August 19, 2013

Tyler O'Brien	9:41 AM

"Week 2"

Hey Ya'll!!

I just want to thank everyone for your emails this week! I look forward to reading them each Monday! A lot of you had questions so hopefully I can answer them all. Monday is my Prep day. I only have 1 hour to email so i try to narrow down what happened this week. It has been pretty hot and humid here. We had a couple thunderstorms this week and the lightning was awesome!

This week has been a roller coaster week. We did not have very much success finding investigators on Monday and Tuesday. We had a lot of appointments with people that cancelled on us. I seemed like we were riding our bikes/Ferrari's all over our area just to be told 'no not today.' On Tuesday we had a girl text us named Danielle. Elder Vaoga and his other companion had been teaching here before I came here. We had a lesson with her last week and it went really well. But we got a text from her saying that she didn't want us to come over anymore. She found a church with her friend and chose that one instead. We were pretty sad and upset about that.

Wednesday I had my first zone conference. This is when all the zones that are in the southern part of the mission meet together. So the cities Waco and Temple join with us. I was able to see one of my roommates from the MTC there. We talked about the first week and stuff and we had about the same reactions. But President Ames and the AP's were able to come down and give us trainings. We had a lot of role play opportunities to help us incorporate what we were taught into our lessons. It was the longest meeting ever though. It started at 9 and went until 4 in the after noon. It totally ruined our prosiliting day. We didn't have very much success that day either because of that.

Thursday was about the same as this week. We had a lot of appointments scheduled and a lot of cancelled. But so far, only one person dropped us this week. We were able to talk to a couple people though that were not interested at all at first but then once we started talking, they finally agreed to let us come back.

So on Thursday I came back to the apartment kinda disappointed with what had happened this week. Both me and Elder Vaoga prayed really hard that night that we would be able to have a successful rest of the week. Thankfully our prayers were answered cause Friday was the most successful day I have had so far. We were able to teach 8 lessons and were able to pick up 6 new investigators. One of those 6 thought we were hitting on his wife and went to go get his gun. But we were able to show and prove to him that we were not here to pick up on his wife. We set a return date for this weekend, so hopefully that wont happen again.

Saturday and Sunday went by way too fast for me. Even though people kept canceling on us, we kept pushing forward to talk to everyone. We were able to have a second lesson with this woman and her family who are Catholic. Her whole side of the family though are Mormons so she just wants to know more about what we do and believe in. She seems very interested and has read through the Book of Mormon. So we can hopefully help her gain a testimony because she has already read through it! We were pretty impressed.

Sunday I had to give a talk. Thanks to Linda who was able to send me some valuable resources, I was able to talk about Covenants and Ordinances. I am starting to get to know the Ward Members a lot better. But I have a long ways to go to learn all the names. The Bishop here is really cool! And the members here that have us for dinner really know how to cook. Haha!

So I am starting to become more comfortable here. Even though sometimes people suck cause they cant remember appointments with us, they are still very nice and some are willing to listen and accept. I hope and pray that we will be able to set a baptism date this week and that I will be able to tell ya'll all about it.

 I love you all and have a fantastic Week!