Priesthood blessings, finding and a typical day in the mission field

March 26, 2018

This week was very good. I really do love the mission! We got a lot of people on date for Baptism! Next week we will have 2 friends getting baptized, Ramon and Amanda. They are both from Brazil. It will be soooooo great, so please pray for them. This week we had a great time finding new people. We had 10 friends come to church with us which is so crazy! Apparently everyone in the mission has never heard of that much. The last 3 weeks we had 9 and 6 and now 10 at church so it’s crazy! The highlight this week was finding some people who are so ready for the gospel! They are all amazing.

This week was so good for me. Recently I was having a hard time sleeping and just overwhelmed so I received a blessing of comfort from Elder Valiati, and oh it was beautiful and has helped me so much! I know that God was telling him what to say to me and it just was amazing! Since then I have felt a million times better and I am now sleeping amazing and am just happy in the work! I am so blessed for that. Then later this week a sister in my district Sister Duke she has been so sick and asked me to give her a blessing early in the morning and it was pretty cool. The Priesthood is so amazing. The gifts God has given his children is just out of this world! Blessings always remind me back to my Jr year when you gave me a blessing right before my football game! Thank you Dad for being worthy and teaching me about the Priesthood and just being the best dad in the whole wide world!

OK so my normal day is pretty different. We get up and usually just shower and get ready or we go outside to a court by our house and play around and a couple of times we went running!!! And holy heck my knee is feeling so good!!! Like I could run for days and not get tired!! But yeah usually I will run at least once a day because we will be late to a lesson so we run there or we are about to miss a bus so it’s fun!!! I am being very safe I promise. Then we usually have lots of lessons throughout the day which is really nice and if we don’t we just go and find on Parnell Street or Henary Street
or O'Connell Street! It really depends on the time we are out! Like there are tons of schools on Parnell so if we are finding when the school gets out we go there. O'Connell Street is good, just sometimes there will only be tourist so it bites!! Usually I stop people by asking a question; like with what they are wearing or just anything, then we just try getting to know them! We then relate our conversation back to the gospel. I explain very simple doctrine that would apply to them and then try and mention the Book of Mormon as much as I can! After our discussion or conversations we then just get a time and date of when we can meet, then we get their number and give them calls! Pretty fun this week I thought it was one of my worst finding weeks but almost all the people we found got on date and are very solid so it’s ended up being like 6 solid people with a date that we found so it was cool!!!

It’s been a fun little transfer. Elder Valiati and I have a very good time together!! Lots of laughs!

Last night this couple, Elder and Sister Handy who are senior missionaries in our mission and were archaeologists for the past 19+ years. They have just been doing tons of finding in the Central America’s Yucatan. They were showing evidence of them knowing of Jesus Christ and then proof
backing up the Book of Mormon! It was so crazy ask me later about it and I can explain it to you. He showed us places the Nephites could have been and yeah pretty much the Church is true! I love it.

This next week we have the All Ireland Conference and just a slew of other things so it will be a good week. Oh, I also drove this week!! We had to take people to the airport and they threw me the keys and yeah it was so fun, and I did a very good job!

Love,

Elder O’Connor