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 Todays letter is after the pictures...

February 10, 2014

"Snow, Ice, Sunny, the Rainy. What a Week"

Malolele!

The weather this week was crazy! It was for sure one of the craziest weeks ever. I was finally able to witness snow in Texas for the first time! I had no idea that it was even possible for it to snow here. But mother nature was able to prove me wrong. It was on Thursday, so we had our planning day. Which means we got to stay in our appartment until 2. And we watched it snow from 10 o'clock to 2 o'clock, dreading the time where we would have to go out into the frozen tundra. But then, we were saved by a NFL football player. His name is JJ Unga. He plays for the Offensive Line for the Bills. He is freaking huge and awesome! He has some of the coolest dreads I've seen. He took us out to eat and then we got another ride from some of the members for the rest of the afternoon.

So we were able to get both ward directory's this week.We decided to do the same thing we did down in Killeen and find names that we didn't know and go find them and bring them back to church. So this week we wrote down about 20 names to go see. Out of those names, only 5 of them still lived at that address. So obviously it's time to update the ward roster. That was in 2nd ward, so this week we are going to try that again in 3rd ward and see if we can have some luck here.

So we were able to have a really good lesson with our one solid investigator. Her name is Fini. Her sister is a member and she was just interested in what we believe. We have taught her the Restoration twice and both times it went really well. So on Sunday we were able to teach her the 3rd hour of church. We do that because it's all in Tongan, and we can't understand what's being said. So it's like, why sit in there when we can teach a lesson instead right? So we start teaching and then we got onto the subject of our purpose here on the Earth and we talked about baptism. She said that she would be baptized if she knew it was true, and she said that she hasn't disagreed with anything that we have talked about yet. She said that she loved learning about the plan and she likes reading the scriptures. We are going to try to set a baptism date for March on Saturday at our next appointment. So pray for us. Haha!

So every Monday we play basketball with the Tongans at the church. They are big, really competitive and love to have fun. So pretty much my kind of people. But what makes it awesome is that they bring a big boom box and play island music the whole time. It freaking rocks! They are such a relaxed people and know how to play basketball too. We are probably going to get to go to the temple here in a couple weeks with a kid who is going on his mission. He wants us to be there with him. So we are really excited to go. This week we are planning on going to go see a lot of less actives again and try to find through them. We have prayed about it and are going to do our best! Thanks for the emails everyone! Have a blessed week!

Love,

Elder O'Brien

February 3, 2014
"Food, Food, Teaching, then more Food..."

Hey Y'all!

This week was filling. Literally. Haha! We have had a lot of dinners this past week. I actually got sick because of all of them. My stomach isn't used to all the food in such little time. Haha! However we did witness something pretty awesome in the food world this week. This guy named IZ (Izzy) took us to dinner to this Mexican place. They had a burrito challenge there. It was like a 5-6 pound burrito that was Spicy and if you ate it, you got your picture on the wall. It was a brand new challenge and he was the first to do it. They brought this thing out on a pizza plate. It was so big! He got about half way through with it and almost threw up the white flag. The owner said that if he were to finish it, they would name the burrito after him. 30 minutes later, the burrito was gone. He ended up throwing up a little bit in the bathroom. I couldn't believe that he at that whole thing. 

So we have really only 1 real investigator. Her name is Fini. Her sister is a member, but she is Less Active. So it's kinda hard there already. She is really awesome. We had to reteach the first lesson with her because she couldn't remember some things that was taught. However, she is now reading the Book of Mormon every day now. She is really cool. We are planning on setting a baptism date for her this week. So fingers crossed! She came to church, but only for the first two hours. She said she had to go home to cook for the Super Bowl. So it is what it is.

We were able to have a really cool experience with a group of high school kids this week. So last week we went up to these 2 Tongans and played basketball with them. After a game, we played again and said if we beat them, we got to teach them a lesson. Which we did and we set up a time for this past Friday. Well we find out that one of them was a member already and the other one wasn't. So we were excited to get a new investigator. Well Friday comes around and we call them and we find out that they aren't home. They are playing basketball with some friends. So we walk over to the courts that they are playing at to find them. As soon as we get there, they had just finished and everyone was just sitting down and relaxing. There was about 6 guys there. So we walk up to the member, his name is Sione,.and he said that we could share a message with him and his friend. His name is June. So we sit down and get ready to start, and Sione calls all of his buddies to come and join in. Next thing you know, we are all sitting in a circle. We got to share the Restoration with all of them. Most of them were either Catholic or they went to the Methodist church. And the cool thing was that they were ALL interested. They were asking questions about the church, the Book of Mormon, and everything! We actually gave almost all of them Book of Mormons. It really was one of the coolest experiences on my mission so far. Tongans, even though you may like be a different religion, they will still like accept you and let you share a message. It was really awesome.

We also got to see one of the members open up her mission call. The family though has a tradition though. So the older sister got her call, and she lets the younger sister read the paper. Then when the younger sister gets her mission call, the older one will read her mission call. I thought that it was different, but it was pretty cool. She is going to Chile Spanish speaking. Of course there was food there, and a lot of it. Haha!

It was a really good week this week. We are trying to work through the members to find investigators. That's really hard here. We have a huge list of less actives we are trying to go see this week which should be good. It's still pretty cold up here and we are on foot. My back tire on my bike is getting fixed right now, so we can only move so fast. I hope y'all have a blessed week! Thank you for you emails! Can't wait to hear about the updates next week! Love you all!

Elder O'Brien

p.s. G