Elder Chandler Obray: Humility is the Key to Happiness

Man, I feel like I was emailing you guys just yesterday. It is unreal how fast the weeks pass by on a mission. When we have been tracting for five hours it doesn't really seem like time is flying, but at the end of the day it is honestly unreal.

East Moline is a great area! I love it here. We have a few pretty solid investigators. Elder Blau and his old companion have been teaching an older gentleman, T for quite a while. He is scheduled to get baptized here on the 18th. We are stoked for him. He is a great guy and I look forward to teaching him some more. He is a wizard on the piano too. He might have to teach me some lessons. I think it is a fair trade, eternal salvation for some piano lessons? We are also teaching a couple from India who are awesome. They are both Hindu so it is cool to see them learning about and accepting Jesus Christ. It might be a little bit of a process with them, but I love teaching them. They have a stud little son. I will keep you updated on their progress.

One thing that is super sweet about this area is on Tuesday nights a bunch of the members from the Stake get together to play some basketball. Elder Seljaas and I were able to get it approved by President Badger to join. It was awesome to play some competitive basketball. I must admit that I am not very good anymore, but it was still fun to get out and play. I am proud to announce that I can still dunk. Not nearly as well as I used to, but after a few weeks I am hopeful that I will be able to get it back. I stepped on a scale the other day and it said that I haven't gained any weight yet (knock on wood), which means one of a two things. I am still in as good of shape as I was when I left, or what little muscle I had back then has now turned to fat. I think that the second option is more likely. Hopefully my last companion before I go home likes running!

I will end this email with my usual cute thought. Serving in East Moline is awesome because you get to associate with a lot of people from West Africa. It is incredibly humbling to listen to them tell their stories about their lives before and after they came to America. I like to ask them how they like their jobs here. They always respond with something along the lines of "I can't complain about my job because it gives me money to send back home to my family." One of the men I talked to said that for his job he separates different parts of chickens for Tyson's. He then told us that he does that over and over all day for more than fifty hours a week. He then said that he cannot complain because the life that he lives here is much better than the life he had in Togo. It is amazing how humble these people are. They continually thank God for how merciful he is towards them. It has really helped me open my eyes. I will often complain about how cold it is outside and how bad my knuckles hurts from knocking on doors, but these people have nothing and they still find a way to be grateful. There are lessons to be learned from every person we come in contact with. In Alma 32, it talks about how much more we are blessed if we are continually humble and not compelled to be humble because of circumstance. Humility and gratefulness are the keys to happiness. No matter what the circumstance, we can always find things to be grateful for.

I love you all and I can't put into words how grateful I am for you. I hope that you all have a wonderful week.

The still tall and skinny missionary,

Elder Obray