July 28, 2014

"Zone Conference Week"

Hey Y'all!!

The weeks just keep getting better and better. So I'm just going to dive into it. Haha! We went on an exchange this week with our Zone Leaders on Tuesday and I was working in our area. So it was about 4:45 and our dinner was going to pick us up at 5:30 and we set a goal to teach a lesson before dinner and we hadn't taught it. So we said a quick prayer and asked for help to teach a lesson. Well we found this black guy sitting in a chair by his front door and we went over and he was really chill! We started talking about the Restoration and when we started to talk about Joseph Smith, we totally related himself to Joseph! He said that he was looking for a church and that he would come on Sunday! He didn't come on Sunday, but he really wants us to come back this week! So we are excited to share more with him! And it was a really cool experience to see answers to prayers too! It has happened so much on my mission and I can't believe how easy it is to forget to pray and ask for help. It's probably the best resource that we all have and can use more often in our lives.

So then dinner comes around right? Our dinner was having a non-member over for dinner and the member thought that he was pretty open for religion and that we can give him a try to teach. So dinner ends and we had tried to switch the conversation from the world to religion and the friend would change the subject every time. So that was a key indicator that he wasn't really interested in what we had to say. So I was just going to share a short message on something simple like Faith. But my companion for the day wanted to share a video that was on the Book of Mormon. So we decided to do that, but during the video, we could tell that he wasn't digging it. After the video, in the nicest way he could say to us, he said that the Book of Mormon was not scripture and that it's not true at all. So rather than bash with him in the home, we just let it go. The video was not a good idea at all, but I still don't think he would've been interested if we would've shared the scripture anyway. So we go from really spiritual high from finding someone, to a shut down lesson. Haha! Gotta love the work!

We had Zone Conference this week and it was pretty fantastic! President is just a spiritual giant! He knows exactly what all of us need to hear and what we need to do to get the work moving forward. He gave us 3 finding ideas to find people to teach and they really are inspired! At the end of Zone Conference, he gave all of us an hour where we can ask any question we have. That was really sweet because some questions that I had, other missionaries had the same questions. So that hour was used to the max. I love Zone Conference! I also saw some of the Elders who served in Killeen with me who are now serving in Waco. My trainer was one of them and Elder Pierce was the other one. It was great to see them! After Zone Conference, we exchanged with on District Leader and we had to bust down to temple to get to an appointment for them. So I didn't get to tour Killeen too much, but I did get to see a lot of the area from driving through it. 

Other than that, that was really the big things that happened this week. It was pretty slow because Zone Conference took up a big chunk of Friday and that's one of our best days to proselyte. This week should be really promising for us though! We are really excited to get started and we are super excited to try and set a baptism date this week! Love y'all and thanks for emailing me again!

Love,

Elder O'Brien