July 7, 2015

"4th of July Week"

Hey Y'all!

So this week was the best week of the transfer by far.  This week was
full of service and full of teaching and finding people. To start off
on Monday we found a former investigator and we talked her about the
plan of salvation however she wasn't interested at the time. However I
did learn what the rosary was in the Catholic Church.

On Tuesday we were able to do a lot of service for a couple members.
The first member we helped was sister McFarland, we went over and helped
her with her yard and weeded her front yard.  I've never been so
grateful for learning how to read from mom because this lady had a ton
of weeds and neither her nor my companion knew how to pull out the
roots.  The area that I did probably won't have weeds when we go back
this week but I'm not sure of the other areas will be. But she was a
nice single lady that really needed help to start her garden. We then
are able to help a less active guy name Oscar who is a recent convert
to the church. We helped him with his yard, cleaned out the shed and
also help to clean his car. It was kind of weird but then he took us
to this really good cheeseburger place and I was able to try some of
the hottest hot sauce of ever had in my life. But the cheeseburger was
really good and the sauce was really hot and it made my stomach burn for
the rest of the night.

On Wednesday me and Elder Wade sat down and talked about how the area
was going and also about the effort that he was putting in to the
area. We set some goals and plans to work harder because it feels like
I'm carrying the area on my back. It's starting to wear me down. So we
talked about how he knew he needed to help plan because I'm trying to
finish my mission on a strong note. So I hoped and prayed that he
would step up his game.

Thursday and Friday were kind of a blur. But on Thursday we did
service at the Arlington animal shelter, but it wasn't as cool as the
Northridge in Richland Hills animal shelter. But it was nice to help
them out. Friday me and Elder Argyle went on an exchange in our area
and we were determined to work. The night before he said that we are
going to go and teach two lessons, but I told him we were going to
teach five. And guess what happened? We taught five lessons that day!
It was by far one of the greatest exchanges I've been on. We were able
to teach and find two of the new investigators in the afternoon. The
first person we found we had prayed to be inspired to knock on the
door, and we felt inspired to knock on the door about 30 minutes
later. It was a nice family and they had a little bit of time and we
talked about the book of Mormon and shared a quick scripture out of
the book of Mormon with them. They seem to really enjoy it and said
that they would read it. We didn't get a return appointment but they
said we could come by sometime next week. The next person that we
found was we were biking getting ready to head to lunch and we stopped
to talk to this really cool guy was pretty open to learning about it
anything. We also gave him a book of Mormon and he said he would be
interested in learning about it. We then went to go see one of our
investigators named Jay. With the bike Superfarm super fast but we
made it on time to his house. We talked about going through trials and
out it's a test of faith. We then show the Mormon message the refiners
fire and he really enjoyed it. We then later talked about the gift of
the Holy Ghost and baptism and how the Holy (Ghost would be able to
help us every day when we receive that gift. It was a really good
lesson. When we are getting ready to leave he said a baptism date for
August 15. He has some work to do and some concerns to resolve, but we
know that he can make it. We then went to our dinner and talk to one
of our recent converts about the priesthood. he has lost some of his
fire since his baptism, and is trying to become worthy and work
towards the temple. We are working with the elders quorum president to
help him receive the Melchizedek Priesthood by the end of the year.
And then the last lesson that we talked was when we are getting ready
to bike home yes we found this kid and he was kind of nervous to come
up and talk with us because he thought that we were atheist. But once
he knew that we were Christians, he really opened up to us. We gave
them a book of Mormon after talking with him for about 30 minutes
about some of the miracles that have happened in his life and we also
gave him the restoration pamphlet and talk to him about the miracle of
Joseph Smith briefly. He seemed pretty interested and we are going to
try back later this week. So me and Elder Argyle had the best exchange
ever.

On Saturday we were able to help out with the Arlington Fourth of July
parade. We have to volunteer in direct some of the traffic so that the
parade will run smoothly. Me and Elder Argyle were in charge of
handling one of the intersections.so I guy pic to me and him up and
went to an intersection before he went to the intersection he stopped
by the volunteer booth to grab some water and other things. And then
we complemented his shirt and he asked if we wanted a free shirt and
we said of course. Who doesn't want a free shirt? So after we got the
free shirt we went to go man our intersection. Man, there are some
really rude people that really want their own way. Our job is to make
sure that nobody went down one road and we directed him to go down any
of the other roads except for behind us. Some people did not want to
listen to us and wanted to go down the road, but we were not allowed
to let them go down. But we did learn that if your married to a
fireman, you can go and do whatever you want and the rules don't
matter. We are almost got ran over by two women who thought they can
do whatever they want! Don't worry I'm still alive. It ended up being
a really fun day and it was nice to work behind e scenes of the
Parade. Outside for roughly 6 hours on Saturday, and I definitely got
some sun.

Much sums up our week. This is a really long email because I found out
that you can talk into the iPad about your week and it has been a
blessing to speak my week instead of typing on the iPad. Ha ha ha!
Gotta love Siri! I hope that all y'all had a great Fourth of July
weekend. If there's any words that don't seem to make sense, or mixed
up, or if there's any punctuation errors, it's because the iPad did
not get it right when I was speaking into it. And I'm too lazy to go
back and check. Sorry! I also heard about President Boyd K. Packer
passing away. I thought that was super shocking and really sad. On the
bottom I'll attach a picture that I found avoid Kay. Packer and L. Tom
Perry on LDS.org. hope y'all have a great week and I will talk to you
next week. Love y'all!.

Love,
Elder O'Brien