No Shoes, No Shirt... Wanna get baptized?

Hey Hey Hey. This week has been a pretty standard week. There were some interesting changes though so we will see how things go. Because of transfers, we didn't really get to do as much work as we would have liked, but all is well. I am glad things are going well back home. I am jealous that summer is starting up for you guys! The humidity is picking up here. Just like the winter, the actual temperature has no indication of how the weather really feels. I am becoming more and more grateful for air conditioning and deodorant. What a blessing. 

So I am kinda bummed to say that Elder Cline got transferred this week. I was sad to see him go. We sure had a lot of fun together. He moved out to Mason City, Iowa. I sure am going to miss him. The cool thing though is that we will be going home together so we definitely will be around each other again. My new companion's name is Elder Youngstrom from Idaho Falls. He is a super funny kid and he is a crazy artist. He is currently drawing a picture of me and my dream girl, Rapunzel from Tangled. I will make sure to send you guys a picture when he is done. We are pretty different, but I am excited to learn from him.  He has been out for nineteen months. 

There was a couple of pretty unfortunate things happen this week that put a damper on the work. Our investigator D didn't come to church for the third week in a row. we are going to have to postpone her baptism a little bit. She told us she is ready to go, but has a hard time getting rides to church. Definitely keep her in your prayers this upcoming week. She needs to get baptized! We had awesome lesson with another one of our investigators C. We taught him the Gospel of Jesus Christ from 2 Nephi 31. We had an emphasis on the spirit and he opened up and told us that he was starting to realize the truth of our message. He told us that he feels the spirit and he is excited to work towards his baptism date of July 22. We found an African investigator from a new country this week. His name is M and is from Chad. We are teaching people from like ten different countries right now. Who knew? 

I am starting to recognize a pattern here in my mission. It seems like every Sunday night, when we are about to go in, we end up finding an investigator on the last door of the day. Obviously, no coincidence. Yesterday was an interesting one. We approached the door and I was convinced that no matter what, this guy was going to be a new investigator. When he opened the door and came outside he was literally wearing nothing but a tiny pair of boxer briefs. He proudly came outside and talked to us as he rubbed his hairy belly and wiped the tired out of his eyes. As we talked to him, he said he was down to have us come back and teach him. I invited him to be baptized and he even accepted. Hopefully he dresses a little bit more modest when he comes to church. I don't think the Relief Society would appreciate that. 

Unfortunately, that is all the real highlights of the week. We did find a street called "Chandler Street" and of course we knocked it. No success really, but we did have a Christian singer give us his CD. I can't wait for August 2018 when I can put that bad boy in and jam. 

Have a great week this week. I love you. 

Elder Obray

Friend Zone

Hey Hey everyone! It has been a great week here! MAN TREVOR AND MADDIE FINALLY ARE ENGAGED HUH? That is so exciting! I am stoked for you two. You guys make an adorable couple. If you have any, send some pictures of the proposal. Trevor it seems like you did a good job on the big event. You make a brother proud. It is pretty wild to think about how different life will be when I get home. Three Cheers to Two years! I am really sad to hear about Grandpa's health. He has always been such an amazing man. I am especially grateful for the experience that I had to give him my first priesthood blessing. I will hold on to that memory forever. Many other blessings have followed and I am grateful that I had the privileged to give my own grandfather my first. Please give him a hug for me and tell him and grandma I love them. Enough of the sad stuff. 

Some highlights of the week, we were accused of housing a juvenile delinquent who escaped her half way house. We saw these two guys wrecking each other outside of Taco Bell. We found an investigator from Egypt, and we literally found an investigator whose name is Lemuel. I almost peed when he told us his name was the same as the brother of Nephi. He is going to get baptized for sure. Plus Elder Cline and I have officially been out on our missions for double digit months! Ten months has flown by holy cow. The mission thing is crazy sometimes. 

The role of district leader is going just fine. I have an awesome district so we haven't run into too many problems. I am grateful to say that I give a lot of blessings of course, but I don't mind at all. This last week I gave a training on staying out of the friend zone with investigators. We talked about making our purpose clear and having a DTR (Define the Relationship) during the first lesson. It went well. Who knew that dating is such a great analogy for missionary work. Lucky I have a ton of experience with the friend zone! I practically live there! 

Our investigators are doing well. D, our investigator has set a baptism date for the first of July. Who knows we might be moving it up a little bit. She is ready to go! We continually find new investigators from other countries. I love Africans so much! I am definitely going to try to go over there and do some humanitarian work when I get home! They are the coolest people. 

I will finish this email with a thought. I have felt extremely grateful these past couple of weeks for the blessing of being born into the church. Lucky for me, I have never really had to search for the truth, because I was born with it as a part of my life. Every day I run into people who could so greatly benefit from this message, but are not willing to put pride aside and listen. Bob and Jen, thank you so much for raising me with the gospel in our family. I will be forever grateful for that blessing. We are so blessed to live where we live and to know the things that we know. It doesn't take long to find a long list of blessings that we have been given because of the gospel. Gratitude is the key to happiness!

 I love you guys have a great week! 

Still in the Friend Zone,

Elder Obray

It's Heating Up!

Hola! It has been a pretty great week here in CR. I am beginning to love Africans so much. Man, they are the coolest. There is a little Liberian kid in our ward and we are best buds. Whenever we go to visit his family, we have to do our special handshake, which includes a jump shot and a dab. I will try to get a video of it the next time we go over there. Man, this week was pretty wild. There are a couple of pretty fun stories that I am sure that you will enjoy. 

The first story happened on Saturday night. When we got back to our house, we were just sitting around talking in the living room when we heard some gun shots from right across the street. Have I mentioned that we live right across the street from a super sketchy bar? We looked out the window and pretty soon like five cops rolled up and an ambulance as well. A few minutes later, we watched this guy get arrested and pushed into a cop car and then we watched a gurney roll into the ambulance from inside the bar. Yep we are pretty sure somebody was killed right across the street from our apartment. Gotta love living in Cedar Rapids. Pretty sketchy. But never fear we park our car in the back and are rarely in our front yard so don't worry mom! I feel completely safe! 

The second story was a finding miracle from yesterday. In the early afternoon, we went to try by one of our investigators. When we stopped by, she came to the door with the Book of Mormon in her hand and said that we could have our bible back and that she is too busy to meet with us again. We did our best to turn it around, but she awkwardly stood in the door trying to close it. We let her keep the BofM and took off. I was pretty frustrated because we were pretty excited to teach her. I angrily started to knock on the next few doors and nobody was down. As we were about to finish up, we knocked on the last door of the complex (coincidence? I think not). Two girls came to the door. About an hour later, we gave them a Book of Mormon and set a return appointment for this Tuesday. We are pretty excited to go back and teach them some more. They were super open and actually knew the Bible really well. You don't see that too much here. So, it was fun to talk to them. 

Cedar Rapids is very different from any other place that I have served so far. Out of our investigators we are working with we have six from all different countries. Sudan, Togo, Kenya, Ghana, and Pohnpei. It is super diverse here so we run into people from all kinds of different walks of life. Who knew that when we went knocking, I would have to carry around pamphlets in French, Arabic and Swahili in Iowa. It is a pretty awesome experience to meet these humble people.

I know this email is getting a little lengthy, but I will close with my testimony that our Heavenly Father loves all of His children. He has a plan for each and every one of us. It is not fair for us to decide which ones hear the gospel or not based off of their outward appearance or surroundings. It is simply up to us to share the gospel with everyone. All of His children deserve to hear the message of the restored gospel. I love this work.

Have a great week this week! I love you!

Elder Obray

p.s. If any of you know any virtuous young ladies who are cute and willing to email a missionary please give them my email. The struggle! 

Super candid picture while helping a member move

The Cedar Rapids District! Gotta love serving around a bunch of Sisters! 

Where champions practice

This whole missionary work thing must be paying off!

You Would Not Believe Your Eyes

Hey Hey! What a week! Sorry this email is a day late; all the libraries were closed due to the holiday. L-Cat and Jonathan you guys are the cutest family I have ever seen. I am jealous you guys had a great trip in Hawaii. I am not too jealous though because Cedar Rapids pretty much has tropical beaches and beautiful scenery all around us... I will draw some similarities really quick. Hawaii has beaches where people wear swimsuits and men don't wear shirts. Well, Cedar rapids doesn't have any beaches but the lack of clothing remains for some. I think living in Iowa has made me more content with my appearance without a shirt on! What a blessing.  I have quite a bit to report on so I will waste no time and get right to it. 

This weekend was pretty wild. Like I mentioned before, we live within a one mile radius of like six bars so you know the party was pretty sweet. Especially on Sunday night. There was a huge party at one of the bars close to our house. When I was doing my weekly call in reports (I call the district members and they report numbers and talk about investigators) I heard like six gun shots. Yep I am pretty sure there was a gun fight right outside our apartment. Each gun shot was followed by an ambulance wailing down the street. Never fear though, we are safe! 

Another fun story of the week. One night we went knocking to finish off the night. It was about 8:45 so people were extra cranky that two white boys were knocking on their door. At one of these doors, a couple sweet daughters of God came bursting out of the door, and asked what we wanted. I barely had time to say that we were missionaries before getting cussed out like never before. I have never heard the F word used so many times in such little time. Usually if this is the case, I get a little sassy and try to save the OYM but this time I just wanted to get out of there. Man, it was brutal. Pray for that woman. There really isn't a moral of this story, that is all. 

We are working with an awesome lady named D. She is getting ready to be baptized on July 1st. She has had a pretty tough life. She has some health challenges so she can’t work or drive. She is awesome though. We went through the baptism questions with her yesterday and she is all good to go. We just need to help her with a couple other things and she will be all good to get baptized! Hoorah!

One thing that is great about the Midwest is that there are fireflies all over the place at night. We will be talking to someone and all of the sudden a yellow light will start flashing around us. It is the coolest thing. That is all. 

Out of our teaching pool, more than half of them are from Africa. I love those people so much. Their love for the Savior and their humility is so inspiring. We talked to a guy the other day that when he saw that our name tags said Jesus Christ he stopped and said, "Oh I love that man!" I want to go and do some humanitarian work in Africa when I get home. I love them. Hopefully we will have a couple of them enter the waters of Baptism here soon. They are great. 

Not too much else to report on this week. The District is starting to see more success and we are excited about the work going down here in Cedar Rapids. 

I love you guys! Have a great week!

Elder Obray

You see stuff like this all the time. Pretty sure this guy was under the influence. He fell off his bike twice while we were watching him.

No Regrets

Hey Hey! Man, it was a great week here in Cedar Rapids. It was so great to talk to you guys last week. I sure do miss you guys. I can't wait for the times when we can sit around and joke around in person. I will dive right into the week.

The first full week of Cedar Rapids was pretty crazy. We have had some great success with finding this week. We have found a couple new investigators who are awesome. We are teaching a couple African families that are so great. They are so humble. Their kids often do not wear pants. It is hilarious when we are in a lesson and all the sudden a little boy runs into the room and literally has nothing on but a shirt. My kind of lifestyle. Elder Cline gets a little bit uncomfortable when I follow their example though... 

Our Zone Leaders have had their car in the shop all weekend so it fell on us to go into a car share with them for a little bit. To make things easier, they are staying in the house with us until their car gets fixed. It has been wild that is for sure. 

We have been teaching a woman named D. She is so awesome. She has had a pretty rough life and lives in some pretty sad circumstances. She came to church yesterday and is now working towards her baptismal date of July 1st. It has been great to testify to her that she is a Daughter of God. We are really excited for her to continue progressing towards baptism. I will keep you posted.  

The first real District Meeting was pretty wild. I prepared like three trainings and I couldn't really figure out what to actually train on until like ten minutes before the meeting. Not a moment too soon. I ended up training on serving with “No Regrets.” One thing that I have really kept in mind during my mission is that I never want to look back on my day and even my mission with the word regret in my mind. As missionaries, we will never look back on the day and regret working so hard that day, we will only regret not doing our best. The Lord promises us that if we do our best, we will sometimes be disappointed in the outcomes, but we will never be disappointed in our effort. I can relate this to life. At the end of the day, we will never regret doing the righteous thing, we will only regret the mistakes that we made and the consequences of those actions. When we compromise our standards to take the easier way, or the more fun way, we will eventually regret it. At the judgement day, we will have a perfect knowledge of all of those mistakes. I hope that I won't have too many regrets at that day. Luckily, we have a pretty awesome thing called the atonement to help out when we mess up. 

Not too much else to report on this week. I hope everything is going great back home. I miss you like crazy. I love you! Have a great week. 

Getting a little chubbier,

Elder Obray 

I'm Just Chilling in Cedar Rapids

Hey Hey Hey! I can't even put into words how great it was to talk to you guys yesterday. I almost forget how beautiful my family is. I am so glad to hear that everything back home is going well, prayers must actually work haha. Maxwell is the cutest little guy. Jonathan and Linds, you guys did well in creating that little one. I already know that we will be best buds when I get home. 

Because we talked yesterday this email will probably be pretty short and pretty lame, but I will share a couple experiences from this week that I didn't get to share yesterday.

The District Leader responsibilities are going splendid. I haven't really received any type of training on it so I am pretty much shooting in the dark, hopefully the Cedar Rapids District will be patient with me until I can figure out what I am doing. My first training during district meeting will be Thursday. Pray for me! Hopefully it will all be alright.

We did find a couple new investigators that we are excited to work with. Miracles all around us that is for sure. Hopefully they turn out to be alright. We scheduled a return appointment so when we got there for the return appointment they decided to take us to dinner instead. We didn’t complain. I will keep you guys updated on them. They have talked to a lot of missionaries and they told us that they know it is true, they are just waiting on a couple things first. 

Not too much else to report on this week. I will reiterate how great it was to talk to you guys yesterday. It is always pretty depressing when the screen goes dark, but I felt a renewed motivation to get to work. Thank you guys for all of your support and for the amazing family that you are. Only a couple months until I can see you guys again. Counting down the days until Christmas, and hey, we made it through half of the skype calls of my mission! We are doing great! I love you guys so much. Have a great week. 

Elder Obray 

High Priest of Good Things to Come

Hey Hey Hey! Man, it has been quite the week. I look back on the week and a couple of the days I felt like laying down in the street for a while, but now it is all good. One minute you are down in the dumps, then five minutes later you could be happy as can be after someone schedules a return appointment. Hopefully I will be a little more stable by the time I get home. 

To dive into the week, we had another really frustrating week. We spent a lot of the week trying to work with the investigators that we do have already. We have a bunch of people who claim that they are interested and say that they love our visits, but they never keep commitments and never come to church. It is quite a frustrating process. We decided this weekend, that in order for us to find the elect, we need to stop spending so much time working with those who aren't the elect yet. So basically, that means that we are starting from scratch. We have had to drop several investigators which is never fun, but the field is white all ready to harvest, right? There are other people who need our time. Now we just need to find all of those people. 

We had a pretty unfortunate event take place this week. After district meeting, we took off to change from our suits and use the bathroom. While our car was parked on the side of the street next to our apartment, an elderly man backed his Silverado into the driver's side door. We were inside so we had no idea that it happened. When we got out to the car, we found an older couple knocking on the doors around us, looking for the Mormons who drove the Ford Fusion. Did I mention we have been rolling around in a fusion? Man, it is mean machine. We get some sweet looks from the guys in the rougher parts of towns. Basically, the fusion has a sweet dent in the door and we are going to have the door replaced, but I was super grateful for this man who was honest and sought us out. Who knew? There are still good people in the world. 

To give you an idea of our proselyting area, the other day, we were walking down the street, and a police officer pulls up next to us. We got ready to tell him that we weren't soliciting and that we were missionaries. He said "Do you guys know where you are? There have been several shootings in this neighborhood the past couple of nights." He was pretty nervous, but little does he know that we have some pretty sweet back up on our side. Don't worry mom I promise that I won't be getting shot any time soon! 

I am sorry this email has been super lame, but I will try to spice it up with a spiritual thought. Man, these past couple of weeks have been incredibly frustrating for me. It is so hard for me to see people so close to experiencing real joy but being to lazy to keep commitments or keep appointments.  I was reading a talk this morning by Elder Holland called Remember Lot's Wife. Bob and Trevor, I know you guys know this one. Towards the end of his talk, he mentions that Christ is "a high priest of good things to come", and that we must have faith that there are good things to come. Although it is incredibly sad for me to see people reject the gospel, or even just not take it serious enough, I know that someday, sometime, they will have an event happen in their life that will turn them to their Savior. He is the author and finisher of our faith and he extends his hands to us unconditionally. These people are being prepared for another missionary who will come by and help them towards the true church, and I am being prepared for others who I will be able to help accept the restored gospel. If we keep the perspective that there will always be a light at the end of the tunnel and Christ is that light, it becomes easier and easier to endure trials with a cheerful attitude. 

President Badger, told me in my email that there are some changes headed my way. Basically, I will be getting transferred. I will let you guys know on Sunday where I end up. Man, I can't even explain to you how excited I am to see you guys and talk to you. Don't be surprised when you answer the skype call to find a slightly chubbier and balding version of your son and brother. Have a great week this week. See you on Sunday. I will have a member text you some more details as it gets closer. Most likely Sunday night. I love you! 

Elder Obray

Whitey's is the best ice cream I have ever had. It will change your life.