March 3, 2014

"An Empty Font, Joe Paongo, and a Crazy Black Lady"

Malolele!

This week was a crazy week! The last week of a transfer always is. To start off, me and Elder Ramsey are going to be together for another transfer. He was so worried he was getting transferred, but I guessed that he was going to stay. This week we had a baptism on Friday. It was really awesome! So Adriana and her 2 cousins were getting baptized on the same day. So we got a call on Friday morning from one of the parents asking if we had 3 baptismal dresses for the girls. That was at like 9 and the baptism was at 1. You could only imagine how upset we both were when we hung up the phone. This baptism has been planned out for 2 weeks and you decide to start looking for a dress the morning of? Elder Ramsey hung up the phone and all he said was "Tongans...." We ended up calling the Elders Quorum president and found 3 dresses in an hour. So that was good. The service went great! There was a huge eating after in a park and there was straight Tongan food there. I am still trying to adjust to their food. I had lamb for the first time this week, and it was really crunchy. Haha! It was actually at the eating where I tried it. 

On Saturday, we got a call in the morning that one of us had to baptize a 8 year old in the ward who we taught the lessons to, but it was just a child on record baptism. So we head over and fill up the font. So while the service is going on, and we were getting ready to see them get baptized, we open up the doors, and we found out that there was a leak in the font. It had drained almost completely. So you could say that there was a slight delay while we had to wait for the font to fill back up. It took about 15 minutes to fill back up to a level that they could get fully under water. They were 8, so they weren't that big. So that was eventful.

So much stuff happened on Saturday, so after we went to the baptism, we went to a Chinese Buffet for lunch. Shocker right? Chinese food and a buffet, Tongans live at these places. So after we Kai-Kay-Mated, we went on an exchange with a member named Joe Paongo. This guy is the funniest guy ever! He tells everything straight up and doesn't care about anyone else. A couple weeks ago, he told some teenager who had his pants down to his knees to "pull his pants up. You look like an idiot." No big deal right? So this week we were in a lesson with this black lady who came to the 2nd ward once. By the way, we show up to teach her, and she is drunk, which made the lesson really hard. We were teaching about the Plan of Salvation and Joe starts talking about our life on Earth. And he starts explaining it and he does a great job. But he started talking about like the Word of Wisdom at the same time and we are just like, dude, that's like way down the list of what we need to teach. So we kinda just force him to stop talking. Then this black lady stops the lessons and comes out and says straight up, I don't like white people...Oh how awkward of a silence there was in the room. We had no idea what to say. So we just decided to close with a word of prayer. And then she asked when we were going to come by again. By then we were really confused because she just told us that she hates us, but then she wants us to come back? So next week should be quite the lesson.

So one more quick story. Fini went to San Francisco this weekend to pick up her nephew. While she was there, she told her grandparents and her parents that she is going to be getting baptized this weekend. They are catholic by the way. I guess they told her that she doesn't need to be baptized into our church, but she can still go. So they are against her being baptized. So we talked to her today, she says that she still is going to be interviewed on Tuesday, and she is still good for this weekend. So we are just keeping our fingers crossed.

Meanwhile, the weather here changes too much. On Saturday it was 80 degrees, today it's below freezing. There is an area closing down just north of us in Southlake, and they have a car. So we are hoping that we will be the next owner of that car. Haha! Thanks y'all for the emails this week! Thank you for you support and have a blessed week!

Love,

Elder O'Brien

p.s. Tonight for dinner, this guy is taking us to do a burrito challenge. Haha! I'm pretty excited for that!