Letter #74

Hello hello!

Today I am doing my email in a BEST BUY so, I am not going to be able to make it to long. But it is ok it is not about the quantity, it is about the quality. Feel free to write that down if you have a pad of paper near by.

Elder Mok and I had a great week. Elder Mok is a great companion. He makes me laugh so hard. This week we purchased some of those little poppers that you throw at the floor and it makes the loud bang sound. They became really cheap the day after Chinese New Year. Anyways, Elder Mok and I were contacting and I could see that elder Mok looked rather tired. Right as he started to yawn, I tossed a popper in his direction. He squeezed together so tight, and he hit the floor for cover. I was going to try to play it off like I had no idea where the attack had come from but my laughter took over. I was laughing so hard. He is being a stud and being very patient with me. Even though we are going through a hard time right now, he is making it very fun by providing lots of laughter. I think that is one of the best skills that I have learned on my mission. When times are hard, sometimes the best cure is just to laugh.

We had a great zone meeting this week. Our mission president just opened it up to questions and answers. Our mission president is such a good speaker. I noticed whenever he would be talking about something and I would have a thought or a question, it would quickly be answered as he continued to speak. He is very good at following the spirit. I really hope that I have that effect on our investigators when we are teaching them; I think that is so important. He also shared a portion from "When Thou Art Converted" by M. Russell Ballard. It was an analogy about a ship and an anchor. He talked about how we need to keep our chain links strong so that our boat will not start to drift away. This made me think about an experience that my dad shared in a talk a few years ago that happened to our family when we embarked on our journey to Catalina. It really helped me to understand this analogy a whole lot better. My mission president also quoted 2 Nephi 33:1-2 (I really hope that is right) It talked about how the Holy Ghost brings the message unto our heart, but not into our heart. It is our job as missionaries to be a worthy conduit so that the Holy Ghost is able to deliver the message. After our mission president touched on this subject an elder raised his hand and asked a great question. "How can we as missionaries bring this message into our hearts?" Our mission president shared a quote that I really liked his answer to this question. "We can become the person that we want to be by practicing every day." Very short and to the point. The word practice really stuck out to me in that quote. I thought about all of the "practice" that I would do for wrestling. Let me tell you when I first started wrestling most of the time at practice my coach would put me with older and more skilled wrestlers where I would just get whooped on over and over. The wrestling skills that I developed were only after a lot of hard work and failure. And even then, I was never a perfect wrestler. There were still many times that I would lose. If we have changes that we want to make, the only way that they will happen is by us trying our best everyday.

The rest of new years was great and things are slowly getting better. One of our members brought a friend to church on Sunday that we were able to teach. We don’t know exactly what will happen with that but we are very excited. It was for sure a huge blessing that I know would not have come if were not working so hard and being obedient. Our investigators are also slowly progressing, what else could we ask for? I am so grateful.

Well I hope that you all have a great week!

Elder Barton