September 16, 2013

"First Baptism in the Book"

Hey ya'll!!!

This week was awesome! Mainly because of the subject of this letter but also with the General Authority. I am going to appologize now, I was unable to attach photos to this email do to the lack of technology here at the library. They need to get updated. But I will send my SD card home soon so you can then see my first 6 weeks.

So like I said last week, we had a general authority come, Elder Neil L. Anderson, and we also had Elder Calister come from the Seventy. It was awesome! Elder Calister talked on how we need to emphasize the Great Apostasy in our lessons. 'Without the Great Apostasy, there would be no need to have a Restoration.' That's what he said. How did I remember this? I did exactly what I didn't do in school and I took notes. Haha. Then Elder Anderson gave an awesome talk. It was more like a training you could say. He had questions and a slide show about the Atonement. I got to shake his hand though which was awesome! He gave us all some scriptures on how to help us understand the Atonement better. He shared some of his stories as a Mission President and how he saw how the Atonement changed peoples lives. It is so true. It was a fantastic experience. After the meeting ended, I finally saw Elder Weaver. Those that don't know him, he is in our ward back in Utah. You'll see a picture of him soon. He is a District Leader and you could tell that he just loves being on a mission. We had a good time catching up and sharing a couple experiences.

So this week was pretty great when it came to talking to investigators. The Deleon family is interesting. The dad, Ramon, has PTSD, so he has deep deep questions. Like too deep. He takes his questions so deep, that it doesn't even makes sense. Like in one of our pamphlets that we have, it had the first verse of the song "I am a Child of God." And he said that it needed to be changed because he wasn't given him a good earthly home and good parents. So he is stuck on that. But the whole point of that song is to show that God and Jesus really do love us and can show us the way. But those are some of his questions. It's going to be awhile before this guy accepts baptism.

We were able to tract this week again. Elder Williams our District leader allowed it to happen. So we were able to find a family that used to have missionaries come over and then they just stopped one day. So we refreshed the Restoration with them and now we have another appointment with them on Saturday. So something good came out tracting after all. Haha.

The Batista boys baptism was awesome! They had their grandparents come down and their Uncle too. The Uncle baptized them, but me and Vaoga were the witnesses and were able to stand in the circle when they received the Holy Ghost and when Adam got the Priesthood. They were so ready. They were just so happy when they came out and they hugged their mom. But the mom, who is very inactive with the church like didn't even hug them back. So we were like what the crap! But they are going to be awesome. There were so many people that came to their baptism that we had to go get more chairs from the other classrooms. They have a lot of support from the ward and I think they will be okay.

Just a couple things, there were some questions whether you can send packages to my appartment or not, yes you can. When you send them to the mission home, I won't get them for a longer period of time cause we are so far south from the home. But you can send them there. And second, Happy Birthday to my Padre Sean!! Turning a whopping 44 today! Hope you have a great birthday man!

I love you all and thank you again for all your emails! As I said before I always loook forward to reading what everyone has said on Mondays! I hope yall have a fanominal week!!

Elder O'Brien