April 20, 2015 - Bridgewater, Nova Scotia

Hello Family,

It has been a bit of a down week for me. Going into the week we had hopes to have 3 new investigators but they all ended up falling through. The lessons fell through. One of them was sick, another cancelled on us and the father of the other told us that she really isn't interested in the Church. So this week has been disappointing. Don't worry Chris you'll have weeks like that too. One night I just took a step back and said, "I'm on a mission.. it doesn't get any better than this; I'm doing the best thing I could be doing right now. More important than any schooling or job. This perspective helped cheer me up. We found out about transfers yesterday and I am staying in Bridgewater with Elder Beckmen. Going into transfers I was pretty confident that I was leaving so it took me by surprise. There will be a shortage of sister missionaries next transfer so because of that two sister missionary areas had to be closed down. One of them was Bridgewater. This is only temporary though as there will be more sister missionaries come out in the June Transfer. But for now there will no longer be sisters in Bridgewater. This was the biggest surprise of transfers. The sisters have so many investigators and people that they work with. None of us expected it to be Bridgewater. So now we inherit all of the sister's investigators. We will have our plates full this transfer with the investigators that we have and the investigators that the sisters had now as well. Over the next couple days we will be having correlation meeting with the Sisters as a result. I was stressed yesterday.  Even the members and the Sisters could tell there was something different about me yesterday. I had a lot on my mind and it showed. We made a list of things to do to take my mind off things whenever I feel stressed. This all comes back to the perspective of being on a mission and embracing it. I'm on a mission right now - what is there not to be happy about. I just need to embrace it. Even though I am nervous about the upcoming transfer, I am happy to be spending another 6 weeks in Bridgewater.

On Tuesday,we knocked into a man who is really into Nascar and has a garage full of Nascar stuff. He actually showed it us; it was really impressive. It made me think of Dad and his passion for vehicles. He was very friendly but sadly wasn't interested

On Wednesday, District Meeting was extended for an hour. We talked about setting goals and plans to achieve those goals. It made me think of my patriarchal blessing. A mission is a good place to learn how to set goals. I have become better at it throughout my mission.

Please pray for me as we make this transition with the sisters being taken out and getting all their investigators. It is going to be a challenge but I am looking forward to it. If the Lord didn't think I could handle it then it wouldn't have happened. The Lord has faith in me and so does President Leavitt.

Have a great week!

Love,

Elder O'Brien