White Oak Soak

Happy Graduation week to all of you "Class of '16"ers! For everyone

else, Happy week (yeah I got nothing...)!

This week, it rained! Which is the understatement of the year... This

week, it POURED almost ALL WEEK! When it wasn't raining, it was super

cloudy and apparently that is going to continue into this week. On the

plus side, it's keeping the weather cool! On the down side, the

weather will be SUPER humid after all is said and done... Oh well,

I'll cross that bridge when I get to it!

The biggest lesson highlight of the week was that on Tuesday morning,

Elder Harrison and I got to teach Celine, a recent convert who was

baptized last September in the College Park Ward but hasn't had the

new member lessons taught to her yet. We got to teach her the Plan of

Salvation, which went amazingly! We were planning on teaching her the

Restoration that day, but the Spirit took us in a completely different

direction, which ended up being EXACTLY what she needed to hear

because of some questions and trials she'd been facing! I know that

this truly is Heavenly Father's work because things like that don't

just happen! I know that the message of the Gospel truly is from a

loving Heavenly Father who wants us, His children, to be able to

return to Him and have eternal happiness!

On Thursday, after zone-district meeting, the zone did a large scale

exchange/finding activity where we were assigned to a random area near

the church building with a random missionary other than our companion.

I went with Elder Shank (Elder Carroll's trainee in Laurel) to the

town of Langley Park and we tracted for the whole time... In a

neighborhood of pretty much all Spanish speakers... And neither of us

could speak Spanish... Good times... We did find one person who spoke

some English and wanted to talk to us, but he ended up being

completely crazy (to the point that we couldn't understand what he was

saying a lot of the time) and suffered heavily from Revelation 22:19

syndrome stating that we don't need anything other than the Bible and

grace to get us to Heaven... Unfortunately, despite our best efforts,

to invite the Spirit and talk to him, he wouldn't accept anything we

tried to say and proceeded to tell us that we are going to Hell for

believing in the Book of Mormon and modern revelation, which to me is

really sad that people basically believe that God loves us less than

he loved His children back then by refusing to accept the idea of

modern revelation... I know that Heavenly Father does talk to His

children in these days, that He gave us the Book of Mormon and

prophets to help guide us back to Him!

On Saturday, we had interviews with President Cooke, which went well!

Though at the end of my interview, president asked me how long I'd

been out and when I told him that I've been out about 9 and a half

months he patted me on the back and said, "Really? 9 months? That's

quite a while!" Which is President Cooke talk for, "I'm going to make

you do something next transfer" so that's worrisome... Oh well, I

guess I'll find out soon enough, for the time being, I am going to try

and be the best missionary that I can be!

I love you all! Have an amazing week!

Sincerely,

Elder Sam Williams

Washington DC North Mission

11700 Falls Road

Potomac, MD, 20854