Week 9: October 16, 2017

Hello Family!!!!

I just want to start off and say how much I loved that package!!!! That was so much!!!!! I was not worried about food at all this week!!! haha!!! I love the photos and the letters!!! That was my favorite part!!! All the little toys and halloween decorations were so much fun too!!! I set it all up as soon as I could!!!! You'll see in the pictures. The food is delicious!!! I'm going to be honest, I plowed through so much of it so fast! It is all so good! When I pulled out the figit spinner, my companion said, "Oh no!" It was pretty funny. I couldn't stop thinking about mom this week. I hope you can see the videos I sent on google drive.

Anyway, this week. I had some really neat experiences this week. A lot of this mission, Elder Degiuli has been sick. He is not contagious, there is just something going on with his stomach. He is getting it figured out with the mission physician and seems to be doing better today and yesterday. We had to stay in sometimes because he has just been too sick. I've tried to go on exchanges with other elders just so I am doing something productive, but that has been a little difficult. One night, we were inside and he was debating whether or not we should go out. I felt bad. I wanted to go out really bad, but he was still pretty sick. We decided that I would give him a blessing. So, I did. As soon as I finished, he sat for a moment. I watched to see what would happen. He got up, grabbed his stuff and then said, lets go. We were off. We biked down to a street that we were going to knock some doors on. We said a prayer to invite the spirit. Elder Degiuli said it. His voice was soft and shakey, he sounded like he really meant what he was saying. We then knocked doors inviting people to the Meridian temple open house. A quick side not, it was night time, about time for us to start heading back to the apartment. Door after door, people were either not interested or didnt even answer. We got to the last door. we knocked. a younger lady came out and almost jumped out of her door. She was trying to keep her dogs inside. She looked at us and said, "youre not my pizza!" we laughed and I said, "We're the next best thing!" It was pretty funny. She was super nice and said that she had met missionaries before, but that they couldnt teach her because she lived alone. She is a student right now at Boise State. She said she was friends with some members, turned out to be our ward mission leader. We set a time to meet with her. So cool! That was our last house after that. It was so neat! Elder Degiuli was sick right after we knocked at her house! I felt so bad for him, but we were both so excited that we got to find her! hopefully there will be more to that in the future.

Also, we went over to a members home and had a really neat experience. We visited a super nice family! There was an older mom there with her grown up son and a daughter (her daughter stayed in the room, she doesnt really like to talk to other people). We talked to the mom a lot. She was so nice! She is also from Germany and has this awesome german accent! She believes so much in the power of missionaries and asked us to give her a blessing about an important decision. Elder Degiuli gave her the blessing. She got up right after, thanked us, and said that she felt very good about the answer she had received in that moment. They had us say hi to her daughter. We did. They were super happy about that. She had not really talked to any members for a while and thought that was a great stepping stone for her to meet us. We are going to visit them again pretty soon for another thing.

We talked to a man named Mir, Azita's husband if you remember Azita. He is super nice! He is a world renowned agricultural scientist. He has some self made opinions about the gospel and baptism, but loves to talk to us and believes that we have the truth, which is kind of contradictory sometimes. When he was telling us his thoughts and opinions on stuff, I can tell you that I never said a single word that came from me to respond to what he said. Every time he said something, the spirit put something in my mind. It was so amazing! I've never been guided like that so clearly for that long of time, or at least I dont think so. It was super neat. They were so nice when we left too. They stood out the door and waved to us as we rode off with our bikes! I love them!!!

Last experience. We were out yesterday at night and deciding what we should do because some of our plans had to get last second rearranged. We were going to visit that one german family again, but we couldn't get another male to be there, so we had to keep pushing back until we found someone. We parked our bikes on a street and started walking down to knock some more doors until she got back to us. As we were walking, I got the distinct impression that it was too late to be knocking doors and that we should turn around and go back to our bikes. I told my companion, so awkwardly as we had just dropped our bikes and walked down the street a ways, we turned around and stood next to our bikes. Elder Degiuli suggested we pray to know what we should do. We did. We listed our options. The german family, a members home, or visit this one family that told us to come back another time. I felt that we should call the german mom. We did. We found out we were going to have to do another day. Feeling a little confused, Elder Degiuli reminded me of Elder Hollands talk about the truck with the dad and his son when they got to the fork in the road and got the impression to go the wrong way first to know what the right way was for a surety. that felt good to know. So, one option down. We didnt have any other promptings after that. We decided it was about time to head back since we still had some studies to do and it was getting pretty late. But, we first went the opposite way because Elder Degiuli wanted to grab so leaves to send home because apparently his family has not seen fall. We went over and saw this guy walking down. We had seen him before. He was a college kid. We walked with him. He was going to the gym. We got to know him a little better. He told us he was pretty open to religion. He told us to just go for it until he got to the gym. I went through the entire restoration with him. We even got to the gym, and he still wanted to listen. We left him with a Book of Mormon, with my testimony written inside, and our contact info. It was amazing! We were led by the spirit without even knowing it part of the time! I am of course imperfect and made a ton of mistakes along the way, but I hope it was good enough for him to feel the spirit and let God work through me.

That's it for this week! Happy Birthday Mom!!!! love you all tons!!! think about you every day!!!!!

Love,

Elder Barton