February 24, 2015

"19 Months Already..."

Hey Y'all!

So how about the ice storm huh? For sure wasn't as bad as last year, but it was bad enough to cause everything to shut down pretty much. Yes we were grounded for the whole day. So for 8 hours we were to prepare for the week as much as we could since we couldn't shop. So we are doing the shopping and emailing today. But for those that are coming to Texas this week, I've heard that it's supposed to be cold and snowy tomorrow. We've probably gotten more snow here in Hurst then Utah has this year. ;) Haha! Not to brag or anything. But all is well here in Hurst!

So this week was a great week! Well I guess we will start off Wednesday. We were able to go over to one of our Recent Converts house and share one of the church videos call Special Witnesses of Christ. It was perfect for her! She said that she has a couple friends that need to watch it with her. Not to join the church, but to know who Christ is. It really is a great video to watch and she really needed it. Her husband isn't a member and is not interested at all to join. He makes it really hard for her to go to church and everything. But she really is awesome! after that we went to dinner with another Part-Member family. They are really cool and love having the missionaries coming over. The wife is not a member, but she knows a lot about the church. She does have a couple things that she doesn't agree with and she had a couple bad experiences with church and humans making mistakes. But they took us out to eat and we shared a scripture with them and cross-referenced it over to the Book of Mormon. She enjoyed it and we had a good discussion about it afterwards. We are hopefully going to be going over this week and do some yard work later on this week when the weather gets warmer.

We were also able to go our to dinner with some members from the Tongan wards this week! It was really great to see them again. We actually got in contact with one of them a couple weeks ago at Anas Island Grill. We went to an Italian place called Cafe Sicilia and oh man! Olive Garden does not contend with this place. It was so good! It was pretty dang great! We set up another day to do a burrito challenge in March. We have to get a crew of 5 guys and eat a 11 pound burrito in 5 minutes. Challenge accepted! So we are looking forward to that in the future!

And then yesterday we had a really great lesson with a family we are teaching. We had a pretty great break through with the Book of Mormon. We went into the lesson not knowing what we were going to do because they weren't progressing, so we decided to just go by what we feel when we get in there. So we got there and we found out that the wife had read, but he hadn't. So we decided to read a chapter with him out of the Book of Mormon and it was totally inspired because we read 1 Nephi 8 which talks about Lehi's dream and the husband loved it! He usually likes to talk a lot and he loved it so much that he was left speechless! It was really cool because he has decided to come to church now because of that. He has pretty much never attended church before in his life so this will be a new, but good experience for him. 

So our mission has started a Mission Choir and the person who is putting this together didn't want the Choir to be better than the Mormon Tabernacle Choir so they decided to have me and my companion be a part of it just to make sure it didn't sound perfect. Haha! But in all seriousness yes me and my companion are in the choir and we have our first practice tomorrow so that should be interesting. It will be my 2nd choir that I'll participate in. The Black Choir was the first back in January. But other than that, we should be having a great week. We have a couple referrals that we are going to be contacting this week and they seem pretty solid from what we've heard. Thanks again for all yalls emails!

Love,

Elder O'Brien

February 23, 2015

I've been waiting for an email.  Since we haven't gotten one I decided to do a little detective work.  Heres what I found...

Yes, he's been grounded!  So, as soon as I get an email, I'll post it.  I'm hoping by Wednesday.

February 17, 2017

"Happy Late Valentines Day"

Hey Y'all!

Sorry for not emailing yesterday. The Library was closed due to Presidents day. It worked out great for me and Elder Smith because we were able to get everything done by 11 o'clock and we had the rest of the day to do whatever we wanted. We ended up having a lot of time to play basketball! We did a combined activity with the missionaries in the other wards and we probably played 15 games of basketball. Our team that we had had the longest winning streak until we got too tired to keep going and lost. But it was a blast! We were also able to go to a Polynesian store (Shop Aloha) and get some stuff to make Spam Musubi. So we are going to be able to eat that a lot more! 

We were also able to teach a couple of our investigators last night as well. We had our first lesson last Monday evening with them and they were one of the referrals that we received and taught. They are really nice, but a unique couple. We were talking to them and trying to figure out what their background was in general and also their religious back ground. Come to find out that they have their own Faith and it's very scattered. When we were talking about them, there were some things that they were talking about and believe in are pretty far out there. But it is for sure has been interesting going over there these past couple times. we tried talking about the Restoration with them, but they didn't have too much of an interest in that. So we gave them the Plan of Salvation pamphlet to read and we were going to follow up last night. So we go over there and they didn't read, but they are both very interested about where we get our testimonies and where our Faith in the Gospel came from. So we decided to talk about the Book of Mormon and share why it's important and how it's the keystone of or religion. For the most part, we were able to keep the lesson focused on the Book of Mormon. She has read the Book before and is willing to read it again and he seemed like he would skim through it. But we have really high hopes for her. So next week we will be following up with them.

We were also able to come in contact with this lady that missionaries have talked to in the past. She is really cool and has a testimony of the church and loves our church. Her hold up right now is whether or not Joseph Smith is a prophet of God or not. She finds in hard to believe that God talks to us still in these days. Something cool that I didn't mention earlier, before we went over to teach her, we decided that we needed to talk about the Book of Mormon with her and help her understand the importance of it. So the lesson that we prepared for her was inspired for sure! We ended up having a really good discussion about the Book of Mormon and she said that she read it, but doesn't remember anything. So we committed her to really read and understand and also to start praying about whether the book is true. Because if the Book is true, then Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. She committed to read and we are going to be following up with her this week. We are planning on talking about the Plan of Salvation, but we will see what happens.

This week I was also able to go on an exchange with our Zone Leaders who are the Spanish elder who cover Euless. So as we were biking around, I was able to find a few people from the Tongan wards and talk with them for a little bit. It was a nice mini reunion with them! I couldn't find everyone I taught because there were appointments with Spanish people we had to go to. But it was nice to be back in Euless for a little bit. Hopefully I can make it back there before I go home! We also were able to have a non-eventful Valentines day this past week. Our evening was completely dead because everyone was our doing something. However a family invited us over to come have some ice cream with them so we happily took up that offer.  

Today we are going to be doing service at an Animal shelter and helping them out. We did service there last week as well and it was pretty sad to see some of the condition of the animals that had been abused. But the people really do need our help with some of the chores around the place so we are happy to help them out! We also have a lesson with a Part-Member family tomorrow and we are really looking forward to meeting them hopefully planting a seed with them. I hope all yall have a great week and thanks for all the emails! Love yall!

Love,
Elder O'Brien

Pictures!!!  His email is after...