February 1, 2016 - Joshua, Texas - Missions are weird sometimes

Dear Family,

I'll just get right to it. The last couple days have been a little weird. I'm not sure if I've mentioned more about those girls in Godley who we tracted into a month ago but we've been back a couple other times. Once the father answered and said, "We're not interested and my daughters aren't home." He didn't tell us not to come back so we did and got the younger girl. We gave her a Book of Mormon and said we'd come back next week. Yesterday we went back again, knocked, and heard someone coming to the door. It went like so:
*steps*
*man mumbles*
*girl mumbles*
"You may not answer that door"
"Dad!"
"You will not answer that door!"
"But, DAD! Please!"
*more dad yells*
"DAAD! PLEEASE!!!!"

From the sound of the girl screams, I would've thought someone was murdered. But yeah, I think she wants to meet with us. It makes me happy to know that but pains me to know that her dad won't let us. I wish everyone we talked to wanted the gospel that badly. Or any other child, teenager, or adult in the church really. We're looking at other options to get someone other than us to contact her and tell her to go to Mormon.org. Possibly through mail... We'll see.

The second weird experience came that night. Suffice it to say that we gave a church tour in which the words "I am [insert full name] and I am a prophet of my Lord." He then showed us a Facebook message from a random lady who claims to have had a dream about him preaching to hundreds. Sadly, this seems to happen a lot on missions. There's a guy in Waco known as the "Waco Prophet" who blesses the traffic as it goes by. Apparently President Ames has had dinner with him. Fun stuff.

Lastly, we were knocking doors in a new neighborhood yesterday and one guy was outside saying goodbye to whom I assume was his child and grandchildren. He motioned for us to come over after they left, met us halfway and said, "Before we start let me tell you: I've got God, I've got a security system, I've got insurance, I've got a 40 caliber automatic, and I've got an attitude!" Elder Balser then said, "Can we--" and he shouted, "No! Now leave!"

I'd like to know what he'd do if someone said that to his grandchildren. All Elder Balser was going to ask was what kind of gun he had but we left anyway.  The rest of the street was super nice in contrast though. None of them wanted to hear from us, but they were nice about it.

Missions are weird but the ups make up for the downs. Have a good week!

Love,
Elder O'Brien