November 22, 2010

What the heck, since when can the beavers play football?! That's not even a close score, I am so proud of my boys... brings a tear to my eye.

So first off, news for the week. I got sick, again. not super bad, I was able to still work, but I feel a little bit like a pile of trash. but I called the presidents wife and she told me some pills I need to take and got mad at me for drinking tap water. My oro is the cats pajamas, he is a cool kid, and since he is just out of the mtc he is 140% obedient. Its gonna help me out, but it is a big difference. He brings up things that I never even thought about before. it is a good thing I guess, but sometimes I forget that he hasn´t been here for a year too so I need to show him how some things work. His Spanish is pretty solid, he speaks great about the gospel, but when the members or investigators talk to him he kinda just fakes his way through. It reminds me of my times of not understanding people. But I learned a lot from my trainer so I hope my kiddo comes out a superstar, he has potential.

We found a buttload of new people this week, and L is still awesome. She didn´t go to church yesterday because she was sick, but when we talked to her she invited us to come over tonight. Its really cool to see her progress.

We are having the meeting with the ward in a couple of weeks, and president is coming. We set it so far in the future so we could plan it well and announce it so much that everyone knows. But this week I explained it in depth to the bishop and he seems really excited to have it. I am pretty stoked, and my new companion has excitement for the work, so it should help us out a lot.

I miss pie night, you should send me some cheese cake, that is the best. For thanksgiving we are going to get some of us gringos together and maybe have a feast. I doubt that we´ll find turkey, but a chicken works out all right.

Dad, doing a bike race together would be a blast! I am going to have to get used to a good bike first, but that will only take a little bit. Mountain or road would be cool, mostly I just miss riding at all. I always stare longingly at the cyclists here. Its actually a pretty big thing here, we see nerds going down the streets in matching shorts and jerseys all the time.

We are having a lot of success here, I am super excited to be working with my new oro, he is a stud.

I love you guys a ton. Peace!

Elder B

Training my first Oro 17 Nov. 2010

AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!

IIIIIIIII´´´´´MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM TRAININGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!

Translation... oh my cow I am training a new missionary!

Wow. i figured when change calls came that I was going to stay here as district leader with elder T. false. elder T was transferred to Canelones, an area in our same district, and I am training my own gringo, elder H. He is from Utah, and is a little bit studly. his Spanish is at about the same level as my last comp, and he had 9 months here in guay. The only difference is that my oro (means gold and in this mission newby) doesn´t know the slang from guay yet. It is super exciting, kinda a bummer because I am no longer dl, but so worth it. We are going to blow it up out here, look out san jose, here we come. And no, we have no beaners riding in low riders, Dad.

So they went over a bunch of rules with us today, and I am only allowed to send one email home every week, so from now on I am just going to have to put it all together into one. There was a few things that I had either not realized or forgotten about in the rules lecture... hmmm.

But this week was pretty sweet. we have one investigator, L who came to church this week. She could only stay for relief society, but everyone loved her. She shared the story about the day when me and my comp passed by her house the first time. She was so depressed that day that she had been contemplating suicide, and then we knocked her door, and she decided that she should let us in, that she had been asking for help from God. Then the Mormons came pounding on the door. nuts. Those stories humble me a lot. It was crazy to hear and even hard to believe that I was used as the Lords servant in this situation to help this lady get her life back. it just makes me glad we decided to knock there that day, because if we hadn´t, who knows?

Dad, about working with the members in our area, we are about to have an activity based on that talk you sent me (The Missionary next door), I shared it with the hermanas, and we are basically going to give the talk, with big changes because the people are different here, but it is so simple and amazing, we´re stoked. I`ll keep the members especially in my prayers this week, hopefully the best will come out of it. Of course it will.

I didn´t finish the college application questions yet, I started but I have to revise because my english is terrible, I actually had to look up words in my dictionary in spanish to see what they were in english, flip.

Well, I love you guys a ton, have a great week. Eat pie until you can´t stand up straight, and then eat a couple slices more...

Elder Barry

Finally! Wednesday Nov. 10

We are having a great week out here! In the last two days we found two families to teach! They both have teenage kids, which will be awesome for the ward because our youth is itty bitty. We talked to a million people last week and now this week we are finally seeing results, it's weird how that works. our goal for the week is to set appointments with everyone, instead of just saying we´ll see you another day. A lot of the time when we are tracting, we don´t set a time to go back and we lose the opportunity of teaching the person. but now our week is jam packed with people to visit, we are also planning better, different parts of the city for different days. Its a blast out here now, and me and my comp are getting along great.

The sister missionaries that share our ward are super good too.

I let them borrow that talk about member missionary work and now we are going to have a ward family night and me and the gringo hermana are going to talk about the social conversion side of missionary work. It should be great. We are going to announce the crap out of it and make sure all 25 active members come to it. We can change the area, I know it. Its super exciting to be here with these hermanas, one of them is a greenie so she has a ton more enthusiasm than most kids, and I always try to out enthusiasm everybody as the district leader. my favorite district leader was elder A, the white kid that lived with me and C, and whenever we had a success he was always more excited about it than we were. I try to learn the names of the other missionary´s investigators. It's exciting business.

I definitely think that my setback would be my severe mental retardation, and how I got over it.... well, the doctors are still working on me. Lets just say I used to be schizophrenic, but now we´re fine. haha

Its so cool to hear about elder C, he seems like a great missionary, I want to be more like him. In my other letters I always hear about him too. We are trying harder now to work with the members here, we don´t have very many, and lots are old people, but we´ll get them excited, just you watch.

love you a lot.

elder Barry

Hi mom sorry I am so late, p day got changed because tomorrow we go to the TEMPLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This last week was pretty cool. We found some new investigators, well, 4. It was kind of a bummer, because we did 250 contacts in the week. that is my all time record by a longshot. We almost had this awesome lady L come to church, but she slept in. But yesterday we went and saw her and she is still way cool. She hasn´t eaten for 15 days, so i was a little worried. We offered to make her something but she refused. She just has no desire to eat... but she can really feel the spirit in our lessons with her. She said she feels really peaceful when we come. We had such a great lesson, and now she has a baptismal date for the 27th. The only thing is that we might have to move it back to the 28th so she can go to church 3 times. but she is super excited, she even asked what she has to do before the 27th. I was like, go to church, and EAT!!! She promised she would eat something.

Also this week, we have already found 2 families!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! yesssssssssssssss!!!!

One of them kinda has issues, but a lot of faith, and the other one is awesome!! We found them last night at like 8 at night. We were trying to fit in like 15 contacts to finish the night off and they let us in and we gave the Restoration lesson and they were super intent. My comp even taught for longer than normal.

Basically, this week is going in the right direction. we already have almost all of the required contacts (140) for the week, and we have found 6 new investigators. Basically, we are stoked out of our minds, but changes are next week, so my comp might be out of here. We´ll see.

I love you a lot mama.

ps i got the halloween package, yay allergy pills and pictures, the family one looks cool!!!

peace out girl scout.

elder b

Halloween 2010

Halloween was super lame here. the kids trick or treat, but their costumes are stupid. and they started at like 4:30, and here it is almost summer time, so the sun was no where near going down yet. Oh well, I guess if you´re gonna copy an American holiday you can´t do it perfectly. Trick or treat in Spanish is Dulce o truco. There is another way to say it, but I don´t remember, most of the kids just say dulce o truco.

Go Beavs, is Cal good this year? Not gonna lie, I might root for the Ducks if they go to the championship, pac ten needs some good representation.

That Doctrine and Covenants scripture was really good! (D&C 109:22
And we ask thee, Holy Father, that thy servants may go forth from this house armed with thy power, and that thy name may be upon them, and thy glory be round about them, and thine angels have charge over them;)

It always amazes me how blessed we are and can be as members of the church when we do what is right. I have been studying a little bit in the New Testament and this week I was able to use it in a lesson, it was way cool. I was never good at the Bible, I´m still not, but the investigator said something that went perfectly with what Jesus told some pharisees, so I opened it right up and quoted the bible.

We had the baptism of T this week. hardly any members came, but then again, we hardly have members here, so I wasn´t surprised. the talks were awesome, this lady with gave one about the Holy Ghost, and it was great. It was just really simple, but really powerful at the same time.

The Jason Mraz song is pretty easy. You play the bar chord E on the 7th fret, then on the 2nd then the 4th and then an A bar chord on the 7th, and that just gets repeated throughout the whole song. You´ll have to look up the pattern. Those Jonas brothers, what bums for copying that song.

We had a lot better week this week. We almost doubled our numbers, not that that means we had good numbers, but it was a good week. I feel a million times better.

love you

elder b

We had that same Sunday School lesson about stakes and the millennium this week, it was a goodie!

Your halloween costumes are hilarious mama!

We had a pretty good week this week. I had an interchange with the zone leaders, which was super hectic, because I then had to go do a baptismal interview an hour away(by train) in the middle of the day. But we got to work with a kid in their ward who is technically a missionary, but at home. His visa isn´t done yet so he had to come home after like 3 weeks in the mission. So he just sits at home now and sometimes helps the missionaries, poor kid.

We had our baptism, it was way cool. I got to do it, we were asking T, the kid who got baptized, who he wanted to do it, me, my comp, the bishop, the YM president, and he said that he wanted me to do it.

But... this week we decided to only speak Spanish when we are walking in the street so we could practice, and it was easier than I expected, it stunk, but we did it. I could feel my Spanish get a lot better, I hope my comp could too.

We had an awesome lesson the other day. A guy named J. He lived a while in the states, so he speaks English, but I can´t talk about the church very well in English anymore, so most of the lesson ended up in Spanish. It was awesome, he talked about how he has no faith, so we read together Alma 32. You could tell that he could feel the Spirit. I feel really good about it. And I feel super stoked for this week.

I have some ideas for a Christmas list...

socks

candy

music:marimba, phantom of the opera, wicked, the goofy movie soundtrack, those are just ideas, don´t feel obligated.

duct tape

gangster bandana

primary music, scripture power!!!

That's pretty much it, for now. I don´t really care though, also... cards to be able to right thank you notes to people.

I love you mom!!!

elder barry

(A note from Jenny: If any of you Barry friends decide to send him anything from this list will you please let me know. I would rather not double up on it. Except for the duct tape of course... you can never have too much colored duct tape! Thanks!!!)