February 24, 2014

"7 months already"

Malolele!!

What a crazy week! I woke up this morning and had the realization that 7 months today I went to the MTC. I cannot believe it's gone by that fast. Everyone said that it goes by fast, I can honestly say I didn't believe it, and here we are today. Haha! Well this week we are going to be having a baptism! It will be in 3rd ward, their first baptism of the year. Her name is Adriana. She is 10 years old and she is freaking smart! Holy cow. She listens to everything that we talk about and she remembers it too. She has been reading the Book of Mormon by herself and she understands what is being said. It was kinda stressful though because we had to teach her Friday, Saturday, and Sunday for her to be ready to be baptized this Friday. She has been interviewed and is all ready to go. We are really excited for her and the family is too. 

Fini is also going really well. We have been teaching her twice a week and we have pretty much taught her all the lessons. We met her at IHOP and had lunch and shared a lesson. It went better than I though it would because we were in a restaurant and I thought that there would be too many distractions. But it turned out to be a really good lesson. She is really excited for her baptism and is ready for it. She is going to be interviewed this week so fingers crossed! 

Samauri is also going great as well. We taught her the Plan of Salvation this past Wednesday and she a lot of questions! Especially about what happens after this life. She is really interested, but lots of questions like I said. We are going to be going over it again on Wednesday to try and answer more of them. She is really solid, but her parents are really Catholic. So that's going to be an interesting situation when we talk about baptism here in the next couple weeks. 

We had Zone Conference this past Tuesday and it was really awesome! President Ames is the man! He is so in-tune with the Spirit that he knows exactly what we need every time! It's so crazy how it works out like that every time too! He talked about how we need to work more with members, get those that are investigating to come to church, and how we need to become expert planners and not schedulers. The last one me and Elder Ramsey are focusing on the most. We are really good at staying busy, but we need to work on preparing to share lessons to those that we plan to go see the next day. It was a really awesome conference! I wish I could be around President more often though. Haha!

So I was able to get my name back this week. Some will ask 'How did I lose it?' Well a member named Tonga Mohetau took us to a pizza place named Joe's. And we were ordering our food (This was the 2nd week that I got here). He said that if I could eat a small Meatlovers pizza, then I would earn his respect. If I didn't finish it, he would call me Elder Meatlovers for the rest of my life. Haha. So I ordered it, but this is not a normal small pizza. It was a New York style pizza, and it was big. Haha! It was like the size of a Little Ceasers pizza, and it was loaded too. Haha! I didn't finish it. So on Saturday, I attempted to take on the challenge again and earn my name back. This time, I was victorious! He was impressed. Haha! I ate it pretty fast too. And I was also able to eat some bread sticks also as well. Which surprised him as well. 

We had an exchange with the Euless 1st ward elders. I went to their ward on Sunday. I have to say, I like the Tongan wards a lot better. And I was really mad that I missed my favorite Tongan hymn. It's only in Tongan and it's the most incredible song I've ever heard! They sing it so loud and....yeah I'm mad that I missed it. But Elder Hansen, the guy I went with is a funny kid! He is majoring in Physics, so he is sorta smart. Haha! He made a mini-cross bow out of small pieces of metal he found on the road and we were shooting it across the apartment. It was awesome!

It was a really good week this week! I love this area and I love the people here! Next week is Transfers, I am pretty sure that I'm safe. Elder Ramsey is a little worried though. So we will have to wait and see. Love you all! Thanks for you emails again!

Love,
Elder O'Brien