Thursday, July 9, 2015

June 1, 2015 - Bridgewater, Nova Scotia


Hello Family,

It has been a pretty steady week for us. It has been raining pretty hard for the past two days with more rain coming tomorrow. But on Friday, it was really hot. I wore a short-sleeved white shirt that day and on Saturday as well. It was pretty hot outside before all the rain came. I had a bit of a rough day on Friday as I had a hard time knowing I couldn't be there to support my brother and all his hard work. My thoughts kept on drifting towards home and I just wasn't very focused on missionary work but I did get through it and was able to re-focus on Saturday. Anyway, so we found out about transfers yesterday and I will be staying in Bridgewater for another 6 weeks with Elder McGuire. But Elder McGuire will be a district leader this upcoming transfer. Throughout the week, I was getting the impression from the spirit that I was staying and I also felt the Lord telling me that he has more for me to accomplish here. So I know this was inspired of the Lord and that he still needs me here in Bridgewater. There's going to be sisters back in Bridgewater. Sister Hughes and a new missionary from the MTC will be coming to Bridgewater on Thursday. Sister Hughes has been out for a while and goes home in August. I've never met her so I don't really know much about her.

I was sad to learn of the passing of Elder Perry on Saturday night. It's interesting because on that morning, we were reading a article on lds.org saying that he had thyroid cancer. Elder McGuire said he thinks he's going to die soon. Lo and behold he was right as he passed away that night. Elder Perry has been a valiant and dedicated apostle of the Lord. He has done so much to build the kingdom of God here on the earth. My prayers are with his family and his loved ones. The question is who will fill the vacancy in the Quorum of the Twelve now. So will they call a new apostle right away or will they wait till next conference? I had assumed they would do that right away but some of the members here said they sometimes wait till next conference to do that.

So I got a e-mail from Jeff Nelson from what seemed like right after Kylie opened her mission call. saying that she is coming to my mission in August. This didn't surprise me when I found out. When Jeff first told me that Kylie was going on a mission, I had a feeling she was coming here. So I saw that one coming. She will be a great addition to the mission and I'm sure she will love it here in the Maritimes. That would be pretty cool though if we served in the same area at one point. That tends to happen in this mission with so many missionaries from Alberta. Take Elder Willougby and Elder Evanson for example. Hopefully we don't make each other homesick when we see each other though. But when it comes down to it, I just have to think of her as a regular sister missionary disregarding that I went to school with her and know her personally. I am looking forward to representing Stirling with her.

Wednesday, I was assigned to give the doctrinal discussion for District Meeting. So I stayed up a while the night before getting it ready. I did it on the fundamentals of the Book of Mormon. With the big emphasis on the Book of Mormon lately, I found it to be highly appropriate to give a doctrinal discussion on. It went pretty well. I thought I could have asked more questions and gave more references but that's okay. :)

Friday was a really hot day. We weekly planned in the morning. Then we went tracting in the afternoon with no such luck. We talked to a lot of people but none of them were interested. After dinner, we attended ARP. They were on Step 12 of the program - Service. It was neat attending that. ARP isn't just for people who have addictions. It's for everyone who has weaknesses and challenges that they want to overcome.

Saturday, We visited  a brother and taught him about Family History work. The missionaries in the past never taught him about it so we thought we would. We're trying to get him to go to the temple. Later we attended a baptism. It was a bit of a gong show given the fact that no one had filled the font before the baptism. So we had to turn on the font and wait for half an hour :P.

Have a good week!

Love,
Elder O'Brien

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