September 29, 2014

"Burleson Here I Come!"

Hey Y'all!

So I am going to be getting transferred. My time in Hewitt has expired. Elder Smith is also going to be out of the Hewitt ward and is going to be serving in the YSA Branch that they have started a couple weeks ago. But good news for my area! It's a CAR area! Holy Cow I can't even tell all y'all how excited I was to hear that! So last week when I drove the car, it was a quick preview for my next area. Haha! My new companion will be Elder Reece, who is Hawaiian! This will be my 3rd Poly companion which means I'm 50% shooting from the field for Poly comps. I'm really excited. Elder Reece actually served in the Killeen 1st ward too! So we got some stuff to talk about and I got some questions for him as well. My new address is:

Elder Tyler O'Brien

355 NW Hillery St. #912

Burleson, TX 76028

So Burleson is my new area. I think that's what the ward is call as well but I'm not sure. But now for the update of this past week. We had a pretty good week. A couple weeks ago there was a family that brought over 2 friends for dinner and they weren't too interested in learning more. But that same family brought over a friend again and this guy is super interested! He goes to Baylor and doesn't have a religious background. He has loaded the member up with questions about the church and is really interested in what we believe. So he agreed on meeting with us and teaching him more about the church. So we had dinner with them and shared the Restoration with him. There was also another family in our ward that came over because they are all in the same class at school. So we gave each member something to teach from the Restoration so that we wouldn't be talking the whole time. It was one of the coolest lessons I've had on my mission so far! The Spirit was so strong! And it gets even better. So on Sunday we talked with the members that go to school with him and they said that the next day he came up to them and said he was already a couple chapters into the Book of Mormon! This guy is really solid! Elder Smith gets to continue to teach him because he is YSA age. So he is super lucky because this guy is Golden!

We were also able to teach another one of out investigators that we haven't been able to teach for awhile. We were at out dinner on Tuesday with some members and we asked the Dad if he would come and see someone with us before he dropped us off at our house. He agreed and we went over and taught the Restoration with him. She didn't remember anything that we had taught before so we had to review with her and it went really well! The member was really impressed that we were able to go teach someone right after dinner. It was totally by the Spirit too.

So I was also able to go to a Chiropractor in the ward this week. He helped me out so much! I can now carry my bag all day and not have it hurt my back! But the best part is that it was for free as well! :) So that really helped out this week a lot! I'm not going to lie, I'm really going to miss the ward here. Especially the Bishop! He is really awesome! I'm going to for sure have to come back and see him. He's helped us out a lot in this ward. Today for P day we are going to go down to Temple for our last P Day and have it as a zone. We are going to be playing basketball and scatterball. So we are exctited for that! Next email y'all get I'll be up in the Fort Worth area. Love you guys! Have a fantastic week!

Love,

Elder O'Brien

September 22, 2014

Hey Y'all!

 

So this week was pretty good! Quick story about today though! So the Spanish Elders in Waco are our ride on Monday to take us shopping and everything. Well one of them got his driving privileges taken away last week and the other one was now the designated driver. Well this morning they come to pick us up and then the Zone Leaders call and say the Elder Meyers doesn't have his privileges to drive yet either. So now none of them can drive. So guess who was left to drive, me and Elder Smith. After 14 months of much patience and endurance in the sun, I got to drive a CAR!! It felt like I won something from The Price is Right! Man I was so happy! But then we got a call from the Zone Leaders saying that Elder Smith was the assigned driver for the day until they could clear up the situation...I was pretty depressed after the call, but I had already driven for about 5 minutes, and I think that was a good enough blessing for me. :) But that's how today started out! Last P day was a pretty good one. I got my new basketball shoes which feel really nice! :) We were also able to play Wackee Six which is a really fun game! I went undefeated in winning. So it felt really nice not losing to Sister Mouritsen every time. Haha! ;) We also played Scatterball again which is always fun.

 

Now teaching wise for this week. We were able to finally get in contact with a lady that we met the first week that we were here and were able to share a message with her. We talked briefly about the Restoration and focused a lot of Christ because she was confused about what are beliefs were with him and how he ties in with our beliefs. So we cleared up some of the things that she has heard and questions that she has. She seemed pretty happy with the answers that we gave her. We were able to set something up for 2 weeks out to see her. She is going to San Francisco this week. We are hoping to start teaching her again. We were also able to talk to another investigator we have. He is pretty inconsistent and isn't good at keeping appointments. But we finally got to teach him. He knows that the Book of Mormon is true, he knows that Joseph Smith is a prophet, and if he were to join a church it would be ours! So solid! The only hold up right now is his wife. She is doing her Residency, or internship for being a doctor. So her only day off is Sunday and she doesn't think that spending 3 hours at church on her day off is something she wants to do. But he is pretty solid. He doesn't want to get baptized though unless his wife in down too. He believes that it needs to be a family commitment and not just by himself! Man You never hear anyone say stuff like that! He really is awesome and we just need to get the wife to be interested. We tried to give him a church tour on Saturday, but he had to drive up to Dallas. So this week we plan on doing the church tour and sharing a message with him at the church! Should be great!

 

We also were able to have a lesson with our Athiest investigator and our used to be member as well. The lesson was okay. We just danced in circles the whole time around how they need to ask God for answers and how they need to search for answers and not just sit there and wait for it to come. We literally talked about that for 2 hours this time, and the last time we talked with them, we talked about that same thing for 1 1/2 hours. It's ridiculous. So we don't even know what to do with them. There's only so much that we can do.

 

Today for P Day we are trying to get the rest of our zone to come up to play games with us, but we don't know if they will drive up. So we will probably do our usual day of games at the church. We have another dinner and a lesson with a members friend this week that we are looking forward to teaching. The members are finally getting involved with the work and it's a great feeling to have a ward behind our backs. I hope all y'all have a great week! Love you!

 

Love,

Elder O'Brien

September 15, 2014

"Week 9 in Hewitt"

Hey Y'all!

So this week was pretty good. Not as good as what we were hoping, but it was still an improvement. We had a dinner with some members on Thursday evening and he brought some friends from law school over for dinner. They were really cool guys. We were able to get to know them really well and had some good conversations going. We talked a lot about BYU, but more about their Law program than other stuff. We could tell that the member was trying to bring up how BYU has such a high standard for their students and try to turn it to the gospel, but his friends kept redirecting it to sports or something like that. We shared a good spiritual thought and tried to get them to say that they wanted to learn more, butman, they were stubborn. Haha. We talked to the member yesterday and he said even though we didn't get them to commit to anything, it was a good exposure to the church. So we gained a lot of trust with that family. Plus the food was really good! Which is always a plus.

So this week was like I said not as good as we would've hoped. We had a lot of appointments fall through this week. We've gotten better at setting up solid appointments and being able to get members to come with us. But we had a lot of things fall through this week. Where they would cancel on us like an hour before. Which is the worst ever! Because then you have to figures out what to do next. So we had a lot of those this week. But this week we got almost all those same people with appointments this week. I was talking to one of out zone leaders this week and he said just to ignore the texts if they cancel and just go over anyway. Because sometimes, they are just having a bad day and we can help up lift them. So that's what's going to happen this week.

So we had District Meeting at the church this week and it was us and the Spanish Elders that were the first ones there. So we decided to play musicin every room in the church. So we turned on all the speakers in the church and and went to the pulpit and started playing the music and as other missionaries were coming in, they heard music. It was pretty awesome! I also got to cook some cheeseburgers on a grill at a members home for dinner. I was super excited about that. They weren't my best because I was rusty, but they were still pretty good. I hope Y'all have a great week! Love y'all!

Love,

Elder O'Brien

September 8, 2014

Hey Y'all!

 

This week was a lot better than last week! To start off we had interviews this week. So we do interviews by districts. So our district was receiving training by our zone leaders and the other district got interviewed first. But our Zone was the 2nd zone to be interviewed. Waco North was first and they went 2 hours over! So we were supposed to start at 1 o'clock, but we started at 3 instead. And after our interviews and trainings, we got done at about 7:30. It was a long day in the church, but it was awesome though! I love President. My first couple interviews were still kinda different cause he did most of the talking. But this time it was more of a conversation than before. Mainly because I came with a lot of questions in mind about our area and other stuff. Plus he just knows exactly what we need to hear and what we need to help us become better. I couldn't have had a better mission President!

 

This week we were able to set a lot of appointments up. I think after interviews, both me and Elder Smith were really excited to go back to work. Which was exactly what we needed. We were starting to die and running out of motivation. So we hit the pavement running and were able to start talking with people. We were able to have all the ward missionaries come out with us this week, which is what bishop wants us to do. We didn't teach anyone but we ran into a potential that we've tried before. He is looking to be an accountant and they seem interested. It's just hard to catch them because they are both in school and working. So we are going to be setting something up for Saturday evening and taking a member that works at the hospital with one of the ward missionaries. We are really excited to start working with them. Even yesterday we set up 2 appointments for this upcoming week. So I think interviews helped out a lot and gave us the attitude we need to get this area turned around and baptizing.

 

We also saw a miracle happen in our ward with the Sisters this week. So they had a investigator that was saying the she will not commit to baptism for the longest time. We had dinner with her on Monday with the Sisters because they wanted to feed us. So we went and we talked about following the Prophet and started talking about what she is struggling with from what we've taught her. She doesn't believe in the Book of Mormon and we started talking about it and shared some scriptures from the Bible to help support the Book of Mormon. So we left after we shared scriptures and she called the Sisters on Wednesday and set a baptism date! It was pretty awesome the way it turned out. Now we are getting ready for a miracle like that to happen in our area. Haha!

 

Today for P Day we are going to be doing board games. We got a Bible Trivia game from a different church we are going to try. We also got Wackee Six (You know what that is Leah & the Mouritsen Clan). So those should be fun with all 6 of us missionaries. But that's all we will be doing today. Shout Out to my Cougars and Trojans for pulling out wins this week! Super happy about that! There was a member at church yesterday when I asked about what happened in the 3rd quarter he said, "God revealed himselft." Got a good laugh at that one. But Thanks for Y'alls emails. Love Y'all!

 

Love,

Elder O'Brien 

We got Photos today!!  His letter is after...