June 2, 2014

"Slow Weeks Won't Stop the Work!"

Malolele!!

Man first week of the transfer always seems to be slow here. I don't know why, but that's how it's been every transfer so far. But this past week, seemed to be the slowest of them all. Apparently, high school graduation is like 10 times bigger in the Tongan culture than what it was when I graduated. Haha! Man, every family whether they are members or not, was doing something for graduation. Graduation was on Saturday for both Trinity and L.D. Bell high school. L.D. Bell is the other big High School down here that has a lot of Poly's here. Every Tongan went to both high school programs. Because everyones 1st, 2nd, or 3rd cousin, grandkid, step kid, husbands-brothers-cousins-sister's daughter was graduating. You know what I mean. Everyone knew someone, and because of that, they all prepared food, or a party for the graduates. I'm not going to lie though, we went to one of the parties for one of the graduates. He has a full ride scholarship to Utah State and will be playing on the Defensive line, and that's a huge pick up for the Aggies. But at his graduation party, there was dancing, a ton of food, and a whole lot of people. It was really cool to see because I haven't seen a Tongan dance before, besides the PCC. I really don't want to go to another area to serve because it's just so awesome to be apart of this culture.

On to the Spiritual stuff now. So we were able to start teaching a Former Investigator this week. He is Samoan and when we went over to his house we started talking and trying to set up a time. But then his brother in law came out and started talking to us and asking questions. And once we started asking questions, the let us come in and talk to them. The brother in law is a mess though. He got kicked out of his own country because he was doing illegal stuff and just has nothing right now. We started talking about the Plan of Salvation and tied it into Repentance. After we shared a lesson, he pulled Elder Fifita outside to talk to him in private. Turns out he wants to find himself. Keep in mind he is 47 years old and he wants to now find himself. So I don't know what we are going to do with him, but that was on Tuesday and we came backon Wednesday to teach both of them and we only caught the former investigator. He is really cool and he just has commitment issues. We finished teaching the Plan of Salvation and he understood it. He said that he was going to come to church this week and we told him we would save him a spot.

We were also able to teach a couple Youth Lessons this week. We are teaching a set of twins and a older brother who just submitted their papers yesterday! They are all really excited about that. They are so solid in the gospel too! The twins have scholarships to play O Line at a College out here and didn't even consider playing a year before going on a mission. They are going to start coming out with us hopefully this week. The Stake President said that they had to lose weight, and what better way then walking with the missionaries around Euless spreading the word! Haha! We  have taught them the first 3 lessons and we should be finishing up the commandments this week with them.

We are also teaching another less active and we had a good lesson about reading the scriptures and after we closed, he started asking about how he wants to know all the races and all the connections in the Book of Mormon. Which you can find out by reading the the book! But it wasn't connecting in his head, so we gave him a chapter to read that talks about how a group of people left on a ship to into the West Sea (Alma 63). Hopefully this dude comes back to church man.

Last week for P day we played a lot of Volleyball at the Colleyville Stake center. It was a blast! I might just play it again this week instead of basketball...but then again, maybe not. Haha! Our Zone got pretty shaken up this transfer so hopefully I'll be able to recognize a few people that got transferred in. Love all y'all so much! Thanks for the emails!

Ofa (Love),

Elder O'Brien