October 21, 2013

"Work Work Work"

Hey Ya'll!!!

I hope ya'll had a great week last week! Cause we sure did! Haha! Our past couple weeks have been a little shakey. Our numbers have been down and the Zone Leaders noticed that, so they told us to work harder this week. We biked more miles this week then we every had before. Because we did that, we were blessed! We were able to find 5 new investigators this week and we were able to set 3 baptism dates as well!!

The first person that we were able to set a date with is Yvonne Shabazz. Yvonne was a referral from another area to go visit just whenever we could. So the next day we visited her. She is a single mom with 3 kids and lives in the ghetto. We showed up to her house thinking that this lesson would be very interesting, and it was. The Spirit was so strong in the house and she was just so excited to see us. We were able to teach her lesson one. She realy like how we talked about prophets and how there is a reason why there are a lot of churches around the world because of the Apostasy. We extended that baptism invitation and she accepted baptism for November 16! She was really happy and excited and we were pretty happy as well. That was in the morning.

In the afternoon on the same day, Thursday, we were able to talk to Ken Kurt Patrick. Ken was having an okay week and was really happy to see us when we stopped by. We were able to talk to him and also show him a couple mormon messages. One of them was called the Road to Damascus. He really liked that one because he was expecting a answer like Saul got from God. We talked with him again that it is the good feelings that you get. The are mentioned in Galatians 4 I think, fruits of the Spirt. After that, Elder Vaoga invited him to be baptized again, and we got a date this time. But it is kinda far out, December 21. He is going to be in Florida for a month with his son. We are going to pray really hard for him to stay interested while he is gone. But yes we were able to set 2 baptism dates in one day!!

The third one was when we were on exchanges. Her name is Keva Scott and before, she said she wasn't ready for baptism just yet. This time, me and the other Elder, Elder Fitzgerald, went over to her house with a member to help fellowship her. We read out of the Book of Mormon, 3 Nephi 11, and talked about how baptism is important with the Priesthood. We then talked about church and Sister Norgard, the member, bore a her testimony and how she is still learning in the church even though she grew up in it. Once she said that, Keva was releaved because she thought that once we were done teaching her that the learning was over. I was then able to set a date with her for November 16.

This week I was also able to teach the lesson in Sunday School. I needed participation for the lesson to work, so on Saturday, we bought candy for the class. Just keep in mind, yes they are adults. So I asked the first question at the start of the lesson and no one raised their hand. Then I set the bag of candy on the table in front of me, and the hands shot up haha!!

So just quickly I wanted to share with ya'll the question that I got this week talking to this one guy. He was black and just got out of prison. He was really cool and had a hard child life. Hence his decision making put him in jail. But we were sharing the Restoration with him and he stopped us and said he had a question for us. We love questions! This is what he said quote, 'I have read the Bible a lot, but I am still confused. Is Jesus a guy or a girl?'..................I don't know. I thought maybe the saying His Beloved Son wasn't a big enough clue. I guess not. We told him he needs to start reading the Bible again. We have an appointment with him on Wednesday too. Haha!

Well that was about it for this week! It was really successful and we needed it! Thank ya'll for you emails this week! I always look forward to Monday to reading what happened this week! Have a blessed week!!

Love Elder O'Brien