December 7, 2015 #RiseUp

Good Morning Ladies/Gentlemen/Other! This past week was one of miracles mingled with sad disappointments. But sweet is the work, and the work goes forward!

Monday was a bit of a slower day, but we were able to teach a short lesson with S*** and B***. They are still making baby steps, but each step is a step in the right direction!

Tuesday we were able to recontact a few old investigators. Had a great lesson on the BoM and it's use with a woman named S***. She was pretty interested and wanted us to come back later that week to talk with her again and some of her family members. Lots of finding afterward, followed by a great dinner with the Schelins. We were also able to go on splits with some of the members of the ward, and had lots of success. We were able to find a lost member who hasn't been out due to health problems and also set a baptismal date with A***! We are so excited to help her move toward her future baptism!

Wednesday was also spent recontacting people, but we were also able to find a super awesome family that lives not far from some of our other investigators. One of them in particular, N***, is more hungry for the Gospel than anyone else I've ever met. She wasn't able to come to church yesterday with us, but she is excited to go next Sunday!​ She has no experience with church at all and her few attempts to read the Bible on her own left her frustrated and confused. (If you are going to start for the first time, don't start with Genesis; read the New Testament first.) I felt prompted to go over with her how to find passages in the scriptures to help with the problems and concerns she has. It was so neat to be able to help her gain an appreciation for the Scriptures. We also were able to visit with A***again, having a great lesson on what Faith is, how we can grow it, and what it can do for us.

Thursday we were able to burn some miles and contact some people up in Brookland. There we met a really neat woman named A***. She was busy at the time, but we set a time for us to come back a few days later. We later dropped in to visit with N*** again, and she had loved reading the pamphlet we had left with her the time before. She had a few questions for us, which we were more than happy to answer! We also were able to have dinner with T***D*** a recent convert. She is super awesome, and I really look forward to all the times we are able to eat with her. Later we were going to go and see N***i, but she texted us saying that it wasn't a good time. As we sat there, trying to decide what to do, we saw a guy standing awkwardly in front of a house, not really doing anything at all. As we watched, a car whipped into the driveway, and before it even completely stopped a short little white guy flew out of the passenger side, ripping his shirt over his head as he went just positively shaking with rage. When I say that this guy is white, I mean he is white, as in we-could-not-bleach-him-any-whiter-if-we-tried white. Anyway, he runs over and confronts the guy who dared stand at the foot of his driveway, looking all the while like a poodle confronting a grizzly bear. It looked like it was going to get pretty heated with everyone else that was outside asking the first guy to please just leave. He refused, and after a few tense moments everyone else went inside. The guy never left the bottom of the driveway, and with our sitting in a dark car with the engine off we didn't want to attract attention to ourselves by starting it back up and trying to drive away, so we just stayed put.

We had probably been sitting there for only a few minutes or two with nothing to do except talk quietly among ourselves about what we should do with the rest of our time and watch the guy as he talked on the phone a few times with someone. We were about to start up the car anyway, even though this guy was still there, when the front door of the house flew open. The guy from earlier was back, and he was madder than ever. His shirt already off and thrown to the side, he sprinted down the driveway and threw a punch at the first guy before he even got close. The first guy was a lot more calm and collected, whereas the shirtless guy was jumping around like a mad grasshopper. It was crazy. The short guy took several more swings, untimely deciding it wasn't worth it when none of them connected and the bigger man just put him in a head-lock. After a few more heated words everyone went back indoors. Later some people in a black SUV came and picked up the first guy, which is when we made our grateful exit.

Alas, I am out of time again, so I will finish this tomorrow and get it off next Monday.

Until then, Catch you later!

~Elder barker

#Rise up Continued…

So, I got a bit more time than I had expected, so I get to continue my stories earlier than I had thought! Right now the other elders are playing PingPong, and since I am a terrible PingPong player I'm sitting this one out and just enjoying watching them get more and more into it! Who knew it could get that intense? Anyway...

After the epic little show on Thursday we spent the rest of the evening getting haircuts from a woman in the ward, Sister Boudrero. She is one of my favorite people here in Jonesboro.

Friday was pretty relaxed. Not a whole lot went on, other than some practice on the piano I had to do to prepare for the Christmas Zone Conference on Wednesday. I still don't know if I will be ready for it. We will see.

Saturday was the crazy day. We started of by heading to the church early for a Pancakes and PJ's activity. It was super good (we didn't go in our PJ's btw), and we were able to teach our first lesson of the day there. After that it was just go go go for the rest of the day. All week we had been stacking the events to line up on Saturday for a huge competition that the Zone was doing. You see, the week before the Civil War was all tied up with the Union winning 2 battles and the Confederacy winning 2 battles. Saturday was to be the big game changer. Each new investigator found that day counted as a point, each lesson taught with a member present counted as a point, and each new baptismal date set counted as two points. By the end of the day Elder Smith and I had 13 points. When the final score was in from everyone on each side, our companionship accounted for a third of the total points! We were super blessed by all of the miracles that worked out for us that day. Our reward: The STL's are baking everyone in the Confederacy baked goodies. Score!

Sunday we had the Christmas Devotional. It was really awesome, and if you hadn't had a chance to see it, please go to LDS.org and watch it. It is well worth the time. We also were able to have some of our investigators there, Q***and X***  

So Glad I was able to catch up, but it is getting close to 6. Time to get back to work! Thanks for all you do, and I hope that you can take the time to remember the Savior and all of the miracles in your day-to-day lives. As you recognize them, you will see them more often.

~Elder Jayden Barker

"Don't forget to read!”

November 30, 2015 "Rain and Gratitude"

With Thanksgiving just over I still feel that I have a lot to be
grateful for. We've been seeing a lot of miracles, even in the midst
of all the rain. As I was going through the week it felt a lot like I
was failing at what I was supposed to be doing. And yet, by the time I
got to the end of the week the numbers showing what we accomplished
were higher than they've been in a while. It truly was a miracle.
Because of time I can't go into detail on what happened, but I will
let ya'll know more next week.

I know that God's hand truly is over this work. He cares for us and
since the work of Salvation belongs to Him, He will do all he can to
help it go forth. When we are working our hardest great things happen.
When we are working our hardest and are being obedient to the
commandments those great things become miracles. Sorry for the short
note, but I love you all and will write more next week!

~Elder Jayden Barker

Fun side notes: Missionaries have a thing called "Six Months to Sexy".
According to the other members of the district I am currently in "Six
Months to Sumo". I'm not sure how I feel about that. lol

We had a Turkey Bowl Thanksgiving morning. We were playing with a QB
who couldn't run due to injuries, and the other team only beat us by 2
TD's, even with it basically being 4 vs. 5.






It was pouring nicely yesterday and we were quite wet when we biked over to dinner. We had an appointment after dinner that went really well, and when we left the appointment for home it wasn't raining at all. Not long after we got back inside the rain resumed. #SmallMiracles

We had 4 non-members and 2 returning members at church today. We also were able to confirm 4 people in church following their baptism on Saturday.

DFTBA!

"Don't forget to read!"

November 23, 2015 " Adventures in Arkansas"

Elder Smith and I had a very interesting past week with lots of driving around and random stuff that we didn't expect happening.

Monday: Pday, spent some time relaxing with the other Elders until it was time for us to get to work. Tried to see a few people, they cancelled and then drove around like crazy to get D***J*** and his family to the FHE at the Schelins! We probably spent a solid hour trying to get the rides all set up after our original ideas fell through, but literally at the last minute we had some help from a member in the ward. While doing all of this we also found out that the inactive sister of a R*** R*** lives right next to D***J*** and his family and we never knew it! The FHE was awesome, and hopefully this will happen again today.

Tuesday we had District Meeting, Elder Geddes' first one as a District Leader. It was really good, focusing on Obedience. We were able to see R*** and P*** and teach them again about the Restoration and check up on how they are doing living the Word of Wisdom. They are going to need some more help in that last area, but we are more than happy to provide the help! We had planned to recontact a bunch of our former investigators, but it really didn't work out the way we had planned. Instead we got to trapeise all over the boonies of Arkansas again! Apparently it is Elder Smith's dream to see all of the crazy places of the south, so it was a bit of a dream come true for him! We even ran into a lady named Sister S***. She seems fairly interested so when we are in that area again we will be going out there. We also got to talk to a guy named G***. He really lives out in the boonies at the very end of a dirt road. It was pretty sketchy, but he was one of the nicest guys I've met! At the end of the night we were able to visit with the Clough family, some of the active members of the Ward to see how we could help them and invite them to come teaching with us to a particular family.

Wednesday I got sick for a good chunk of the day and slept until about 4. It was really nice, but kinda threw off my sleep schedule that night! Lol. After I was feeling well enough to tackle the day we walked out to the car . . . only to see that the back right tire was completely flat. We pumped it up with a bike pump and could hear the air hissing out of it, so we booked it over to the nearest autoshop to get it looked at. We could have put the donut on it, but didn't want to take the time. Luckily the air held until we got there, and then proceeded to sit there for a solid 2 hours while it was looked at. The final prognosis - we had run over an industrial sized staple and had twin punctures in the tire. So that was fun. We ended the day at D***J***'s teaching them all about prayer.

Thursday we were pretty excited about because we had finally got authorization to go and work on campus at a booth. So we set up and tried to get people to come and talk to us for the next 3 hours. By the end of the time only 4 people did; two of them were members who were too cool to stay to talk with us, and one of them was using us as an excuse to get off the phone with his ex-girlfriend. Not the most successful.

Friday was spent trying to get a hold of less-actives and YSA's to ge them to the Thanksgiving potluck that night. The most interesting thing that happened was at about 4 with a guy named R***. He saw us knocking on a door and called out to us, trying to sell us something for a little cash. We told him that we weren't interested in that, but we would love to talk about the gospel with him. I didn't think he was going to want to come and talk with us, but up the stairs he went. We had a great conversation during which he told us much of his life story about the things he did on the streets and how he wants to do better for his kids and to be a better example for them. We taught him about repentance and went over the steps to forgiveness and challenged him to be sober for just 24 hours. Immediately he started grabbing stuff out of his pockets, starting with a glass bottle of whiskey, to throw over the fence. It was the coolest experience. At the potluck we had a bunch of people there, a total of 10 people that we helped bring. It truly was a miracle.

Saturday we contacted more Less-actives and YSA's and tried to recontact a few of our old investigators. We spent the day very busy, but without too many lessons. We were able to teach a solid lesson to B*** though on faith at the end of the day, and that was great. Really ended the day on a high note!

Sunday was more of the same. We had a lesson with R*** on the BoM, to which Sister Orey came with us. She shared some of her conversion experince with him and it really helped him see what it was we were there for. When we left the apartment after lunch we called Brother Caldwell, the HP Group Leader about anyone he would want us to contact. He gave us a whole list of people in a small town about 12 miles away. We started with the closest name to us and knocked on the door. He invited us right in, asking essentially what took us so long to get there. While there he started pointing out all of the inactive members of the church who lives in that house/were visiting. It was really funny because everyone got out of the room rather quickly once he started doing that. He's inactive himself, but we are going to work with him and his family more in the future. We were also able to teach a young woman who was there at the time and he was participating in the lesson like he'd been doing it his whole life. It was great. It also took a lot of time becuase he would make funny and snarky remarks about us, himself, and the other people in the room quite often. We were able to eat supper at a YSA devotional that night that Sister Rawlins put on. It was a really good pasta bar. The only downside was that part-way through the supper the mission decided to do a disaster response drill, requireing us to leave all the yummy food and drive to a member's house about 15 minutes away. So that was fun!

All in all, a solid week. It was certainly a different flavor of work than we'd done in the past, but well worth our time. Today we are going to hurry with shopping and then head over to a member's home to learn how to make ties. I'll be rocking a brand new tie at the next meeting! Whoot!

Remember the purpose of Thanksgiving this week. Truly the Lord has blessed us with everything, so take some time out Thanksgiving night to reflect on the miracles you've seen lately and thank the Lord for them. I promise that if you do you will see more of them in the upcoming months and year. As always, have a great week!

~Elder Barker

November 16, 2015 "Brevity"

This week was another one with ups and downs. I seem to be seeing a trend here! lol.

Some of the downs were most of the people we had found last week we were unable to see (yet). Failed appointments are nothing new, but they were still a bit disappointing. The part I want to focus on though is the ups, the awesome things that happened. We had a large meeting on Jacksonville this past Friday which took up most of the day. During it we received some truly excellent instruction on how we can better work with our ward and branch leaders, how we can better use the BoM in our teaching, and also try and speak to a few people in the area itself to use some of what we had been learning. We were able to find a fairly solid family for the elders there to go and teach which was really exciting.

Before getting sent out into the city for about an hour we were assigned a different companion to work with, perhaps just so we can get to know a few of the other missionaries and learn how they work. I was put in a trio with a missionary who had spent nearly all of his time over on the Memphis side of the mission (about a year) and with a missionary who had only been out a few weeks. As we walked we asked each other the usual questions: Where are you from? Where have you served? and How long have you been out? When I responded that I had been out about 21 months the young missionary stared at me with an expression akin to a young child staring at the skeletal remains of a dinosaur. It provided no small amount of amusement for me.

Another HUGE highlight is being able to work with a less-active family, a mother and her son. Their names are R*** and P***. They were baptized about 4-ish years ago in Kentucky and eventually moved down here to Jonesboro. I might have shared some of their story with you before, about how Elder Price and I met them while getting free hotdogs at the park. Anywho, We had been working with them for a while, but this past week we were able to teach them the Word of Wisdom again, and help them with their Family History work. They both have such a strong desire to get to know their ancestors and preserve the memories they have of their family who has already passed on. Richard in particular has a desire to go to the temple and be sealed to his father. This past Sunday they were also able to come to church for the first time in a very long time. A member named Freddie helped us out with that. I'll send a picture of all of us here in a bit.

We also were able to see D***J***'s mother for the first time in a while. She has been letting us teach her kids about the Gospel for some time now, even allowing us to bring them to church, but hasn't taken an active part in the lessons at all. Yesterday evening we were able to talk with her about the scriptures, about revelation, about prophets, and, most importantly, God's love for her as an individual. We were able to share some scriptures on the Atonement with her, Christ on the Cross in Mathew 27:46 and what he did for us there and in the garden of Gethsemane, explained in Alma 7:11-12. It really touched her and (finally!) got her interested in what we had to say. We left her with some passages from the Bible and the BoM for her to read and for us to discuss when we come back again tomorrow.

I've been learning that this work truly isn't about numbers; if you looked just at our numbers for this week one might say that it was a dismal failure. But it is in the lives we touch by our simple actions. I've heard this compared to a football game. If you have two teams and one of them has more passing yards, more time with the ball, more interceptions, more successful sacks, but the other team has more points on the scoreboard, which team truly did better in that game? Last week we were able to touch at least 3 people's lives for the better, and ultimately that is all that counts.

I know this work is true. There is a reason it cannot be stopped. There is a reason people join the Church every week by the Hundreds, and that reason is not because Elder Barker is a perfect missionary. This is the only organization I know of that can send young adults between the ages of 18-26 out into a strange land with an apartment, food, cell phone, and a car, leave them mostly unsupervised, and have them accomplish anything meaningful. Ask a buisiness executive about if that sounds like a good idea and he would double over laughing, and yet work it does. The Lord's hand is over us and this work. I close with Joseph Smith's own words:

“The Standard of Truth has been erected; no unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing; persecutions may rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble, calumny may defame, but the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent, till it has penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear, till the purposes of God shall be accomplished, and the Great Jehovah shall say the work is done.”

In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

~Elder Jayden Barker

November 9, 2015 "This Week"

This week was intense. My new companion is Elder Smith, from Washington state! He's a great guy and is already progressing towards becoming a truly great Elder. He's about 5' 2" and is able to crank out pushups like nobody else.

We've had a lots of downs this week, but we've also had a lot of miracles happen. But since time is an issue right now (we are sacrificing 2 of our PDay hours to help with a baptismal goal of 100 this month) I will include just one of them:

Yesterday after church both of us were feeling rather down, for obvious reasons. We had been expecting about 10 people to come to church and only 1 came. The news about A*** was a blow below the belt. I really didn't want to do anything even remotely resembling missionary work after that; I was tired both physically and mentally, and I wasn't feeling the spirit like I wanted to. Training though has given me a stronger incentive to go and do what is right, because I really want to help Elder Smith have a happy successful mission. I knew that work is the best antidote to feeling depressed about things, but it was still difficult for me to put that into action. I know that the miracle that followed though never would have happened to us had we just stayed inside. We headed out on our bikes, just looking for new people to talk to. There were a few smaller side streets on our path, and since there were only a few houses on each street we paid tribute to traditional tracting and knocked every door on the street. This yielded more rejections than appointments and we decided to stop paying tribute after about an hour. We continued on, stopping to talk with the few people who were outside (one of them was brewing beer; we have a return appointment for tonight) and to contact the referral we recieved. Ultimately though, it was appearing unsuccessful. 

We looked on the map to see where we were and about how long it would take us to bike back to our apartment for supper and studies when I noticed a few streets that caught my eye, mostly because the names were kinda funny. We decided to go there before heading in. On our way to those streets I saw a few kids outside playing in the street down a road that we were just about to pass. Following a gut feeling I now recognize as the Spirit working through me I told Elder Smith that we needed to go and talk with them. When we got there four of them recognized us, calling out "Missionaries, Missionaries!" It took a moment but I eventually recognized them as some kids we had met the day before in a completely different part of town about 20 minutes away by car. They had been staying with an uncle of theirs while the mother was shopping. The uncle, J*** spoke with Elder Smith for just a few moments while I was talking with the kids outside about the Book of Mormon. What Elder Smith said to get him interested I don't know, but he ran up to me and said that he (J***) wanted to be taught right then. We headed inside and learned a bit about him, how he had come from a rougher life and how he was now a Deacon in a Baptist church and then taught him a great deal of the Restoration. We were unable to get through all of it because of the good questions and comments he had about the scriptures we shared, but we left him with a copy of the BoM and a desire to learn more. We go back on Saturday. I know none of this would have happened had we just stayed inside like I had originally wanted to. I am sad that I had even considered giving in to the natural man, but am glad I decided to work anyway. My driving thought was that no doubt the Savior would have wanted to stop and rest at some point during his ministry also, to just give in for a small time, but had he done so the Atonement never would have happened and his greatest work would have been left undone.

I love this work and all that I am able to do. I love that the last 12 weeks of my mission are able to be spent training a new missionary and sharing my knowlege with him. I am really looking forward to everything we are going to accomplish!

Thanks for your prayers and all that you do to share the gospel with those around you.

~Elder Jayden Barker

What do you do when your mother sends spiderwebs in your halloween package and mission rules say that you have to stay in Halloween night?  Dress up as Santa Clause, of course! 

Game Over...One Life Left

This week was a slower one as far as missionary work went. Nearly the entire week was spent in the rain, which did very little to help both with motivation and encouraging people to open the door. On a positive note we were able to see more people with members of the church this week than we've had since I got here! That was really exciting, and I hope that the trend continues as we make it a focus in our work. We were able to see A*** like we had talked about last week, and that was a solid lesson. We taught her about the Restoration of the Gospel.

We were able to spend a decent chunk of time on Tuesday getting CD's burned with the entire Book of Mormon on them so we can give them to our investigators. We've already seen good success from doing so. We were also able to see D***J*** and the E*** family with Elder Green. Elder Green is a missionary whose family lives here in Jonesboro. He has been serving in Ghana for about a year before getting seriously sick, so he was sent home to recover for a short while. We made the most of it while he was here! It is likely he will return to Ghana before the end of the week.

Wednesday we had the ward chili cookoff/Trunk-or-Treat. It was awesome, and we got to see a lot of investigators there who have never been to our church before. Prior to the cookoff we also were able to go teaching with Freddie Green to visit several people. One of them was a woman named S* K***. She is a convert to the church some years back and is a very good example of a woman who was offended by some members who made some inappropriate comments and has since decided that since she can't understand all the reasons for things everything must not be true. It is really quite sad.

The rest of the week was spent without much to talk about. Thursday we had our usual basketball game at the church and it got pretty awesome. A few minor injuries, but nothing crazy. Elder Lewis, another one of the Elders in the District, is a basketball fanatic but has hurt his knees and decided to take it easy. That lasted all of about 5 minutes before he was hopping around like a little rabbit. During the game I ended up biting the inside of my cheeks pretty hard when I went for the ball. I'm pleasantly surprised at how quickly they are healing up!

On Saturday we spent the evening with the Rougeau family. Since it was Halloween going door to door like we normally do would be more than a big waste of time. So we instead participated in Elder Hamblin burning a suit to commemorate the close of his mission!

We also carved pumpkins. Here's mine:

A few of the other guys did scary stuff, and one of them, Elder Geddes, carved the angel Moroni. It was pretty awesome looking. 

Sunday we had our correlation meeting and was able to prep for a lesson before heading over to the Schnider's for dinner. Since it would be Elder Hamblin's last day in the mission Elder Price and I wanted to do something special for him to send him off. So we wrote some song lyrics and sung it for him. This was sung to the tune of Alleluia:

 

It made him cry. :3

To finish it all off we had a great lesson at the E***'s with M***, one of the Ward Missionaries. We focused on the different aspects of missionary work and how it various auxilaries came to be, like the Relief Society and the duty of member missionary work. She had some concerns about her own work in spreading the gospel and how fit she would be to do these things, and we hope that this helped ease her fears. She seemed to be much happier afterward!

One last thing of note: On SUnday I both myself and Elder Price got calls from the AP's. I will be training my last transfer and Elder Price will finish training Elder Lewis, Elder Hamblin's half-trained companion. I am super stoked to be training my last 12 weeks. I've heard it said that the last 10% of a mission is the hardest and the most successful ever. Well, it's time to put that to the test - that starts in two weeks! Elder Thomas, my first trainee is also training again, and his trainee is training. Mission Posterity!!!

Got to go, but I y'all are awesome! Keep up the good work!

~Elder Barker

Short and Simple

One of the things we have been focusing on a lot in our lessons and meetings is simplifying what we say. In honor of that I will do my best to keep this a bit shorter than normal! (It's not just because we have a lesson at 4 and we still need to clean our apartment and get groceries... no, nothing like that... ;)

Picking up where I left off last week, Thursday was bizzare and nothing really went as we had planned for it to go. After we deconstructed the wooden pallets with style - and perhaps more force and bigger tools than strictly necessary - we tried to find a few people to teach. This only resulted in having an old woman chew us out saying she didn't want to hear about a "Mormon Jesus" (because apparently that's a thing). Later we broke our fast by eating supper with a recent convert, T***. She made some killer chicken, and I ate far more than I probably should have. Later we played basketball at the church. One of young men here brought a whole bunch of his friends from school and several instructors with him, resulting in about 30 people there to play. It was the birthday of one of his instructors, so said young man bought a cake for him. We ate it, right after we shoved a small piece of it into his face.

Friday I got sick and we stayed indoors. yay.........not

Saturday was spent running around trying to teach people the Gospel without great success. We were able to share with a few new people, including a woman named T***, though, and that was nice. After pumping up our bikes again we headed off. Later it got a bit colder and I was finally able to break out the jacket and gloves again. We also ate a truly autumn-style dinner of biscuits, stew, and apple cider, wrapping it up with some icecream that tastes just like pumpkin-spice eggnog. Life was good that evening!

Sunday B*** came to church! It was awesome and she really enjoyed it. We also got to meet a less-active, BK*. After a little bit we started walking to see who we could find, running into a hispanic family that spoke zero english. Elder Price speaks zero spanish, leaving it up to me. I was able to say just enough to be able see if they were interested in hearing our message and then sending the address on to the Spanish Elders. 

I find it remarkable the number of times I've had to speak Spanish on my mission, mainly the past few months. I might as well just go Spanish, because we've sent over a dozen names of interested people to the other Elders. I know next to nothing really, but the Lord is using what I've got and is supplementing it with words that I didn't even know I still remembered. It is remarkable. 

Monday we had a few small miracles occur. After eating supper we hitched a ride with the Spanish Elders, who were planning to work and area just a few miles from our apartment. We got out of their car about 8pm. Our intent was to simply walk back to our apartment and talk to whoever might happen to be outside on the way. On our way back we were prompted to knock on a particular door, which we obeyed. Please keep in mind two things that make this a miracle: 1- It is after dark, and 2- nobody answers their door after the sun goes down. Not only did the woman answer the door, but she was willing to talk, perhaps because she had talked with missionaries about 8 years previously. We left her with a copy of the Book of Mormon, which she said she would look into. She also asked us to come by again today at about 4. We continued walking and ran into some other less-actives we are working with just walking the streets. We were invited inside and were able to teach again about what the Book of Mormon is and how it can strengthen our faith in Christ. Randomly the Elders from Mountain Home, AR (outside of our mission) called about some information on a referral we had sent about a month previously, and we had a great conversation there. One of them knew a missionary in this mission, and I was able to pass on a message for him. It was really cool.

Tuesday was District meeting with a focus on teaching in unity. Every time someone said "switch" the person speaking had to immediatly stop and let the other guy talk. It was fun, particularly when, since we were doing so well, the people we were 'teaching' started saying "switch" every 5 seconds, sometimes in the middle of a scripture referrence! It was crazy

Wednesday I got to split wood. It was great. I'd send the video, but it's kinda big. Sorry peeps! WE also got to teach D*** about prayer. It was solid! Dinner with the Dinsmore's.

Thursday we helped Sister Casteel with some stuff in her yard, cleaning up some large limbs that broke off of a massive tree next to her house. Can anyone say "health hazard?" I got to use a large ax again. It made my day. #SimplePleasures

Friday we had the privilege of teaching the E*** family again, this time about the Word of Wisdom. It went for a very long time, but was good. WE were also able to see S*** and B*** and help them get more ready for coming to church in the future. That morning I also crashed hard-core. I took an hour nap right after studies to help me focus on the rest of the day. Three-and-a-half hours later I woke up. This is getting crazy; I've not been this tired my whole mission!

Saturday not a whole lot happened other than trying to help various investigators we have not do stupid things and go to jail. We also had to help another part-member family realize that just because one person wants to go to church and the other doesn't is not a good grounds for divorce! *sigh* The work goes on! (We helped get both things cleared up btw...)

Sunday we found another Hispanic man who had recently moved in, and again sent him over to the Spanish Elders. He lives right next to another one of our investigators, so maybe they'll be able to fellowship each other into the church! I love it when that happens! We had two people to church, D*J*and his brother. We wrapped up the day with dinner at the Chandler's, an awesome family with 8 kids, all of whom have names that start with the letter 'K'. It was oodles of fun! Lastly all three sets of Elders got to help teach the youth at a missionary-themed fireside. Elder Price and I taught on how we can tie just about every conversation and question back to our belief in Christ and the Book of Mormon. It was awesome!

All in all, things are going well. I am happy and loving it here in Jonesboro. This is Elder Hamblin's last Pday with the rest of us, and we will be sad to see him go. Elder Price and I want to compose a "Trunky Song" to sing to him just before he heads for the Mission Home. I know he will enjoy it.

I also realize that this email isn't nearly as short as I had thought it would be. Perhaps next time I will type more of it up in advance! Lol.

Life is good! God loves us! This is His work! Remember who you are and that you are wonderful in God's eyes!

~Elder Barker