Family and Friends!
I can honestly say, I think this was the best week that I have had on my mission so far. Words are hard to describe some of the things that have happened. Well, to start off it, was stressful; I am not going to lie. Everything from trying to find my way around this area and trying to fill the place that elder boekweg had in this ward. He was here for 9 months so he was very close with a lot of our members. I was nervous starting out. I had no idea how I was going to do it. And on top of that, finding lately has not been going so well. We still have Matilda with the bap date and Jing Han that are doing really well but both of them are out of town this week! I was feeling quite a bit of pressure! But this week ended up being awesome! We found a lot of new people to teach that are extremely prepared and I have never felt closer to the spirit my whole life.
A lot of things that happened were just small but they felt huge to me. We were helping this new family move into the ward (the man invented the missionary name tag, which I thought was pretty cool!) but anyways they said they wanted to follow me to this new house they were moving into. I had been there before because a member used to live there. They told me to make sure I didn’t go under any small bridges because the Uhaul was so big. I said ok and didn’t think there would be any in the way I had planned to go. Well, as I was leading them to their new house, I took a wrong turn. Nothing to hard to correct. But on the way home took the way that I had planned on going, realizing that we would have gone under an extremely small bridge!
I was also on a split this week with a Spanish elder in my district. We decided we would get out of Danbury and go try tracting in a place called Carmel. It was about a thirty-minute drive to get to this place. We got there and began to tract. We tracted for about ten minutes, then I looked over at my comp and asked him what he was feeling. He said, I am not feeling to good man. I had the exact same feeling. I had such a sick feeling in the bottom of my stomach, I felt like I was going to throw up. We got in the car and drove all the way back to Danbury. Who knows what would have happened but there was no reason for us to find out.
Me and elder Dees one day decided that we would walk instead of drive to save miles on our car. (We have a certain number of miles given to us each month.) We ended up walking down this street that we would have never even thought about going down before. It was small and did not even look like there were people home in most of the houses. Turns out, the first two houses that we knocked, let us in to teach a lesson. Both of them were so cool! Blake was a skater kid that had just graduated high school. He had a mow hawk and the whole deal! He received the lesson really well! We had several opportunities to teach random people that we had found this week! We found so many great new investigators this week! A personal record since I have been here!
We also had opportunities to use our priesthood authority! This is something that I have not had an opportunity to do yet on my mission. Coming from china town, the branch was so small, and I don’t know how well the members even understood we could give blessings. The first lady was a sister of a man in our ward. She was not a member and did not speak English. She was from India! She just had a horrible brain tumor removed, which paralyzed the right side of her body.. She could move one of her arms and nod her head if she understood, that was about it. After we gave her the blessing, we knew that she understood, because of a small tear running down the side of her face. The spirit was so strong in that room! We also had an opportunity to give a blessing to a less active mom, who used to be extremely active. She was just visiting for the weekend when she started to have some internal bleeding. She was the nicest lady!!! When we walked in and asked her how she was she said "I am finer then a frogs hair!" very energetically! I left my scriptures in her room, so I had to come back the next day to pick them up. (Yes I still forget things all of the time!) But when we came back to see her, she had made a miraculous recovery! She was getting ready to leave the hospital! We were very happy to hear that!
Our mission president also gave us the okay to go into the fair! The fair in Danbury is a big deal! Not much goes on here! But we were able to go inside and set up a table with a poster and pamphlets! I can’t even tell you how effective this was for the whole district! We talked to a lot of people! We had the Spanish, and Portugees speaking missionaries from our district as well, which was great! The reason the fair allowed us to go in was because the man in charge of the fair that we talked to was an inactive member. His family left the church when he was only a deacon. He let us do it for free and gave us a whole tent! It was incredible! I played pool with a man working in the carnival to get a lesson out of it! It turns out he was a free mason! We had a really cool conversation and placed a book of Mormon! The Spanish elders also ran into that Chinese guy I met my first week here. He said he still really wanted to learn about our church but had just been so busy! We went over to his house that night and were able to share the first lesson!
This week was amazing! There is still so much that I have not even typed! My testimony grew even more this week that the church is true, god is always preparing people to hear the gospel, and he knows each of us individually. I can’t tell you what an answer this week has been to my prayers and my efforts. I will be looking back on this week the rest of my life when I am having a hard time. I really felt like things just clicked together for me.
Well, I hope that you are all having a great week and enjoying this great summer weather!!! I know that I am! Talk to you all next week!
Elder Barton
