August 26, 2013

Dearest Family,

Holy Cow this place is awesome I don't even know where to start! My trainer's name is Elder Halford he is from Orem, UT pretty cool kid played basketball and everything so we get along pretty well. My area right now is called Golden Gate, it is near naples and it is the furthest south you can get in this mission! My backyard is the Everglades crazy right! Well with that being said I bet everyone is wondering how my first experiance with snakes is going... I know that the first thing I thought when I was told I was headed down south! Lets be honest here, Im not afraid of snakes at all... Just kidding. My first snake encounter came at a members home, he actually hatched them right in front of us so they were little baby snakes. So that wasn't to bad. When I first asked about the snake down here my companion said it not the snake you need to worry about its the bears and panthers. 

WOW crazy right, you will see in my picture that I literally live in the jungle I feels so weird.

Austin's backyard

 But I really do love this area. To get from Tampa to where I live it is a good 3 hour drive. I fell alseep. Man the humidity is... nothing. I actually love it the only time is sucks is about 1-3 in the afternoon and the sun is some how out. By the way the sun is never out. It rains every single day without dought. The mornings are beautiful and sunny, then by 1 it starts to rain. Yeah we are in the lightning capital of the nation. I have never seen the sky light up so many times in my life. It has come close a couple times but I guess thats normal for down here. My closest experiance so far is about 200 yard away from me. We were getting in the car to go to a dinner apointment and holy cow it was crazy loud I jumped way high. And the rain that another story, in about five minutes you can have inches of rain over the roads. It gets to the point where you have to stop and pull over or go about 5 mph to get anywhere safe. We try to stay dry but it doesn't work very well. I bet your all wondering how much I bike... never! I actually got on a bike for the first time yesturday to go to an apointment. We are a full car area. But our miles are running short so my comp keeps telling me this week is going to suck because we have to bike everywhere. That would be all fine and dandy if I had my bike. It doesn't get here until wednesday because they ship it strait to our house. The bike I use right now is for about a 12 year old kid. Its way to short! just Imagine a 6 foot kid riding a bike that is made for a little kid. But I guess whatever you gotta do to spread the lords work.

Right now we have 7 solid people who will most likely be getting baptized in the next month and 3 more pretty good investigators that I think will get baptized. Mostly a bunch of families which are basically gold pots down here if you find a interested family they all listen and love the gospel so that in its self is amazing. When we went tracting for the first time I was super scared that everyone would reject and be super mean about it... Its the exact opposite everyone is super nice here. They all listen to you for a little bit then offer you water and finally tell you they aren't interested. But you do have a few people who tell you to get off there property or they will shoot you... Haha so funny! We were tracting in what we call the estate which is homes because most our work is done in apartments. The people there aren't so nice they really don't want to listen to you and just want you to leave oh well sucks for them if they don't want the best message they will hear in there lifes... just kidding we still love them. 

  

I hope everyone is continuing to Read, Pray and write in your journals daily! I know it will bring many many blessings. Our mission president is really cracking down on the obedience rules like super hard. He calls people in and ask if your in or out if you show any sign of not wanting to do this he says pack your bags. We are on a strict obedience policy because we hadn't been having much success, now that we are being obedient we are seeing many wonderful miricles happen. He doesn't want this to stop so its gonna be hard to do it but we really have no choice.

Our big message is mostly to the members right now. We are pushing the hastening the work. So as my family I hope you guy will always look for ways you can become more involved in finding non-member. You can watch the videos that are put up on the internet to see more about it.

I love you guys so much and hope you have a great week!

Love,

Elder Williams

August 14, 2013

I am so excited to finally get to Florida. When I think about it, I feel like I shouldn't be leaving the MTC so soon but I am way excited to know that next week at this time I will be where the Lord wants me to be. . 

Class was awesome. I never really thought I would come around to the whole learning in a small class room but my district is amazing. We learn so much together I am so blessed to be able to lead them. I don't really do a ton to lead them, they probably think the only thing I'm good for is getting their mail for them. They all love me when they have mail and are mad when they don't. I found out I love to talk. When me and my two companions go teach lessons I usually end up doing most the talking. But that could also be that they are both pretty shy. It is honestly hard to get a discussion done in 20 minutes. But its still way fun. Our progressive investigator Shawn  has come a long way sense I last talked to you! I guess we have done alright because he is going to try and be baptized on september 14. Isn't that awesome the first person we teach we have a baptism. I guess you could say its not going to be that easy in the field but I am still way excited. 

I thought I would let you know that as of right now I am doing my laundry haha guess who didn't bring soap... ME! oh well my companion was nice enough to share with me so I guess I owe him some soap now! 

I honestly have no idea what we do here on p-day because usually everything is scheduled for us. We do get to go to the temple later today and I am way excited! 

I guess now is probably the time to tell you about the two devotionals we have had. They were amazing on Sunday night we watch a previously recorded talk by David A. Bednard! It was so amazing. He talked on Characters of Christ. It was awesome to explain what that means I guess the most simple way to put it is too turn out word when other turn in. To make more sense act as Christ would. When Christ was about to be crucified and the guards were coming to get him, peter cut off the guards ear, Jesus knew he was about to die but didn't care he healed the ear of the guard even when he has other things that were more serious and pertained to him. We all love that about Christ he always giving charity and turning out to help other rather than turning in and worrying about his problems. I know I am striving to be have characters of Christ and I hope you will to! He gave us a Challenge and I want to offer the same one to you. Take a blank Book of Mormon and underline all the time Christ or any of the prophets were showing Characters of Christ. I am excited to learn new ways to become more like Christ and I hope you are always working to become more like him. Time is really short now so I will Quickly tell you about the next devotional it was last night and Elder Richard G. Scott gave it, on communicating with God through pray and how important it is to pray always. I have two quotes I will leave with you. "You can't rush an effective Prayer"   "Pray even when you have no desire".

I love you guys so much.

Love,

Elder Williams