Letter #49

Hello my dear friends,

 

This week was a little slower than weeks previous, but it was still great. We were able to meet with all of the people that have baptismal dates which was very good! But other then that, we spent a lot of time looking people up and having them not be home! And then tracting and getting yelled at… you know the usual. Wow it is so cool hearing about everyone back home getting mission calls! That makes me so happy! Its like we are all this army going to battle together. I like to picture myself as the strong one in the front with the longest and best-designed spear out of the whole group. I am sure that the rest of the friends would have to agree on that one! You guys are all going to love your missions so much… this is the best decision that you could have ever made. I mean that with all of my heart.

The lessons and experiences that we did have his week were incredible. We met with jing twice this week. The first time that we met with her, she said that she was not very sure if she wanted to be baptized any more. She kept talking about how she just needs to be supported and how she is going through such a hard time, barley getting by every month. She said that it is too much to put on her plate right now. When she said that, it made it very clear that she did not understand the atonement, even though it had already been taught to her. It is hard to understand until you use it and apply it into your life. Not matter how hard I tried to tell her that these things were true and that they can help her, it just did not seem like she understood. I felt like I should give her a blessing. I explained what a blessing was and told her that I would like to give her one. She asked me if I was old enough to be doing something like this but then agreed to let me do it. Poor elder Dees had no idea what was going on!!! I suddenly just looked over at him and asked him to help me give her a blessing. With the biggest prayer in my heart, I laid my hands on her head and started the blessing. Shortly into the blessing, a dog ran into the room and started to jump on me. Followed by the owner of the dog trying to get him out of the room. We finished the blessing and I felt like I failed. I was really bummed and felt like the blessing was ruined. Jing said thank you, walked into the kitchen to make us dinner. We ate, said goodbye, and left. On the way home I had no idea what to think. I continued to pray for her… that something would touch her heart.

The next day I get a call from her daughter Xiao. She told me that her mom decided she wants to be baptized now. I was so confused, but told her that we would come over the next day to see what’s up.

The next day, I helped jing learn how to say things for her tai qi class in English. Then we started to talk about why now she wants to be baptized. She looked at the floor for a second and then started to talk. She said that it is touching how much that we care about her and how much we really just want to help her. She said that when we gave her that blessing she had a very peaceful, and good feeling. It helped her know that the things we have shared with her are true. She said that she is going through a really hard time right now and really needs help and she knows that heavenly father would help her. The spirit was so strong. I had no idea what to say. As a matter of fact, I literally could not speak for a few minutes! It has never been so evident to me how much that heavenly father loves his children. It is like he knows each of our needs then just interchanges all of us to help each other. I don’t know if that made any sense. But wow I am so grateful I had that opportunity. I really needed to learn that lesson. It is kind of like what I was saying with jing and the atonement… how she did not understand it because she had not used it. I feel like I always heard the words our heavenly father loves us, and even had things happen that have helped me understand. But now, I know for a fact and that part of my testimony will never be changed or budged.

Well I am sorry I kind of got carried away in that story. But it really was incredible. Well guys I love you all so much, and I hope that you are having great weeks. Keep doing everything that you are doing!

Love Elder Barton

Letter #48

Hello everyone!

 

Well this week was really incredible. I keep thinking that eventually these blessings are going to stop but they don’t! They just keep on coming. It has gotten to the point where me and my companion really wonder where they are coming from. We have no idea what we are even doing to deserve them.

I think I told you all about Shane, the Chinese guy that accepted a baptismal date, he is progressing and very fast. We went over to his house and visited him with our ward mission leader last Saturday. It was so nice to have a member there to help us teach. That is one thing that we do not get a lot up here and I really wish that we had more. But, our ward mission leader was great. He taught so clearly and bore some great testimony. When we followed up with Shane about his book of Mormon reading he said that he has been reading and he feels something very special as he reads that book. He explained that it is a feeling that he has never felt before. He also said that when he prays, he really feels like some one is there and listening to his prayers. I felt so happy when he said that words couldn’t even explain.

Jing is also doing great. Last Thursday she called and asked if I would come help her buy a computer. She wanted me to translate for her at the store. It ended up being so stressful! To start everything off, I had to follow her to the place in our car. She is such a scary driver! She would start drifting into the other lane or try to do a u-turn in the middle of a busy road, or randomly flip on her turn signal and then not turn! It was crazy! But luckily we made it to the store alive! When we got into the store was really when the magic began. She was buying a new computer and wanted the programs from her old computer transferred on to her new one. When the man at the store said that she couldn’t do that, she became upset. Then the man was not able to get the computer she wanted in red, which also made her very mad! It was crazy! I felt bad for the guy in the store. But then finally after spending over an hour in that store she purchased her computer and we left. When we got back to their house we had an opportunity to teach her a lesson and it went really well. She accepted a baptismal date as well, but I don’t know how committed she is quite yet. She does not fully have a testimony yet that these things we have shared with her are true. We are going to meet with her again tomorrow and I am excited.

We also received a referral this week from the Portuguese elders. They told us that it was a family and they seemed very interested! We called, set up an appointment and they ended up being very interested. A man named Ernie and his wife Lu Lu with their 5 boys. They also had a friend over when we taught them. We taught them the first lesson and the spirit was so strong. When we were talking about apostasy, the dad chimed right in and started to tell us how he has seen this in the world today. At the end of the lesson, the spirit was so strong I and my companion gave them baptismal dates. They all accepted to be baptized! That was our first time meeting with them, so they still have a long way to go but we are very excited for them. They will be a great contribution to our ward.

It has been so crazy with all of these things going on. I have to be honest; it really does not feel real. I have spent so much time out here working my tail off and really have not seen to many results. And then now I feel like I am getting hit with this wall of blessings. The cycle ended today and yes I am still here! I am not sure how much longer I will be in Connecticut, but I am loving it here. I am learning so much… it is incredible. Well, I hope that you are all having a great week!!! Thanks so much for all that you do!

Elder Barton

Letter #47

Greetings!

 

Well this week was fantastic! Elder Dees and I really had a great week! We decided this week we really wanted to focus visiting all of the other people that we had previously talked to that said we could come back another time! It worked out pretty well for us! Not as good as we hoped, we did not get in touch with everyone but we still made some good progress. I don’t know if you guys remember me talking about Shane. He will pop up from time to time then I won’t write about him for a while. He was the other Chinese guy that I met like my first week in this area. Then we would call and call but he would never answer. And we would try to go visit him but he was never there. So eventually we started to give up. But it seems like each time I have started to give up, he is put back in my path again. One time the Portuguese elders ran into him and he said he was still very interested in meeting with us; he has just been so busy. So we tried to go visit him that night and got the first lesson with him! But then the same thing happened we got out of touch... a few weeks had gone by and we were starting to give up again. But then we were eating dinner at a member’s house close to where he lives. So we decided to go try to visit him again. Sure enough he was home and we were able to teach him again. It turns out that he had been reading the book of Mormon and was still very interested. And the best part was, he agreed to be baptized.  We set a date with him for the 20th of august. Even though, he still does not fully understand everything, he knew that baptism was a good choice. He has a long way to go still but we are very excited for him. It is very evident that heavenly father thinks he is prepared. We now have a set day and time that we will stop by every week so that we don’t loose communication with him.

Other than investigators this week, we were also able to be involved in some reactivation. We met 3 people tracting that had been baptized and lost contact with the church. It was very powerful to see how heavenly father leads us to his lost sheep. One of them that really stuck out was a man that had two autistic children and a wife that was not a member. He told us that he still had the strongest testimony of the church; it was just hard for him to get to church and have his kids distracting the congregation. His wife works on Sundays so she is not able to help out with the kids. He said that he tried and tried for two years to bring his kids to church, but he said it just didn’t make sense. He then said he had his purpose in this life and he wanted to fulfill it. He talked to us about how raising those kids had helped him so much and how he tries to talk to his wife about the church. I thought that was a really cool thing for him to say. It really became evident how god knows each of us individually! One of the other members I want to share about was having a hard time with his testimony. I am not sure of the full thing that happened to him but regardless, he was struggling. As we were talking to him, the spirit came in so strong and took over the lesson. We shared with him d&c section 6. This is the section when Oliver Cowdry wants to translate the plates. There are some really powerful verses when the lord says he had already answered Oliver and tells him when he is having a hard time to think back to that one night when the lord did answer him. We then asked him why he was baptized (He was a recent convert). He said that it was because of the feeling he had when he read the book of Mormon. We told him to think about that moment. The spirit was very strong. It was like you could see everything clicking together in his mind. We are not sure what he will do, but we hope he will start coming to church again, so he can baptize his daughter that is 9 years old.

The weather this week was crazy! I am not used to this crazy humidity! If you leave food out on the counter here, instead of becoming stale, it will become soggy from the moment you get out of the shower you are wet for the rest of the day! Then it will randomly just start to rain out of nowhere sometimes! Sorry that was random, but I just felt that you guys needed to know.

Well I hope that you guys all had a great week! I am going on a hike today, so I am pretty excited! It will be nice to go see what this place is really about! I hope I don’t get any ticks.

Elder Barton

Letter #46

Good afternoon everyone!

 So this week has been so awesome I am not going to lie! Every week out here is incredible, but this one was really incredible! I will start off with telling you the story that I am most excited about.

So jing han came back from Hawaii this week, yes that is my Chinese investigator! It was so nice to see her again! She had all of these funny stories to tell me about her experience. I think my favorite one was about two dogs that jumped up on her (her facial expressions were making me laugh so hard)! She looked so disgusted talking about how these two large animals almost ruined her shirt. We talked for a really long time, and it was amazing how much I was finding out about her and her past. This was such a blessing; I had really been praying to know how I could best help her! It was like every question I was praying about was answered in our conversation. I felt so bad for my companion, I looked over at him half way through and he was conked out asleep on the table. He said he had a really bad headache from listening to us talk. Anyways I found out that she was a tai qi instructor in china before she came to America! tai qi is the thing that you will see hundreds of Chinese people doing all together sometimes. it is like a slow dance kind of thing. yes I made sure to ask her for lessons. which was another answer to my prayers! I have always wanted to learn! but I also found out some real ways that the gospel would bless her life. she explained to me that her husband used to treat her and her daughter horribly. so that was her reason for coming to America, when she got here she was remarried to a man that treated her really well. they were married for a few years before he was diagnosed with cancer. she would wake up every day at 3 o clock in the morning just to make him some Chinese medicine. eventually he died. she started to cry as she told me this story and said that it feels so good just to talk to some one about it. because she can’t speak English there is really no one there for her to talk to. she just has her daughter, but she doesn’t want her daughter to see her struggling. after she finished telling me this story I taught her about the atonement of Jesus Christ. the spirit was so strong. I really feel like this was the reason I was pulled out of china town. even if she does not get baptized, I really feel like she just needed some one to talk to. I am so grateful I had this opportunity. after our talk, she made me such a good meal. and taught me how to make this really cool Chinese soup! I have not tried to make it yet but it tasted really good! we have another appointment with her tomorrow and I am so excited!

Something else that happened really cool! I think I mentioned a few weeks ago about the girl Rachel that bore her testimony in sacrament meeting about the book of Mormon and was not even a member? we finally had a chance to talk with her! I guess she was always kind of scared of the missionaries because she thought that we would make her get baptized! it was funny we just had a normal conversation with her, and at the end thanked her for our testimony that was it. then a few days later she called and invited us to come over to her house to eat dinner! we were very excited because the rest of her family is also non-members! the dad and the sister were not interested, but her mom was very interested! we taught them the entire first lesson and they really received it well! the mom requested a copy of the book of Mormon, and wants to have us over again in a few months to eat Italian food! she is Italian. it will be in a few months because they are going on some family vacations. but still… it went really well! Rachel has already looked up were institute will be when she goes to college! wow she is awesome.

we also got a member referral from a guy that is in a different ward! it was a friend he knew from work and had some questions about our church! the member that came over there with us was so good! he was testifying and sharing all of these great stories! it really made the lesson great! please volunteer to help the missionaries teach! it really does make all of the difference if a member is present!

Our ward mission leader is also back in town! he made this awesome plan and thought of some great ideas to get member referrals! it was so nice to finally meet with him! I have not had one correlation since I have been in this area! oh if you guys want to see how awesome my ward is go on bookofmormonproduction.com my ward made this movie!!! I hope it will work, and I gave the right address!

well guys I love ya, hope things are going well! stay fresh....

Elder Barton

Letter #45

Hello hello!

So I am typing this email from New Canaan this week! New Canaan is one of they richest zip codes in the whole United States and it definitely shows! I am on a split with elder rosell! He is a cool guy. I guess his family has a beach house in Oceanside! So, we are going to hang out after the mission for sure! He lives with elder near (my china town comp) so I have been able to hang out with him which has been really fun! He is serving in New Canaan! It has been so nice to see him again; we have been having some good times. My split with elder rossell was actually yesterday but because we didn't get out of a lesson until 9:00 we got permission to split back today! Our split yesterday was really fun! We went and got all you can eat sushi for lunch! That tasted so good, I have not had sushi in a really long time! I had a very large helping to say the least. And to my surprise, all of the people that worked there spoke Chinese! And gave elder rossell and me a discount because I was talking with them! I am not going to lie I felt like a movie star.. They would walk up to me with a word in English written on a piece of paper and ask me what it meant in Chinese. (They were all trying to learn English!) I was so lucky the word they asked me I totally knew how to say! They would all start freaking out whenever I told them an answer! It was really fun! I also really liked it because we were in a city area again! We walked around the city and street contacted! I loved it, I missed it so bad! We were just walking around talking with people. We met some cool kids doing tricks on bikes and talked with them for a while! I was so tempted to throw down a trick for them, but I didn’t want to get hurt! We also met this really funny limo driver that didn't speak any English. Although probably not the best thing to do, we messed with him. We asked him if he had driven anyone famous. He said, "oh yes! Many!" we started to name off all of the stars and for each of them he said he had driven them! Even when I said Gordon B Hinkley… he said yes! It was funny!

As for the rest of this week, it went really well. I can’t say that it was as good as last week, but it still went well. We had a lot of people say this week would be a really good time for us to meet with them so we are looking foreword to it! Also jing han comes back this Saturday and I am so excited! I have been thinking about what we should share with her like crazy! I know it is going to be great. I think I have told you before about the vaness family? The recent convert family, with the non-member dad who just got out of jail. We have really wanted to start teaching him, but didn't know what the rules were about teaching people on probation. This week in PEC, our bishop told us to go for it. That made us feel good! I guess he just has to get permission from the first presidency if he wants to be baptized. The bad news we had this week was we lost Matilda. Not really lost, she just wants to start taking things slower. As of right now, she really does not understand that there is one true church on earth. We have shared scripture after Scripture, but just does not seem to be sinking in. She said that we could still meet with her on Saturdays though which is always a good thing. I don't think I had a chance to tell you this last week but in our fast and testimony meeting, a nonmember girlfriend of a member in our ward got up and bore her testimony. She talked about the book of Mormon and what she felt when she was reading it! She went to girl’s camp with a few of her member friends and I guess it really went well for her. This of course got the missionaries so pumped! It was such a powerful testimony! We have been talking with her boyfriend’s family to make arrangements to teach her! We are very excited to see what will happen with that!

Once again, we have so many things that could potentially be so good! I really hope that things will start to happen! We have a lot of really cool investigators, they are just not progressing because we can’t meet with them enough. They are all so busy! I really want things to start happening! Well I hope you all had a great week! Talk to you soon!

Elder Barton

Letter #44

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

Letter #43

Good afternoon boys and girls!

So this week has been pretty intense, I am not going to lie! To start things off, I got a new companion! His name is elder Dees and he is so funny! He makes me laugh all day. He is from Washington State but is Fijian. He has been teaching me Fijian and I am teaching him Chinese. Pretty good trade off if you ask me! This week has been awesome; we have been trying really hard to come up with new ideas for finding investigators. So far we have made a huge poster board comparing the book of Mormon and the bible side by side! It is not finished yet but it is looking pretty good. We always used a poster in china town and it seemed to work pretty well so we figured hey, why not give it a shot. We also want to do a combined Newtown and Danbury ward movie night once a month, strictly for investigators and members with friends. We really want to start getting our members involved more with our missionary work. We are also going to make a sign up sheet for them to come and help us teach lessons. The longer I have been here, I have realized how bad we need the members! In this area it is through them that anything is going to happen. I am not used to it at all because in china town, everything was purely done through missionary efforts.

Our investigators are doing really well! Matilda set a baptismal date for the 24 of July! We are so excited! We are so blessed to have this opportunity to work with her, she is incredible. She wants to follow Jesus Christ more than anyone that I know. Our last lesson was really cool with her. When we first came in there was a feeling that something was different. As we started to talk she seemed quieter and her countenance was changed. So we decided to go back to the things we had talked about previously. Finally we found the problem! She did not understand what the book of Mormon was! She thought that it was a part two of the bible, it was all about Jesus Christ’s ministry continued.. Then she was very confused when she cracked it open and was reading a storey about Nephi! But after we helped her understand that Christ’s actual ministry was only a small part of the book of Mormon and the rest was other prophets starting after Jeremiah, she was much more interested! I am so happy we did not just move on with out trying to see what was wrong. The message of the plan of salvation made her very happy, she thought it made perfect sense! She said that if the book of Mormon were true she would be baptized!!

I was threatened this week by a large man with a bb gun... that was interesting. We did a ton of tracting this week and to be honest, did not have that much success! This is always a rough feeling for a missionary to have but all of the good moments we have destroy the bad ones. Our Chinese investigator is still out of town, she will be back on the 15th and I am very excited! We heard from the other missionaries that know one of her friends, she has been really enjoying meeting with us! That is a good thing to know! Her daughter called me this week because she was having a bad day. I guess she has been really stressed out with her mom not home. I am excited for her to get home! We also met another Chinese guy that wants to go with me and my companion to eat Korean food! The only problem is that he can’t drive and we can’t drive investigators, so I have to try to find a member that speaks Chinese to help us out. I am sure we will be able to find one!

Well guys, I hope you are having a great week! Thanks for all of the love and support! I know I say that every week and it is not just because my hands have gotten in the habit of saying it! I really mean it!

Elder Barton