Week 40: May 21, 2018

Well,

Another glorious week has passed by! Seriously reading your letters makes me so happy! You all sound like you are all doing so well! You all wrote how thankful you are for all the blessings you have and are all recognizing God´s hand in your lives! I think that is just one of the coolest things ever! You all are such huge inspirations to me!!!!! I got one of your Easter Packages form the beginning of March!!! hahahaha!!! Loved it!!! Thanks soooooooooo much!!! Loved it!!!! I did a special thing for the missionaries that I live with. I equally spread out the goodies you all sent me and put it in separate bags for them. I then put a little note and a scripture that talked about a Christ-like attribute that I thought they really exemplified. they loved it and thought it was so cool!!! It was so much fun to do!!!

We have been working super hard this week! Elder Gusmão and I have been working over time to find those prepared to receive the gospel. There have been some struggles with that; I'm not gonna lie. There are times where I think things are going to work out perfectly, but they end up falling apart. I keep remembering a part in Dad's book that talks about a talk that dad heard while he was in the MTC I think. It talks about how we don't find God in the quite streams or the abundant forests, but we find Him in the deserts, something like that. There are a lot of times where things don't work out perfectly, but the way I've tried to think of it is that its ok, its just another opportunity to grow and to be closer to my Savior. I just have to have faith that God has a better plan and that I can trust in Him.

We had a super awesome zone conference this week. We practiced teaching an investigator, one of the APs or a zone leader, in front of president for 20 min! We got to teach AP Elder Hermann. President just walked in each room and sat there for like 5 min for each person. It was so nerve racking!!!!! It was awesome though!!! We all learned a lot about how to teach better. One thing that I learned from Elder Hermann that day was that when we teach, we need to know the "what", the "why", and the "how" for the person we are teaching. It made our lessons much more powerful this week! Seriously, the leaders in this mission are incredible! They always know how to best help us! In the weekly letter from our president, he said how when we follow the council of our leaders, it is the same as following direct council from the Savior. I thought that was super neat!

The members were super awesome this week too!!!! We left with a member named Lídia. She is seriously one of the most Christ-like people ever! She was literally walking with us and doing contacts with us! She is an older lady that has a permanent, radiant smile on her face! She loves to be around children and pets! We were literally walking on a cross walk and a dog passed by, and she reached down trying to pet it as it passed by and then kept on walking! It was pretty funny! The people she talked to, she always complimented them and just pointed out every good thing she could think of. It was super cool!!!!

Anyways, that's all I've got for this week, but I seriously love you all sooooooo much!!!! I feel so much strength and so much love from your letters and prayers! I've seriously been receiving tons of help from all of your prayers!!! Love you tons!!! have a great week!!!! knock em dead the last few weeks of school!!!!

Love,

Elder Barton