Elder Chandler Obray: The Sun is Shining

Hey Hey! Man, it has been a great week. I realize that I say the same thing at the beginning of all my emails, but these days, the weeks are consistently good. It has been a beautiful week this week. The sun has been out and the temperature has been steady around 65 degrees. Perfect weather to catch people relaxing outside and perfect opportunities to hear about the gospel. This week wasn't nearly as exciting as last week, but it was still pretty great. I think back and there really isn't much to report on, but I will do my best to keep it entertaining.

I will start with a fun experience we had this week. Elder Anderson and I have kind of become our Zone Leaders’ little helper companionship. We have been traveling all around the zone with them to help other areas find new investigators and help their areas. We spent this Thursday in Davenport. Usually in this case, we go on an exchange too so that we can learn from somebody else. When Elder Anderson and I got there, they told us that we would be sticking together and that we would be tracting all day. We didn't really have any directions so we said a prayer and got to it. As we were knocking near a Catholic church, we realized that everyone in this neighborhood attended that church of course. A couple hours into it, we knocked on the door of a Nun. Man, it was wild. She came out all guns a blazing on us. She had all kinds of thoughts about what we believed. It is pretty sad to me that other congregations spend time feeding their members false information about other churches, especially ours. We can always catch them though when we ask them where they got their information. They confidently say that they have done research on the Mormons. In other words, their preacher told them.

Another fun little story happened on Saturday night. Elder Anderson and I were knocking some apartments. We were almost ready to head back in when we knocked on a woman’s door. We shared a brief restoration lesson and got a return appointment. She asked me to write down all the bible references for the points in the Restoration lesson. Sweet! Luckily you can find it all in the Bible! When we were exchanging information, I had the weirdest prompting of my mission. I had this thought come into my head that I needed to ask her about Mexican food (This woman was Caucasian). I kind of ignored it and then it came back! So, I asked her if she knew any good Mexican restaurants around town. Her face lit up and she told us all the good Mexican restaurants on this side of the Mississippi. She and her son apparently are avid Mexican food fans. The Spirit is real man. I am excited to go back and teach her. Hopefully she will be down to grab a taco or two and talk about Jesus.

The last experience comes from yesterday. We were excited to start the day yesterday. We had three of our solid investigators say they were going to come to church. K, A, and K. We even got K to try to help us give a ride to the other two. We were stoked when all three of them responded Sunday morning that they were indeed coming to church. When we got to K's house to lead him to the church he was all ready to go sweet! When we went to A and K’s house, they were nowhere to be found. We frustratingly told K maybe next time and got back into the car. When we got to church and got K all situated, we took our seats on the stand (Elder Anderson and I spoke in sacrament meeting). A few minutes into the service, A and K both walked in. Man, I haven't been that stoked for a minute. It was great to have three investigators there. We are really excited to continue to help them prepare for baptism! Hopefully I stick around another transfer! Fingers crossed.

Well I am sorry that this email is kind of lame. I commit to having a better one next week. Thanks for the package too! The Legos were a highlight. Elder Anderson is incredibly jealous!

I love you guys. Have a great week!

The Avid Mexican Food Eating Elder,

Elder Obray