December 22, 2014

"My Young Padawan"

Hey Y'all!

Nothing really happened on Monday or Tuesday of this week because Elder Reas wanted to say goodbye to all the families that he liked in the ward. But Wednesday was the day that I got to go pick up my "son", or my trainee! It was pretty awesome! His name is Elder Smith (no he is not related to Joseph Smith or the other Elder Smith I was companions with sadly). He is from Show Low, Arizona. It's up in the mountain area, I think North East is what he said. But he is 18 years old. So I'm finally older than my companion! I've always been younger in age than my companion. It feels weird to finally be the older one. But he is so excited to get to work. That afternoon I decided to take him tracting because that was the first thing that I did on my mission. So I figured that I would keep the tradition. It poured rain right as we started knocking on doors. It was still fun though. He taught his first lesson to one of the 9 year olds that we just baptized. We taught the Plan of Salvation and he did a great job for his first day out. 

We were also able to pick up 2 new investigators this week. We were looking up people that the missionaries had taught before in the past and we decided to try one of them. So we went over with a member and we were able to teach her the Restoration! She enjoyed it. Her son had gotten baptized a few years earlier and now she is thinking about getting baptized! Elder Smith invited her to be baptized and she is going to be praying about it. I think he was pretty nervous to do it, but I thought that he taught that lesson really great as well. We were also able to teach a lesson to a members friend yesterday. He is 12 years old and is one of the smartest 12 year old's I've met. We were at our Ward Mission Leaders house on Saturday to introduce him to Elder Smith and he was over there. We asked him if he wanted to take the lesson and he said yes. So we taught him yesterday and was talking to him about church because he came to church as well. He said that it felt different at our church than the church that he got baptized in. He said that he felt more involved and felt like people recognized him here and didn't at his parents church. He really like the Restoration and kept asking us questions all night. Because he was at a members house when we taught them and we went and dropped food off at people's house for them with the members and he came along with us. He kept asking questions and was talking about how he can be baptized and when. We didn't set a date with him because we want to make sure that it's okay with his parents before we set a date. But he is a smart kid and really wants to get baptized. So we are excited for him!

Today we are going to be playing basketball with the young men at the church because there is no school because of the winter break. So they are going to be hopefully bring some of their non member friend and we can get to know them. We also were able to invite some people there so hopefully we get a good turn out. But this upcoming will be a tough one because of Christmas this week. Last year it was tough and nothing really happened. But last Christmas on my mission! Love y'all and thanks for emailing me this week! Can't wait to call home on Thursday! 

Love,

Elder O'Brien