something has come to your mind that you should do. Now all you need to do is do it! We can be our personal beacons in Zion, but it all starts with change.

Sorry this was one was longer than usual, but i hope it wasn’t a waste of my time to write this.

I’m loving life and i cant wait to help in the Lord’s work in columbia, tn.

Love Y’all!

🇺🇸Elder Williams🇲🇽

The whole Mission with Elder Holland

Week 82 - Madison Tennessee

Hola mi familia!

This week has been really great! We have been so busy with lessons, that its been hard to find times to go tracting. But that didn’t stop the lord from blessing us with new investigators. We knocked a total of three doors on Saturday and two of them answered, and we found three new investigators. And then the day before, we were heading to go tracting and saw a guy working on his truck, so we stopped and talked to him, he became a new investigator, and that was all the time we had to go finding. It was actually really cool for me to see, because normally we can go tracting for hours at a time and not have much success, but we had a ton of success in under an hour.

We also worked with a new part-member family. We started working with liz, who is the daughter-in-law of a returning less active. The lesson we had with her on saturday was one of the most spiritual lessons I’ve been a part of, and she offered the most sincere prayer I’ve ever heard. She’s already come to church twice, and she’s planning on going to the young adult meeting on Friday. The only hard part is that she can only meet on saturdays, but we are going to try to set up more lesson through facebook this week. I can really see her getting baptized in the coming weeks.

Still working with Javier, he doesn’t want to get baptized this week because he hasn’t gone to church the past three weeks, and so he wants to go for a couple weeks and then he will feel better about it.

I found out this week that I might go take over some area that is currently an hermana area and finish there. But President said that would be decided in the next couple days.

Love you all!

🇺🇸Elder Williams🇲🇽