March 31, 2014

Malolele!!

So this week was a different week for us. Well it was for a couple days actually. So on Tuesday night, we visited this family that is less active and shared a message about being obedient to the commandments, and as you do that, you are blessed. It went really well. They then took us to McDonald's to get us some food at 9 o'clock at night because we looked hungry. Haha! So me and Ramsey both got Big Macs and they tasted very good. Well that night, Elder Ramsey's stomach decided that he needed to taste the Big Mac again. Infact, he probably tasted it like 15 times. If you don't know what I'm talking about, he threw up 15 times that night and into the next day. So we didn't go out that day. While he was dying in bed, I was listening to John Bytheway, playing Solitaire, and watching some Hispanic guys lay sod all day. So it was quite the day. He is feeling better though. 

We went out on Thursday, but he still wasn't eating normal at all. We went to Kafoa's house to eat. So if y'all remember Kafoa, he was the one that had the Mamma Mia music playing and left us with all the food? Well he didn't have the music playing, but he made the same amount of food for us this time. Elder Ramsey looked at me after one piece of chicken and said he didn't feel good. So that left me, myself, and I to eat...all...the...food. Which I didn't do. But I gave it my very best and ate like 11 pieces of chicken including the Potato Salad. So that was a lot of food.

We had a member referral given to us this week too. We went over to their house and taught their cousin. It's the Tuipulotu's. So we teach and she was really quiet. She loved the Restoration and was really excited to learn more! Yesterday, we found out that her dad told her to come back to Hawaii because he found out that we were teaching her. So that was a bummer. But we had a great lesson with her though. 

We are also teaching the Kenyan family now. There are 3 girls and we haven't been able to have the dad sit in yet. We have taught them the Restoration and the Plan of Salvation. They really like the lessons and they are reading the Book of Mormon too! So it's going really well with them. Probably the only hold up with them would be that it's a Tongan ward, and the dad might be a problem too. Hopefully everything works out. They are awesome!

Other than all that. We did a lot of walking this week. We are trying to get the members more involved with missionary work. There is a huge push right now in the wards and we are really excited to keep the work going. Thanks for all y'alls emails this week! Love you all!

Love,

Elder O'Brien

March 24, 2014

"A Not So Perfect, But An Awesome Baptism"

Malolele!!

Well Fini was baptized this week!! It was awesome! However, it wasn't the most perfect baptism in the world. So we will just start off with preparing for the baptism. So we were in charge of making the program for the baptism. So we went down to the library, thought that we had everything right, and went to go start making copies.  We get over to the copy machine and realize that we didn't spell baptism right. We had already logged off the computer and we would've been there for another hour trying to make it. So we took a really dark pen and did the best we could to fix it. It actually looked okay. So we made 40 copies and took them home. We started folding the programs and realized another mistake. Fini's baptism was going to be on Friday March 21st, 2014, but the program said Friday March 21st, 2012......Yeah not good. So once again, we used that really dark pen to fix the program. 

We met with Fini on Thursday nightand showed her the program and she just laughed about it. But we were just making sure she didn't have any questions and that we were still of for Friday. We found out that her mom was not happy about her decision. In fact, she was so mad that she told her if she got baptized to not call or text her ever again. We were shocked when we heard that, but she said that she still wants to do it. So Friday came and Elder Ramsey was able to baptize her. But she was baptized in the dark because the font lights weren't working. Another oops, Haha! She bore her testimony and thanked everyone for coming after she was baptized. On Sunday, I was able to confirm her a member of the church and give her the Holy Ghost. It was one of the coolest experiences I've had on my mission. 

On Saturday we got the Elders back. We kinda did the same thing as the sticky notes, but we did playing cards. We hid 6 decks of cards in their apartment. They are 2 cards short and they still can't find them. We hid a lot of them in tough places. Haha! On Wednesday I woke up and felt like I got hit by a train though. So we didn't really do anything that day. 3rd ward has basically disappeared from missionary work. We haven't done anything with them for the past 2 weeks. We don't know why the work has stopped with them. We are doing what we can to try to teach people and the members so that they can share it with their friends!

We are excited to continue to work with the Tongans again this week! Hopefully the weather cooperates with us too! Thanks for all you emails! I love yall!

Love,

Elder O'Brien

 Heres the pictures we received this week, his letter today is below them...