Week 27: February 19, 2018

Estimada Família,

Hey guys!!! Hope you all are doing great!!! Don't have too much time to write, but I´ll try to write as much as I can for this week!!!! 

So, this week, we tried a lot to work with the members. We were told by our AP how increasing working with the members is such a more effective way of doing missionary work. We presented a member missionary reference card to the members. it was awesome!!! I got to show a bunch of ways not to do missionary work and then one quick example of how they should and could do easy simple invites in less that a minute!!! It was super neat, and we got a bunch of golden references from it. 

We´ve also been working with this one member named Irmão Azevedo. He is seriously one of the most amazing people I know! He is always so upbeat and ready to go out and do missionary work with us. He is a bit older but acts super young and has tons of energy! there was one time we called to meet with him and we were waiting at his house to go out and visit a less active member and an investigator. We called him and it turned out he had been waiting in a different area for us and told us he was on his way. It was seriously one of the sweetest things I had ever seen! He is quite a bit older so his body functions a bit slower, but we saw him what seemed to be slow motion sprinting toward us. He was running as fats as he could and felt so bad that we had waited for him. He is super funny! He has such a strong testimony. He always just jumps right in and bears his testimony. Love him!!! He also likes to speak english with us. He can only say, thank you, or thank you very much. But, every time he says that, we always get super excited and clap our hands and then he gives us a huge smile of accomplishment right back. Its so funny!!! Right now, we are teaching him how to say, good night. Its a work in progress, but he loves learning english!!!! 

We also got to go out and do visits with this one young man in our ward named Mateus. He is super awesome!!! We went out with him one night to look for some people we had to visit on this list we got from the Bishop. We thought he would be familiar with the area, but he didn't have a clue!!! hahaha!!! We spent a bunch of the night going around into different restaurants asking for help. We would enter and it felt like we set the whole restaurant staff in an eruption! They would all crowd around to look at the address and they would give us directions and then we would get lost again. hahaha, it was super funny!!! Mateus was super awesome!!! He is the only member in his family. He will be going on a mission later this year. He told us at the end that if we ever needed him again, that we could call him. He is super awesome!!! Such an inspiration to me!!! 

I honestly thought I would be changing so many peoples lives going out and serving others, but honestly, I am just finding tons more inspirations to look up to! I am learning so much just by learning from other people. Serving His mission is such a blessing!!! So thankful to be here!!!

I feel like I have so much more to say, but I don't have too much time. Love you all tons!!! Thanks for being my inspirations!!!!

Love,

Elder Barton