Happy (late) Halloween!

Hello family,

So this week all the sisters in the mission met together and had a Sister's Conference, which was pretty fun, we got to watch the General Relief Society broadcast ate American food (it was weird to eat home made rolls and pasta salad) and other nice things.

Then on Sunday since we had no appointments, it was Halloween and my companion had never celebrated it before we dressed up and went reverse trick-or-treating to all the families in our branch. We gave them candy, sang a song and took a picture, I'll send some next week when I get them from my companion. I think she enjoyed it and we got to visit a lot of less actives that always say they are too busy for us to come and teach a message but were suprisingly nice when we showed up looking like fools and bearing candy. It's surprising what a black wig and a guitar can do.

Today we went to visit a huge Buddha so I don't have a lot of time, but I thought I would share a few thoughts that have been running through my head lately.

We have an investigator who doesn't really have a lot of interest in religion because he thinks that mostly ministers and preachers try to take away people's freedom of choice by forcing them to come to church and telling them they will be damned if they don't. So he really loved the Plan of Salvation learning about free agency as being one of the main reasons we came to earth. However, when we gave him the pamphlet for the Restoration and it talked about apostacy he again put up a wall. Basically it says that an apostacy is when people refuse the prophets and that it results in unhappiness.

His question: why does it result in unhappiness. I know lots of people who don't go to church who are happy. So I thought about and was thinking about how the reason that we have prophets is to provide us protection. Really when refuse their words or consider them as only "wise men" then we are missing out on that protection, it is like when you turn off the lights before bed and try and get back to your bed, you almost always stumble on something or have to shuffle your way back. They provide that guidance that we need. I then came upon an article in the June 2006 Liahona by Elder Eyring talking about prophets and loved it.

This past week at Sisters Conference we watched President Monson and I talked about how much I love him. Because my companion was less active for a lot of her life she didn't really know much about President Hinckley so on the bus ride back I spent a good hour just talking about his stories and how much I love him. It's always such a testimony strenghtener to see the prophet speak and to see him with his family. I wish I could take part of that feeling and share it with everyone. Maybe if I had a small portable TV with General Conference on it....

Anyway, I love you all, have a great week.
--
Sister O'Bryan
Daejeon PO Box 38
Daejeon-si
Chungcheong bukdo 300-600
South Korea