August 12, 2013

Tyler O'Brien	9:48 AM (6 hours ago)
"First Week"

Hey Ya'll!!!

So this week was my first week! And holy cow this is going to be weird to get used to! That is wearing the shirt and tie everyday and getting up at 6:30. But this week has been very eye opening for me. I have always visioned me going up to doors and knocking and I will never forget the first door me and Elder Vaoga went to. But Elder Vaoga is from Samoa. His last name is pronounced as Vaona (The G makes a N sound). He is 20 years old and has been out here for 7 months. He loves to joke around and is a great teacher. We are going to be together for 2 transfers, or 12 weeks, in the city called Killeen. Killeen is at the bottom of my mission, and is about 3 hours South of Fort Worth. It is also one of the last places on my list of places to go on vacations. It is a Military town and there are people moving in  and out of houses all the time. The mission has this thing called the 12 week program which is just training and getting myself comfortable in the mission field. The weather down here sucks. It's like 100 degrees with 80% humidity. So you can probably imagine my enthusiam as I get ready to go outside for the day. I have never been so hot and sweaty ever! And the locals say that it stays this hot until October hits. Totally stoked for that month. haha

But back to that first door experience. I was so nervous that I didn't say a thing. I stood there as stiff as a board! The kids name was Talilee, and no I can't remember how to pronouce that. But after that door I started to settle down and actually talked about the Joseph Smith story at the next street that we tracted at. We knocked on this guys door and he let us in. His name was Richard. This guy is like 50 years old, but looks like he could bench like 500 pounds! We taught him the whole first lesson about the Restoration of the Church. We gave him a Book of Mormon to read and we set another appointment to come back to. I felt more relaxed once we got inside and out of the heat. We were also able to talk to 2 other people that day and got 2 return appointments. So my first day was pretty awesome. That was Wednesday.

Thursday was our planning day. For planning days, we plan from 10-2 for our next week. We got into depth for eveything that we plan. Set goals, figure out streets and appointments, etc. I never knew how organized I could be. Once that was over we went to our first appointment of the day. His name was Ken Patrick. We taught him lesson 2 which is the Plan of Salvation. He had a hard time understanding with the spirit world and the Kingdoms, but after a couple scriptures he was able to figure it out. We were able to track 3 streets after that. We taught 6 other lessons and get 3 new investigators. The reason why that number is off is because they can choose whether they want us to come back or not. After tracting, we visited other investigators and we have and just introduced myself to them. We followed up on commitments and left after that.

Friday I had my first Zone meeting. In this meeting, there was a lot of role playing in it. These meetings are designed to help us teach better and help recognize peoples needs. There was a lot of good advice given by not only our zone leaders, but other missionaries. However the kid in my ward, Connor Weaver, he is not in my zone. So no I have not seen him yet. The Zone meeting went from 10-2. So after the meeting, we had 3 appointments with investigators. 1 appointment cancelled and completely dropped us. The other 2 cancelled and rescheduled us for this week. We were able to tract more streets and I did finally get a door slammed shut on me. Usually the people here answer and kindly say no. This dude straight up looked as us and slammed it shut. It sucked I'm not going to lie. We didn't really talk to anyone that day so it was kinda depressing for me.

Saturday was a great day. We were able to talk to 4 people and they all asked for us to come back. We talked to this one woman though named Erica. She was like totally prepared for us. We got there and it was like a answer to not only her prayers, but ours. She has gone to one of our churches before and wants to know more. I extended the invitation to here to be baptized and she said yes and we also set a date!August 31. So within 3 days, I went from stiff as a board to inviting someone to be baptized! it was so cool! We invited here to church and she said she would be there!

Sunday came and I met the Bishop. He is a total cowboy with his accent and all. I was able to meet the Ward members and it was weird cause a lot of them have tatoos and stuff cause they are converts to the church. But they were all nice. None of our investigators showed up to church which was really depressing. But that just means we have to work harder this week to get them there.

Well thats my summary of the first week. Ill be talking to you guys in 7 days. I only have an hour to type emails so I try to summarize everything as best as possible. my new address is

Elder Tyler O'Brien

101 W. Central Express Way #1306

Killeen, TX 76541

Hope everyone is doing great! I love you guys

Elder O'Brien