Letter #52 Hurricane "Disappointment"

Hello everyone!

Well this week was pretty intense I am not going to lie! Hurricane “disappointment”, I mean “Irene” came which was actually pretty gnarly! Our whole town has lost power and most likely will not get it back until next week. Floods were everywhere! Many houses were flooded and many trees were knocked down blocking the streets! We are still helping clean up the mess! Our mission president was completely on top of it though! I was not scared at all with somebody like him leading us through it. He evacuated all of the Manhattan missionaries and some of the other places that were along the coast or in places that were in danger of flooding! He was also texting us through out the whole storm letting us know what was going on! It was pretty incredible! We had 6 missionaries living in our pad. It was a lot of fun! Almost two much fun! We were not allowed to go outside for two days under our mission president’s orders. We went pretty nuts I am not going to lie. A lot of wrestling, scrabble, and church movies!

This whole experience has really strengthened my testimony. Probably about two months ago or so our mission issued every missionary in our whole mission an emergency back pack full of survival supplies. He also told us to not let our car’s gas get under half a tank. I guess there was a member of the seventy received revelation that this storm would be coming. Our mission and the stakes in our mission have been preparing for it like crazy. It gives me the chills. The gift of prophecy and revelation is real.

My favorite clean up story that I have is for sure about a lady named Liz. She was not a member of the church but got our number from a former investigator and gave us a call. She lived right next to a river, so the street she lived on was completely flooded with water. At the end of the street, the water was up to 5 feet deep! As you can imagine, her house was pretty bad… particularly in the basement. Oh and did I mention that her husband was a HOARDER!!!! His basement was loaded with a bunch of junk! We are talking mountains of stuff! Mix that with a lot of water and it really does not end well! We were using a snow shovel to dig through piles and piles of moldy clothes!! The smell was incredible! I think in the end, we hauled off over a hundred trucks loads full of stuff to the dump! And on top of it, she was not very grateful. In a way, it made it that much better! Sometimes when we serve people with no reward or praise it feels that much better!

Jings baptism was canceled due to the hurricane… as was church. I was bummed and so was she. It will happen this week though, which is great. She is a little bummed that it is on the 4th though because Chinese people are very superstitious of the number 4!!! But I assured her that everything would be ok and we are looking forward to it! Chen is also scheduled to be baptized this weekend! He talked with his professor and he agreed to let him off! We are so excited! And so is he! The poor guy has wanted to be baptized for such a long time but has never been able to get the time off! Words cannot even describe how happy I am. Lu Lu and Ernie’s family is still doing great as well! They said they want to come to church this Sunday!!! Now that school started, they are in a more stable situation! The members are so excited to finally meet them. We were also able to find one new investigator in the heat of all of this! His name is Carlos! We actually taught him on the day the hurricane was coming! He sat in our car with us and we shared the first lesson! It went so well. As we led him through the lesson, you could just see his mind grasping on to all of these new foreign concepts. He told us in a very sincere tone that he is excited to read the book of Mormon and see if it is true! He also texted us yesterday and said he is on page 5! We are so excited for him!

If there is one thing I have learned from all of this, it is that the lord’s work really cannot be stopped. It will keep on going on. The people that are prepared to hear the word, will hear the word! The elect few that god has prepared, will learn, and there is no thing, or person that will be able to stop this from happening! I also felt very protected. I never realized how much God does care about his missionaries. I felt like Ammon when he said that the lord has looked over him in the foreign place that he was in and protected him. (Sorry I kinda butchered that scripture)

Well guys I hope that you are all having a great week! Thanks for the love and support!

Elder Barton