The Lord's promised blessings

Dearest Family,

Well Elder Garcia and I had another really great week. Well it started off really great at least! Our first couple days were really great! We went to the FHE that we had planned out. At first we were a little bummed out because nobody had showed up but right before we started we found out their family members who live next door had a son who is less active and the son's wife isn't a member. We invited them over but after a while it was starting to get late so we decided to start. But after about 20 minutes he and his wife showed up. We shared a really nice message about the ways that the gospel can and does bless our lives.Overall it was great and we set up another appointment with them. The son did listen to us but he told us that his wife preferred not to. That was a bummer but the great part was that on Sunday he showed up with the rest of his family which was really exciting! 

I think overall the greatest lesson that we had this week was with a less active member. She is a widow and is having a really hard time making ends meet right now. We had planned to teach her about the sacrament but in the moment as we were talking with her we felt it would be much better to speak with her about tithing. Wow, I had never had such a great lesson about tithing in my life! We explained the principle tithing and the Lord's promised blessings for us as we kept the commandment. She said to us that she already knew. She then continued saying, "But how do you expect me to pay tithing if we don't even have money to pay to eat, or the rent, or the light bill?" Truly that really hit me hard. In that moment we really felt inspired to explain the principle of faith. Wow was that great. Even greater was that she came to church that Sunday and in the class of gospel principles that we gave we talked about faith in Jesus Christ. She gave a great testimony to the rest of the people there about her experience with tithing and how she would now be paying because she knew that the Lord would bless her. That was one of those moments when you feel, I am doing my job. Her daughter who was becoming a bit inactive has been coming more often and we heard she was called as President of YW! Great time we are having with them.

We continue to teach Ivan! He is the nephew of Liliane, the lady how got baptized a few weeks ago. He came to church again with us, his little brother also! We hope that he will be ready to be baptized the week after General Conference! Speaking of that, crazy it's almost conference again right?!

Elder Garcia and I continue to work hard . Right now we are trying to find ways to work better with the ward and have more success. We talked with the Elders Quorum this week and we hope that it will work out the way that we planned so that they can do some visits with us! Really we have seen a lot of the work and growth within a ward depends firstly upon the members and their desires so we hope as we work with them more we can find that success we look for.

It sounds like everyone is doing really great back home. I hope that is the case! Know that I am doing really great and I am enjoying my time a lot! Can't wait to hear from you all! Have a really great week!

Love you! :)

Elder O'Brien