Monday, September 26, 2016

It's a Good Thing Our Apartment Was Built Upon a Rock

This week was wild so buckle up. The week started out fantastic! We had our first Zone Conference and I was able to see some of the boys from the MTC. Strangely, I actually kind of miss the MTC. President and Sister Badger are the greatest. The conference was killer and after we left I felt a refreshing desire to share the gospel. So that is exactly what we did. We went on exchanges that day and we blitzed our area. We were able to find two new investigators! Phil and Christie. Elder Dunford and Elder Casselberry ran into them knocking.  Even better news than that though is our investigator, Diane. She is a 68-year-old woman who grew up Baptist.  We weren't too hopeful about her because she wasn't answering a lot of our calls. It turned out that she got a new phone and had been attending institute at ISU! What a golden investigator right? Once we found this out, we of course got her new info and we taught her a couple of lessons. We were teaching her about the Book of Mormon and she couldn't contain her excitement. She kept saying stuff like "Praise Jesus" and "I'm just so grateful." She is awesome! We invited her to baptism and she gladly accepted! October 22nd is the golden day. She even came to church yesterday and shared her testimony in fast and testimony meeting! Start filling up the font right now! These kinds of experiences make all of the knocking, biking up hills, and all of the disappointment so worth it. I love being a missionary. 

Similar to Layton, the state of Iowa has had some extreme weather. Ames was hit pretty badly but I hear Cedar Rapids is in for it. On Friday morning, we woke up from a text from our Bishop's wife saying their basement flooded and that they needed help! We sprung out of our beds to go over and splashed onto our carpet. Yep our apartment got wrecked. We woke up to the whole apartment soaked. We did our best to get in contact with our landlord, but it was 6:30 in the morning so we had to sit and wait in our apartment for a few hours. We looked around the place and unfortunately we had a lot of stuff get wet. My journal was soaked, copies of the Book of Mormon were ruined and all of our clothes had a pleasant aroma of stinky water to them. What a blessing. We eventually got in contact with our landlord and they were no help. So we ditched the place and went to help people who had it much worse like the Bishop.  We called the mission office on Saturday and they told us to pack up and get all of our stuff out of the house. We spent the majority of Saturday afternoon moving furniture out of the apartment and packing up our clothes. We now live with the Ames 2nd Elders in a one-bedroom apartment. The four of us have gotten very close in these past couple days. Elder Dunford and I brought our mattresses over and we sleep on the floor. Unfortunately because a lot of the stuff we own was sitting in our apartment wet so long, a lot of it has a sweet smell to it. My suitcases both smell like sewer water. Any suggestions on cleaning those? 

Although it was a pretty tough week, it has also probably been my favorite of my mission. There is a reason the church puts so much emphasis on charity. It really does make you happy! Every night this weekend when I got into my bed I was exhausted from working all day, but it felt so dang good. The Lord will bless us more than we can comprehend when we put other's needs before our own. We have a great example of that in the Savior. He put all of our needs before his own and created the Infinite Atonement. So if I can leave a commitment with you guys this week, try to find more opportunities to be charitable. I know you all do that already, but keep an eye out for people who need help. I know that you will notice an increase in happiness and joy as you serve others. 

I love you all more than I can describe. I hope you all have a fantastic week. Remember to smile a little.

Borderline homeless missionary,
Elder Obray

P.S. for the next couple of weeks our address will be 3132 Briarhaven Road #267 Ames Iowa 50010. 

I mean just in case you feel inclined to send any thing my direction haha. 




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