April 17, 2017

Dear family,

No weird stories for this week, just an awesome one and a couple funny ones. I'll start with Monday, that's when most notable things happened. I sent a picture of the text we got last week but I'll explain a bit more. So, Brother Johannsen was baptized when he was a kid and apparently it was essentially against his will and as he grew up he came to hate the church quite a bit. Around the same time I came to the mission, he was led to meet with the missionaries again and, long story short, they couldn't find his records so he got rebaptized just over a year ago. Since he decided to come back to church he's been really pushing his wife to join but she was pushing back for a while. He let off for a few months and I guess she decided to really read and pray about the Book of Mormon and come to church more often. The second one we noticed of course so she was on our radar a bit. Anyway, on Monday she decided to get baptized. She's been taught the lessons and everything so we set the date for this Saturday. I honestly didn't think those kinds of things actually happened but there you go. Definitely will be an exciting weekend.

Later that night we'd finished up for the night so we were just relaxing in the apartment when suddenly I saw an odd, brownish spot on the carpet. We both checked our shoes and turns out Elder Brinkerhoff had stepped in dog poo and got it all over the carpet. 🤢 Nasty... We got all of it out though!

I think it was a couple nights later that a huge storm came through overnight. I always enjoy storms so that wasn't a problem. However, in the morning, I got out of bed and was about to get ready when Elder Brinkerhoff informs me that the roof is leaking... on my bed! A couple buckets and some shifting around of furniture and that was fixed. The roof is a bit more of an issue though. Hopefully the mission office can get the landlord on that soon.

The only other news I really have is that I'm staying in Fort Worth 8th with Elder Brinkerhoff for another transfer. I was pretty excited about that. The rest of the Zone is changing a ton though. Even within the last transfer we've had three missionaries go home for different surgeries and such. That's never fun to hear about. Let's hope everyone sticks around for a little longer this transfer.

Hope y'all had a happy Easter and hope your week is awesome!

Love,
Elder O'Brien (the younger)