April 28, 2014

"Prayer: An Excuse to go to a Chinese Buffet"

Malolele!!

So quick story to start off the email. Last Monday night, we walked up to a Tongan house and there was a truck with a cage inside of it. In the cage were 6 live pigs that were asleep. So we took some pictures. Well, in the back, there were 2 already dead just laying on the ground while the dad and his friend were skinning one of the pigs. Haha! It was pretty weird to see that done! But it was awesome! 

This week was pretty awesome! We were able to have 6 people come out with us and teach! We went on splits on Wednesday with 2 members in out ward. We had Paul and a return missionary go with Elder Fifita and I went with another member. Me and my companion worked in 2nd ward and Elder Fifita and his crew worked in 3rd. My experience was one never to forget, especially one that my sister Abbie will never forget. So last week, this member said that he was going to make sure that I get the opportunity to try Horse.Yes that's the animal. i had forgotten about him saying that. But I quickly remembered. So this week, we stopped by a couple houses and checked up on some less active families, and we hopped back in the car after one house and he looked at the time and said, "We need to go to the Kaufusi's." So I was like okay! So we pull up to this house and we go inside, and the first thing I smell is horse. And at this time, I quickly remembered. It was actually not to bad either. But I was kinda laughing in my head thinking to myself, "What would Abbie do if she were here right now? Probably go run away so she couldn't watch her brother eat her favorite animal." Does that sound right? Haha!

We were also able to have our new Ward Mission Leader in 3rd ward come out with us on Thursday afternoon. After 2 hours of driving around, we talked to 0 people and 0 doors opened. We had run out of  names to visit and we were getting ready to have him take us home when he got an idea. He told us we needed to go to the church and ask the man upstairs where we needed to go. It was a great idea! So we pull up to the church and we asked him if he would offer up the prayer. He happily said....no. Haha! He wanted Elder Fifita to say it. So he says the prayer and we literally waited for like 3 seconds. And our Ward Mission Leader says, "I know what we need to do. We need to go eat."....quite inspiring. All he needed to do was just make up an excuse to go get some food. Haha! What better place to go than another chinese buffet too. It's like the 30th time I've been to one. And the best part was, we already had 2 dinners that night. So I gained 5 pounds just in 5 hours. Haha!

So we have started teaching the youth and we had a really cool lesson with these 2 twins. They both play football and they both play the Offensive Line. So you can already imagine the size of them. A lot bigger than me. They have full ride scholarships to a Texas College out here and are both planning on serving a mission. We shared the Restoration with them and they knew a lot and both learned a lot. So that was on Saturday. On Sunday, we had to teach the Young Mens class and they both talked about how much they felt the Spirit and how much they learned from us coming over. That got a lot of the young men excited and wanted us to come over too. We are going to have them start coming out with us hopefully this next week. They are excited to help us out with the work.

So investigators wise, we are at ground zero. We have one but she is the Older Kenyan lady. The 15 year old has disappeared and everyone else is just too lazy to do anything. We gave talks on Sunday and we did our best to share experiences and ways to help get the ward involved with sharing the gospel with their friends. I was in the middle of my talk and I was looking around at the congregation and almost all the elderly people were knocked out. They did the same when Elder Fifita was talking too. It was kinda funny but sucked at the same time. They probably had no idea what we were saying in English. Haha! But other than that, we are trying all we can to teach non members. Hopefully we have some luck this week!

Today we are going out to Colleyville to play basketball and Volleyball. There's 3 missionaries in our zone now that were with me down in Killeen. So I'm pretty excited to play basketball with them again. Thanks everyone for you emails! I love you guys! Talk to y'all next week!

Love,
Elder O'Brien