“Let the Holy Spirit guide"

Hello world outside of Missouri, This week was a crazy one!

We started the week with exchanges. I stayed here in Liberty and Sister Munoz came. We started the day with a prayer of faith...and the way that works is you ask God what miracle he is willing to provide for you that day. Then pray for that miracle and tell him what you are going to do on your side to make it happen. So we knew that God would help us find 2 new investigators by the end of the day, and we would do our part by talking to 10 unknown people and inviting those people to be baptized. And guess what...miracles happened. We ended up talking to 22 people, finding 3 new investigators and another one that lives in a different area, and we also got in with 2 less actives that never open their door.

Monument to the Eight Witnesses

of the Book of Mormon,

Liberty, Missouri

For some reason we think that we have to go through this life alone, but we can call on the powers of heaven whenever we what...and a lot of power comes from being accountable to the Lord, but even more power comes from humbly holding God accountable to his promises.

Then throughout the rest of the week, the Jail was really busy, which was an answer to prayers; because we had been super slow for awhile. But more and more non-members have been coming through, some with members, some just curious to learn. It's amazing to see how God truly prepares people to receive this gospel. Wow. I'm just so lucky to serve here.

Sister Day and Sister Williams 

On Sunday a really interesting thing happened. We were in church, when I saw someone and the spirit instantly told me that we needed to go to her house after church. So after church we started doing some finding, and knocking on doors, but the spirit again gently reminded me that we really needed to go visit that sister. So we went. As we walked in we just started talking, she told us that she had been having some pretty rough few weeks. We showed her a video, she began to cry and ask us some personal questions about what we would do if we had someone in our life who was mentally suffering as she was, and if it would be easier for everyone if she was gone. I began to cry as the spirit prompted me to say certain things. As we were leaving she looked me in the eye and thanked me repeatedly for the answers I had given her...and told us that while her husband was gone this week she planned to take her life and that the things the spirit had taught her while I spoke had saved her life. I stood there almost numb. What if I hadn't listened to the spirit? She lived on the opposite side of our area and we could have easily justified not going due to time.

BUT our Heavenly Father loves all his children so dearly. I know that we are where we are, in the circumstances we are in, for a very specific reason. He has a plan, he loves us and the Holy Ghost can guide our lives if we allow it.

I love you all! And we hope you have a great week.

Love, Sister Williams

"Learn it, live it, love it"

Classic black and white 

car picture. 

What Missouri looks like. 

Doniphan - Take 2

The old Doniphan crew.

Alright well transfers calls did come and Sister Farnsworth did indeed get transferred. So my new companion is Sister Day, and she's from *drum roll please* Utah!! Which means every single one of my companions is from back home so... We can get together after the mission (blessings).

Sister Day!

So the night before transfers we all dress up in early pioneer clothes and get to go inside the jail, well since we were very slow that night me and Sister Farnsworth decided to get dressed a little bit early...than just our luck, right before closing time a man walked in and asked for a tour. Haha well um so we gave him a tour looking mighty authentic.

Transfer eve

This week we had the awesome opportunity to watch a worldwide mission
broadcast, it was so good! It's always good to have a little rejuvenating fire, it help us have a really great start to this transfer. I'm so excited to see the miracles that our Heavenly Father allows us to be a part of this transfer.

I wish I could explain how much I love serving in the Liberty Jail, this past week every tour that we have taken has had at least one non-member on it, and it's amazing how strong the spirit is when we go through the rotunda, it's so strong that it seems you can touch it.

One of my favorite tours was actually one that we weren't really giving the tour. There's a boy who lives here in the area named Alma and he has come to the Liberty jail every Sunday for a long time, and he's an amazing missionary. He has helped many of his friends get baptized...so when he came I told him he could give the tour to his brother and three of their non-member (one about to be baptized) friends..And that I would help with anything that he didn't remember, and pretty much just let him take the lead. So throughout he had us
bare testimony and answer questions, and at the end every single one of them bore their testimony of what they had felt while they were here, and one girl told her story of how she decided to get baptized at the end of next month. I was crying, she was crying, Alma and his brother were crying. Long story short, the Holy Ghost is amazing and I can say with even more conviction that this church is true and Joseph Smith was a prophet of God.

Love you all SO much!

Sister Williams

Knockin Doors and Saving Souls

Hello!

This week was full of success and miracles! Last week I wrote about counting all of the no's we have gotten, well, we knocked on more than 45 doors and finally found some new investigators! Our diligence and faith is finally paying off :) One of our new investigators name is Nannette, she has the cutest little family. The night we found her started out as a rough one. We didn't have a car so we were walking, it was freezing. We knocked on about 15 doors with no luck so we
decided to walk to a less active members house but we got lost... We stopped and decided to pray. We told Heavenly Father that we were lost and to help us find someone how would be interested in the Gospel. After the amen Sister Farnsworth and I walked to a door and knocked.


This is how the conversation went:

US- "Hi! We are the local missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saint, have you ever heard of that church?
NANNETTE- No...
US- "How about the Mormons"
NANNETTE - "Ohh... yeah, how can I help you?"
US- "As missionaries we share a message about Christ (insert child running to the door) and how through him we can be together with our families forever, is that something that you would be interested in learning more about?"
NANNETTE- "I would love to!"
US- Silence. We were so shocked that someone actually said yes! "Ohh, well we will be back in the area..."

We have a lesson with her later this week! We found 2 other investigators. They have both been taught before.

We have a new investigator on Mormon.org chat. He is from Pakistan. It was so cool! He came onto the Chat because his religious leader in Pakistan was criticizing the Mormons. He spent some time on Mormon.org and was interested in learning more! But he cool part is that he had a really hard time reading and writing in English so we used Google translate and talked to him in Urdu! Pictures will follow. We helped him download a Urdu Book of Mormon because he said that it was dangerous for him to have a paper copy.

We've taken some pretty awesome people through the Jail. One man was here on a business trip and had time to kill so he came to the Jail. I have never taken someone who was so excited to be on a tour. He had so many questions and was so engaged. At the end of the tour he thanked us 5 trillion times and asked if he could bring his kids back, it was fantastic.

I hope that you have a great week!

Love you!

Sister Williams

Melancholy to Miracles

Wow! 

I could sum up this week by just saying wow I love being a missionary! Haha but I guess I'll explain a little bit more about why. 

My little revelation this week was on Conversion. Too often people say that what they want is not always what God wants, but this week I've realized that if you are truly converted those things will always be the same. Your will and his will, will be aligned. You'll constantly want what he wants for you. A conversion to the gospel is so important right now, the handbook change really shook some people up, but on a mission if a minor is going to be baptized they have to have written permission from both parents ...so I personally think that there isn't a huge waiting list of same sex couples waiting to give permission for their children to baptized. But things like this are going to continue to happen and the worlds views are going to continue to drift. We must be firmly planted in our beliefs.

Our area is doing well, we are striving to talk to at least 5 unknown people a day and always leave them with something. We have also started teaching the lessons to members in their homes and helping them recognize the spirit testify names of people who need this message. We have been able to see our teaching pool begin to grow and with the Christmas parties and fire sides coming up, it give us opportunities to have something to invite people to. So that's super exciting.

Sister Maxwell has been a big blessing, she has a really driven personality and has helped me have a deeper understanding of how to magnify my calling. She gets along with everyone, and we've been able to find more people to teach as we've been really able to teach in unity. Haha long story short.. I love her and she's fantastic.

This week I've learned the importance of first contacts. With both members and non-members, the first time they meet you they need to know your purpose, and feel the spirit. We represent the church and our Savior Jesus Christ. The have to trust us, before they allow us to teach either them or the people they know. People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.

Everything else is going really well, I had a rough patch this week after everyone was canceling their appointments and people weren't coming to church... It was easy to feel like it was my fault that the success kind of hit a halt. But while at church when I was taking the sacrament I recognized the many miracles that we were able to see this past week, and remembered what success on a mission is defined as, giving our all and better yourself every day.

Sister Williams

Sister Eccles famous pumpkin cookies

Flower pots or hats...?

A few of the young women from the Ward after we taught at mutual