Wednesday, January 6, 2016

January 4, 2016 "This Week"

This week was a bit a slower one, but one with lots of miracles.

Monday not a whole lot happened. We had dinner. That was nice.

Tuesday We had some off roading adventures driving around seeing people who lived clear out in the boonies. We put close to 80 miles on the car that day since we had extra miles to burn. Later that night we had a great lesson with A*** and her family on repentance and on the nature of God. 

Wednesday we got to hang out with Elder Ceron for the day since Elder Shoenfeld was in Little Rock for some sort of leadership training thing. It's where important people go to smrt.  Me, I'm already smrt enough so I didn't need to go. lol Anyway, we had a fun language study there helping Elder Ceron speak English a little bit better. We would read something out of Preach My Gospel to him and have him translate it into Spanish while we were speaking (as if he was translating a talk into Spanish during Sacrament Meeting). We helped out Sis. Hawkins for a bit and then hurried over to a lesson with L*** at the G***'s house. It was a solid lesson. He had a lot of questions, and we were able to answer most of them. It was a longer lesson, which is something that we are going to have to work on in the future. We picked up some food for a part-member family we are teaching since they were running a little low on stuff. Later we took a road trip out to Egypt, partly because we had the miles to do it and mostly just because we could. After all, if you have an opportunity to go to Egypt, wouldn't you take it? We have pictures, but they are all on Elder Lewis's camera, so I hopefully will be able to get those to everyone next week. Dinner with the Chandlers, followed by a lesson over at C***'s, one of the people who was baptized by the Spanish Elders not long ago. I barely understood anything, but considering how little I actually remember about Spanish I was just happy that I was able to pull anything out! lol

Thursday we had interviews with President Wakolo. He didn't have all that many questions for either me or Elder Smith, so it was a really quick interview. Later we had a solid lesson with J*** N*** and his wife on the Plan of Salvation. We only got through part of it since we were taking it really slow and being extra thorough with it, but it went really well. Lots of good questions. We will be coming by again later this week once they get back from Little Rock. lol We had supper with Ben Rougeau and his wife that night with the other Elders, briefly talked with a buy named J*** that night to set up an appointment for later (he wants to have us over for a turkey fry. We're excited). We wrapped up the night at the ward New Year's Eve party at the church building. Q*** and X*** were both able to attend. It was a really positive experience for them, and they were able to meet some more members of the Ward here in Jonesboro. 

Friday started off with a bit of a surprise. Just a little bit into studies we got a call from the Spanish Elders letting us know that C*** wanted to have us over for breakfast that morning.
 "When is it?" we asked them. 
"In about 15 minutes." (It takes 15 minutes just to drive there). 
"Ok, we'll see what we can do."
It was really good, not even remotely close to breakfast food, but still really good. Some sort of corn and chicken soup that you eat with tostadas and beans, plus this really good dessert that a different member of the family made. Then he started passing out mugs of this drink made of boiled fruit and sugar and some sort of plant like sugar cane. I have not a clue how to make it myself, but it was spectacular. We finished up our studies after that and did some weekly planning. At about 4 we got a call from Elder Geddes, our old DL who got moved down to Little Rock as an office Elder. He was just letting us know that he was on his way with a trailer to drop furniture for us and the other English Elders. So now we have a really nice 3-seater recliner to add to our collection of a table, chairs, and small sofa. Oh, and a dresser. Yay for commodities! That night we had supper with the Brent Rougeau and his family - hot dogs over a fire out back. The best part is that Q*** and X*** were both able to go. Later we had a great lesson on the Book of Mormon with them. I really hope this means that they will start progressing soon. They have the curiosity, now they just need the desire to act on it.

Saturday was a bit of a bust. Most of our plans fell through within the first few hours, so we spent a good deal of the day knocking doors. It was really neat to see how the Lord guided us to the people that we needed to talk to that day though. A good example of this is a family who recently moved into a really ritzy neighborhood that we tracted into. Typically we don't go into upper-class neighborhoods like that because fewer people are willing to talk with us, but that day seemed to be the exception. They seemed really interested, but had family in from out of town and their day already booked, so they invited us to come back next Saturday instead. We are excited.

Sunday we had two people to church, L***and a man named A***. L*** came all dressed up in a suit and everything and really enjoyed the service. Afterward we were able to have  a great lesson with him over at the G***'s place again. We did a lot better in keeping it short, but it was a bit more of a legarthic lesson since everyone was tired and hungry from fasting that day. We did a bit of driving afterward up to the Meeker's place to pick up something for A*** and her family. Bro meeker and his wife had recently got a new kitten, so we hung out there for a tad bit longer than we needed to so we could play with it. 15 minutes later we noticed the time and hit the road heading back into Jonesboro. Thank heaven for the main highway that goes right down the middle of it! If it wasn't there and we were forced to take backroads in we would have been really late for our dinner appointment with the C***'s. We got there just a little bit after the other guys got there. We finished the night off teaching A*** about temples to prepare her for the trip that she will get to take with some of the youth in the ward on the 9th to the Memphis Temple. She got her recommend that morning and was positively glowing when she walked out of Bishop's office. It has been a really awesome journey to see her progress in the ways that she has.

I think that's about it so far for this week. If you have any questions about anything or just want to drop me a line, please do! 

DFTBA!
~Elder Barker

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