February 3, 2014
"Food, Food, Teaching, then more Food..."

Hey Y'all!

This week was filling. Literally. Haha! We have had a lot of dinners this past week. I actually got sick because of all of them. My stomach isn't used to all the food in such little time. Haha! However we did witness something pretty awesome in the food world this week. This guy named IZ (Izzy) took us to dinner to this Mexican place. They had a burrito challenge there. It was like a 5-6 pound burrito that was Spicy and if you ate it, you got your picture on the wall. It was a brand new challenge and he was the first to do it. They brought this thing out on a pizza plate. It was so big! He got about half way through with it and almost threw up the white flag. The owner said that if he were to finish it, they would name the burrito after him. 30 minutes later, the burrito was gone. He ended up throwing up a little bit in the bathroom. I couldn't believe that he at that whole thing. 

So we have really only 1 real investigator. Her name is Fini. Her sister is a member, but she is Less Active. So it's kinda hard there already. She is really awesome. We had to reteach the first lesson with her because she couldn't remember some things that was taught. However, she is now reading the Book of Mormon every day now. She is really cool. We are planning on setting a baptism date for her this week. So fingers crossed! She came to church, but only for the first two hours. She said she had to go home to cook for the Super Bowl. So it is what it is.

We were able to have a really cool experience with a group of high school kids this week. So last week we went up to these 2 Tongans and played basketball with them. After a game, we played again and said if we beat them, we got to teach them a lesson. Which we did and we set up a time for this past Friday. Well we find out that one of them was a member already and the other one wasn't. So we were excited to get a new investigator. Well Friday comes around and we call them and we find out that they aren't home. They are playing basketball with some friends. So we walk over to the courts that they are playing at to find them. As soon as we get there, they had just finished and everyone was just sitting down and relaxing. There was about 6 guys there. So we walk up to the member, his name is Sione,.and he said that we could share a message with him and his friend. His name is June. So we sit down and get ready to start, and Sione calls all of his buddies to come and join in. Next thing you know, we are all sitting in a circle. We got to share the Restoration with all of them. Most of them were either Catholic or they went to the Methodist church. And the cool thing was that they were ALL interested. They were asking questions about the church, the Book of Mormon, and everything! We actually gave almost all of them Book of Mormons. It really was one of the coolest experiences on my mission so far. Tongans, even though you may like be a different religion, they will still like accept you and let you share a message. It was really awesome.

We also got to see one of the members open up her mission call. The family though has a tradition though. So the older sister got her call, and she lets the younger sister read the paper. Then when the younger sister gets her mission call, the older one will read her mission call. I thought that it was different, but it was pretty cool. She is going to Chile Spanish speaking. Of course there was food there, and a lot of it. Haha!

It was a really good week this week. We are trying to work through the members to find investigators. That's really hard here. We have a huge list of less actives we are trying to go see this week which should be good. It's still pretty cold up here and we are on foot. My back tire on my bike is getting fixed right now, so we can only move so fast. I hope y'all have a blessed week! Thank you for you emails! Can't wait to hear about the updates next week! Love you all!

Elder O'Brien

p.s. G