Week 86: April 12, 2019 - What Matters Most

Dear Family,

I hope you all are doing fantabulous!
It was a great week!

First off, General conference was awesome! We watched it at President Fillmore´s house. The spirit was so strong in his house. I loved hearing the the speakers. I feel the spirit so strong when the prophet speaks. He always seems to attract all of my attention.

We got to go on more visits this week. I got to do a few visits with Elder Lopez which was tons of fun. We visited Ana and Cordêncio. Thats them in the picture below:

Cordêncio is holding their baby girl Nataniela. They are such a cute family! We are working on helping them to be an eternal family. We had a neat lesson just reading the Book of Mormon with them. I feel like I need to incorporate the scriptures better when I teach. They are so powerful! I read in a manual about teaching like the Savior today that said how the doctrine in the scriptures never change, but the doctrines themselves change us. I thought that was super neat.

I already talked to you guys in our call about my studies, but they are so much better when I study with a purpose in mind, whether it be to receive an answer or to help another person. They are usually better when I study for other people. I end up getting a lot more out of it in the end.

I'm seeing more and more the importance of the littlest things. Elder Doughman and I, I feel like I repeat myself after doing the video chat with you guys hahahaha, but oh well, there is power in firm repetition as our mission president says. Elder Doughman and I have made a goal to leave every day from the office to go do proselyting, even when we have tons of work to do. If we can move it back a day, we'll do that. We went out just for a few moments to go contacting near by.

First bit, people were just brushing us off. I then started talking to a guy I would soon find out to be called Joniel. He said he was rushing for work and I cheerfully responded that I would love to walk with him. I felt impressed to bear my testimony of how much God loves us. I felt the spirit so strong in the contact. There was something different about it. He recognized me as a "Mormon" after I showed him the Book of Mormon and told me has was a less active member from Brazil. He hadn't gone to church in 10 years. I told him about the Shepard parable where our Great Shepard, Jesus Christ, would leave the 99 sheep to find the lost 1. I told that Christ was reaching out to him and that He sent me to do that. He said he thought so too. We will see if he is able to come to church this Sunday.

We also had an amazing dinner with the Marriotts. They prepared Mexican salad for us!!!! There dinner was a dinner that I would never forget. We talked about conference and they bore their sincere testimonies of the gospel to us. It was so powerful! They shared so many insights. I just felt the spirit so strong the whole time. I feel like many times I have just been so focused on entertaining others or myself with things that don't really matters that I have forgotten the real purpose of some things and what really matters. It could have been just a dinner of any kind, but they made it special just with bearing their testimonies and sharing their thoughts.

I absolutely love serving the Lord. He gives me so much more than I deserve. I love His gospel and I love Him. He is my best friend.

I hope you all have a wonderful rest of the week!!!!

Love always,
Elder Barton

Pictures of our preparation day in Sintra!!!