Final Exchange Craziness!

Hey everyone!

This was a pretty good week. The biggest things of note were that on

Wednesday, Elder Bias came on exchange with Elder Brown and myself and

on Saturday, I went on exchange to the Carrollton Ward with Elder

Hirzel. Both exchanges were really good, but I have more stories from

the Saturday one, so STORY TIME!

The first thing of note is that Carrollton actually had a baptism that

morning, so I got to attend that (and got to direct the music, which

was cool). Later on in the day, we went out and while we were trying

to contact some referrals, we decided to talk to these two guys that

were standing outside their home and immediately, when they saw us,

one of the men called out to us, "Hey, Joseph Smith Disciples!" It was

at that moment that we knew we were not in for a fun conversation.

Basically to summarize the 20+ minute conversation, after he tried for

a few minutes to try and attack us using the Bible (which didn't work

as both of us know the Bible decently well) so he basically resorted

to trying to insult us for most of the time by claiming that our

church actually follows Satan and that we are brainwashed (he claimed

he could prove us wrong with a series of questions, but he also

claimed that he "didn't have enough time" to do so) and because it is

"too late" for us, he was going to make sure to "protect" his

neighbors from our "evil". The only "evidence" he had to back up these

claims is a anti-Mormon documentary he watched once, so he obviously

was getting real and accurate information about the church *sarcasm*.

By the end of the "conversation" (he would keep interrupting us and

wouldn't actually answer any question we asked), both Hirzel and I

were pretty done and both pretty much rebuked him (hopefully as moved

upon by the Spirit, based on what happened after this experience) and

we went our separate ways. As we were leaving he yelled at us, "Don't

even THINK about knocking on any of my neighbors' doors!" So

obviously, the first thing we did was proceed to knock on the closest

door to us and we actually found a super cool guy named Timothy who

let us into his home and we had an awesome talk with him about the

gospel and we were able to have a short break from the summer heat,

which was really nice. The tender mercies of the Lord are definitely

real, that's for sure!

Other than that, we also found a super cool couple from Trinidad that

had many friends who were members of the church and wanted to learn

more (and also wanted to feed us a lot of super good food, which is

also a plus for the missionaries who visit them from now on)! So yeah,

a lot of really cool exchange miracles and tender mercies of the Lord

(because I usually HATE exchanges, but the final one of my mission

ended up being super amazing!)

That's about all from me this week! I love you all! Have a fantastic day/week!

Sincerely,

Elder Sam Williams

8301 Ashford Blvd #606

Laurel, MD, 20707