June 13, 2016

Dear family,

It's been yet another fun week in Texas. The weather has been weird as usual. This morning I was wearing my glasses because my eyes were bothering me and every time I got out of our car they fogged up from the humidity! You just can't win here. Other than that, the storms have been coming in waves. Sporadic. And powerful. Waves. No rivers behind the apartment though.

I can't remember if I mentioned this, but this week was President Ames' final Zone Conference in the mission. It was super spiritual as expected and he even left us with the advice he usually gives the
departing missionaries. Immediately before dinner we were talking about kneeling prayers during lessons and President Ames explained why we're asked to do them. It's hard to describe over email so I'm not even going to try. Suffice it to say that everyone in the room was probably thinking, "Wow, who's the guy who has to follow that up with a blessing on the food?!" It was me of course so I walked up to the front, looked at everyone for a couple seconds until they knelt down on the gym floor, knelt down myself, and poured my heart out. I didn't even get a word out before I started crying. It was one of those prayers where I knew for a fact that my Heavenly Father was listening. Easily one of the most spiritual experiences of my mission.

The rest of the conference mostly had to do with helping people understand the importance of church, prayer, and reading the Book of Mormon. I left there totally motivated to hand a Book of Mormon to
every Texan I saw. Unfortunately Elder Reich was sick the next day so we couldn't do a whole lot of that. I did read quite a bit of the Book of Mormon though! That itself was a spiritual experience.  The day after that Elder Reich was doing a lot better so we finally got to place a copy.

I suppose you might want to know how our investigator is doing so I'll tell you briefly. We had a lesson with him on Tuesday about the plan of salvation and asked him what he thought about baptism. He said he hadn't thought about it so we committed him to pray about being baptized. This week we're hoping to set a date with him. He's super sincere and keeps his reading commitments so it's looking likely. I let y'all know how it goes but for now I hope you have a fantastic week!

Love,
Elder O'Brien (the younger)