November 3, 2014

"Our Willingness to Serve"

Hey Y'all!

So this week was crazy! First off, Halloween up here in Burleson was probably the best decorating I have seen ever. People up here go crazy. I saw so many homemade haunted houses and so many houses that were decorated. There is a less active member that had his house decked out! He said that it takes almost the whole month to set everything up perfect. The whole freaking month! But it was by far the best house I've seen for Halloween. And the cool part was that almost all of his stuff is homemade. He has these giant tombstones that are 6 feet tall that took him awhile to make. However, the thing that I got the most kick out of was this. So we had to go grab some dry-erase markers at a dollar store because our last one died. So we walked inside and we were looking at which ones we should get and a lady came up to us looking at us weird and asked "Are you real missionaries?" It honestly took both of us off guard as we replied yes. She ended up being a member and had to ask because I guess last year there were people dressed up as missionaries to make fun of us. So she was just double checking with us. It was pretty great!

So I really wanted to tell y'all about what happened all yesterday. So we had an appointment yesterday at 11 o'clock with our investigator at the nursing home. We had talked with a member earlier this week to meet us there and to help fellowship her. They were like instant friends! But we show up at 10 and she wasn't there. So we texted her and she said that she was on her way. Well she gets there and walks in and asks us if we had set our clocks back......Nope. We totally forgot about daylight savings so we were an hour early on everything. So we read from the Book of Mormon with her and have a really good conversation with her about it, and we left. So we were in the car and we decided we had 2 options. That we could go back and take that hour nap, cause we were both pretty tired. Or we could continue to work. It was a pretty obvious decision for me a least. But we continued to work. We went and tried a potential that was hard to catch for us and he ended up being home and we had a great lesson about the Plan of Salvation with him. The lesson actually went really well with him. He understood a lot of it and agreed with most of what he said. He told us to come back whenever because he really enjoys us coming over to his house. So we were really happy that we chose to go see him. We then went to chuch and after we decided to go try a less active family that was also pretty hard to catch. We ended up catching them home and had a great lesson on the power of Prayer and why we need o pray each and every day. It was something that they needed a reminder of and it really brought the Spirit into their home. So we are already having an awesome day and it was just getting better. We then went to another potentials house and he was home. We didn't get to teach him but he talked with us on his porch for awhile. He told us that we are welcome to come by another time when his football wasn't on. Haha! After that potential investigator, we went to dinner. We had dinner at 7 yesterday because the family was having an investigator over for dinner and that time would work best for him. So we went over and had some of dang good steak. However, the guy we were going to teach had to leave to go meet his dad at his home. So we didn't get to teach him at the house. So quick back story on the family that had him over. They have 12 kids and half are living at home and the other half are either married or moved out. So one of the siblings is his roommate and he told us that we could go to his apartment and teach him there. So we did! We went over and taught him at his apartment. This guy is so solid too! He know's so much too! It really wasn't a lesson, it was more of a conversation about the Restoration. It was really cool to see someone come to understand the gospel. Because he knew a lot and felt like there were pieces missing on what he grew up on, and the lesson last night enlightened him and you could tell that he became more interested as the lesson went on. It was an awesome experience. After that lesson, we then went over to that Less Active's house and saw all of his awesome decorations. And then on the way home, we had a family text us saying that they wanted us to come over tonight and start teaching their 9 year old son! Man we were so excited! So last night, it got me thinking, what if we didn't go back out to work? What if we would've taken that hour nap? Would we have had all that success tonight? Probably not. It's amazing how when we show the Lord that we are ready to work and are willing to keep going, he blesses us with success. So we showed Him yesterday that even though we didn't get that extra hour of sleep, it won't stop us from working. So it was a fantastic day yesterday!

On Monday we went to the zoo and it was pretty fun! I liked how they had everything set up there. It made it so you could walk on the same path the whole time and see all the animals. We only had 2 hours so we didn't see the whole zoo. And my camera died about 3/4 of the way through so I didn't get pictures of the last part of the animals. But it was good fun and different from what we usually do. This week we don't know what we are going to do. We are going to wing it again. Thank you so much for the emails this week and I hope y'all have a fantastic week! Love y'all!

Love,

Elder O'Brien