November 18, 2013

"Below Freezing in Texas?? Who Knew."

Hey Ya'll!!

I hope everyone had a fantastic week! It was great week down here in Texas for sure! This week we were able to do a lot of service for some of our investigators. There names are the Worley's, and they have a very interesting house. They have 2 dogs that shed like crazy and they hardly pick up the hair. We have been moving furniture for the past couple weeks for them and starting this week we have been scrapping up their floor and are going to be laying tile for them. There are 4 of us Elders doing it, and 4 of us Elders are not very experienced at tile laying. So this will surely be a service that none of of will forget. haha!

This week we were able to come into contact with the Deleon family! Ramon had ACL and MCl surgery at the beginning of October. So we haven't been able to catch him because he has been pretty loopy on drugs. We were prompted to stop by on the way home at 8:30 and just to see how they were doing and set up something for the coming days. We ended up staying a lot longer and started to talk about church with him. He believes that he doesn't need to go to church to get closer to God, or to gain more faith. But after us talking about the importance of church, he commited to come this week with his whole family! It was a really cool experience and a awesome lesson! The only this that went wrong is that when you commit to do something, you should do it right? Well, he didn't come to church. But we finally had a break through lesson with him where we actually did a majority of the talking. He's a Texas talker for sure.

We also had Zone Conference this week on Friday. It was from 9-4. So basically all day. We had to drive up to Waco because the last conference was down in Killeen, so it was only fair. It's about 45 minute drive north so not terrible. Our first conference was also President Ames first conference, So it was a new thing for him and for all us missionaries. This conference felt more planned for and also ran a lot smoother. We talked about President Ames's vision of the mission, The Work of Salvation, is what he called it. Where it's now just our job to preach the Gospel, it's also the members too. So he wants us to really work with the members for the rest of our missions. The only problem is that almost all of our members are in the military, and are always busy until 5. So me and Elder Hyde are working something out to start involving some of the Priests as well. Then it's less biking for us too. Haha!

Which speaking of biking, a while ago, I thought that we were only going about 10-15 miles a day. Well I found out that that's not correct. I got a odometer for my bike to start keeping track and on Sunday where we only prosilite for 5 hours, we went 15 miles. So this week I can figure out probably on average how far we go now. Haha. Biking this week was terrible though. On Tuesday and Wednesday, it got to be upper 20's after 7 o'clock. Thankfully, one of the members bought us some hand warmers and we already used like 10. Haha!

Me and Elder Hyde are starting to get along great! We have a lot of appointments coming up this week with a lot of potential for sure! Today for P. day we are going to be playing basketball, and I will be going into Black Mamba mode and start draining shots. Haha! I hope everyone has a fantastic week! I love you all!

Love Elder O'Brien