December 29, 2014

"Christmas Week"

Hey Y'all!

This week was really awesome and also pretty slow at the same time with Christmas being this week! But to start off we had a Christmas Devotional on Christmas Eve and we were able to watch a Christmas Carol. It was an old one, but it was still really good! It was nice actually watching a Christmas movie for the Christmas Devotional. Last year we watched a Book of Mormon movie, which was really good, but it didn't really tie into the rest of the Devotional. So I was happy with this years movie! Plus anytime I get to watch a movie I usually take advantage of it. After the movie President talked about the Christmas story and tied it into the Plan of Salvation and how everything before Christ was born lead to him being born. Even Abraham. So I thought that was really cool. We then got to read letters from our parents and also from Bishop and the Stake President back at home. President also wrote us a letter as well. So that was pretty cool! On Christmas we had a District Meeting and it was pretty good! We tried to go eat out at IHOP afterwards, but they ended up taking forever and we had to take our food to go. Omelets that are fresh taste better than when they are in the fridge for a day. But me and Elder Smith got to call home when we got home and that was really great to talk to my family. I always enjoy calling home to them. We then had a really good Christmas dinner at a members house. They made a lot of food which is always good! We then went to the nursing home and visited our investigator there. We decided to bring her some oranges for Christmas and talk about the Christmas Orange. Oranges ended up being her favorite fruit so I know that Elder Smith was inspired to tell that story and bring those for her. Plus we got given a lot of them from a member, so we had some to spare. But that's really all that happened for Christmas.

Saturday we were able to find 2 new investigators. I had been trying with Elder Reas to get in contact and teach this potential investigator. Me and Elder Smith finally got in contact with her on Saturday and at first she didn't want to take the lessons. But once we started talking with her we were able to share part of the Restoration with her. It was really cool because she looked like she was just agreeing and kinda listening to what we had to say, but her son was in tune and listening the whole time. He wanted to say the closing prayer but he ended up getting to scared and he said that he will do it next time. It was really cool. She told us that we could stop by on New Years Eve and talk to her more, so that's good that we will have something to do on New Years. We were also able to stop and talk to this guy in an apartment complex and we ended up giving him a Book of Mormon and he told us to come back. We don't know how solid he is because right before he left he asked if we had a Koran. We told him that we don't have one. Haha I thought that was kinda funny.

We were able to play basketball last Monday with a bunch of the youth in our ward and it ended up being a really good turn out. We had a youth bring his dad and he played like Shaq man. He would just throw his body around and could just score whenever he wanted. But it was still a blast to play with all of them. But other than that, that was our week. It was pretty slow because of Christmas week, we had a lot of time to fill. But Elder Smith had a good time for his first Christmas which is really good. I hope all y'all have a great New Years and don't do anything stupid for it either! Love Y'all!

Love,

Elder O'Brien