Barton Family News

Dear Family, Well, this is just about it. The last stretch. One thing I love to do, mom knows better than anyone, is run. I think running is such a good analogy for enduring to the end. One thing I do at the end of my runs is a burst sprint. I do that because I want to feel like I gave everything in that run, like I didn't hold anything back. That's what I'm hoping to do this week. This last week was pretty good. We got to teach a non-member family that a member family brought to a dinner last night. They were super awesome! Elder Ixtlahuac and I taught the plan of salvation in 4 minutes!! Something that we have been practicing a lot lately. The member told us after that they are literally elect and that he is preparing another one for us!!! So cool!!  We also got to talk to an investigator named Mafalda. She is super nice and a happy person in general. She is very curious about the church. She has a baby girl that she is taking care of by herself right now. It has b...

Dear Family, Hey!!! How's it going? Happy happy Birthday to Chloe!!! Love you tons!!! I hope you get my letter I sent you. We were kind of all over the place this week. We went on a split with the elders from Montijo. We went over to their area at first to be present in their district council in Barreiro, then we had our zone conference, and then we had a lunch with the district and some members.  Elder Ixtlahuac went with Elder Nichols to Montijo and Elder Valdez and I went to Setubal. Elder Valdez is newer on the mission. He is from Uruguay. He was awesome!!! He has a super strong testimony about the importance of serving a mission. We got back to our area pretty late because of all the traveling, then we had a lunch with a non-member family. It was interesting. The mom, Katia, didn't have the food ready in time, so we waited and talked to the Dad of the family, Marcos. He was pretty fun to talk to. Elder Valdez was really good about getting to know Marcos' rel...

Dear Family, It seems like this week flew by. We had zone conference and did a split with Elders from Beja which is a long ways away from us. It took 2 hours in the bus to get there! The split with the elders in Beja went super well. I got to go with Elder Dowdle for the first half. He is from my same MTC group! We did lots of contacting.  We actually found a building for student housing in their area. We went inside and decided to ask the manager of the building if we could do a little presentation in front of the students. Unfortunately, he didn't permit it. We then asked if we could put some invites up for the church and he was totally fine with that. We had some fun knocking doors together. We went up and I would say every time that we had to read the house to know which knock we needed to do. So we would go up, for example, and take a look at the house. I would point out the statues or a Brasilian flag and tell Elder Dowdle, "Ok, we're goin with the classic Ston...

Dear Family, Heyy!!!!! Hows it going? Great week! We taught some awesome families! On Monday, I went on a split with Elder Garay. He is from Paraguay. He is an amazing missionary and knows how to talk to people. We knocked on the door of a family we contacted. The parents were named Marcos and Katia. They were super nice and we got off to a really good start. Elder Garay started right into teaching the plan of salvation. The parents loved it. We got to one part and then Katia said, "This is where I don't agree with you." She had already talked to the missionaries before. She had a long break from them, and we were the first missionaries to talk to them in a while. She believed that all people that had faith in God would be saved. At one point, she asked us if she needed to be a "Mormon" to be saved. We first gave her a simple explanation of how much God loves us and about his eternal plan, and then I looked her right into the eyes and stated simply, "...

Dear Family, Hey y'all!!! How ya doing? Well, the last week I felt really bad I didn't write you guys. Last week in Portimão was awesome! It seemed like a lot of things were coming together. We were finding a lot of people to teach and we had a few getting so close to baptism. I got the notice last week that I would be transferred to Setúbal 2. I was excited about the opportunity, but also pretty bummed that I would have to leave what we had started in Portimão. I felt like things were really starting to pick up and that I would finish my mission there. But, the Lord always has better plans in mind than mine. I'm not gonna lie, I thought going to a new area for my last transfer would be the last thing that would happen. But, it's turned out to be awesome so far. My new companion is Elder Ixtlahuac. He is from Monterey Bay, California!!! He is an amazing companion!!! He is a super hard worker and is super close to the spirit. There are a ton of members here in Setúb...

Hey there family!!!!! Well, we can all say we were in Europe together now!! Hahaha I hope you all are doing well and had a safe flight over here. We already talked a lot about things that happened this week. We did a split with the Elders in Lagos which was tons of fun. I went with Elder Clark. We taught a guy named Mike. He was super cool. He was evangelical and said how he had talked to a bunch of our companions before and wanted to know why we were so persistent about him becoming a member of the church. He basically wanted to know why he couldn't be part of any other church and worship God the way he wanted to. We led into the lesson on the restoration of the gospel. He listened. In the end, he still didn't understand the importance of authority in God's church. He seemed a little frustrated in the end, I even acknowledged that in the lesson, and Elder Clark bore his testimony on the Book of Mormon. I think that was the most powerful part of the lesson. Something f...