11-13-17

Hey guys!

So this has been a great week!!! We had lots happen but the best part was Daniels baptism! It was awesome! He was so happy! It was such a joyful moment seeing him after being baptized.

When I shook his hand and congratulated him the spirit told me that this kid will do great things. I loved seeing the smile on his mother's face and the tears in her eyes when she saw him in the water. I love seeing people being baptized but this one was different because seeing the whole family happy and full of gratitude really hit me. I am thankful that I know this gospel is true and I am great everyday to be able to tell people of its truthfulness! So that was the big highlight of the week. Okay so for the big change of the week is that we got Facebook. We had MLC, which is just a meeting for Zone Leaders, and we learned all about it and made our accounts. It is really helpful for the work! We have already been able to share videos and messages with our investigators everyday. We have also been able to do video chats with them as well. It has been a huge help in the work. The missionaries in our zone have not got it yet but we keep telling them that it is so amazing. A lot of missionaries aren't to excited for it and see it has a distraction but to be honest it's not any bigger distraction as they have right now. If you are focused on your purpose honestly it's not that tempting. On the other hand it was a trip to log in into facebook and see profile picture of friends with their spouses that I had no idea they were married! So that was crazy to see all of that and it felt just weird. Anyway all and all Facebook is a really great tool. All the missionaries in the Zone get it this week at Zone Conference so that should be fun. This is going to be my last Zone Conference and I was so hoping I didn't have to give a training but we will be training of the new Christmas initiative. Got a fun week ahead. The rest of this week has been great times with teaching lots and going to meetings. Oh one other highlight in my life

is that Panda Experience just opened up in Eagle River so mission just got even better. Well that was the big stuff of the week! Well love you all and hope you have a good one!


-Elder Barney


2 Timothy2:3
Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.

11-6-17

Hey!

So ya this week was pretty awesome! It was transfer week so I got my new comp Elder Ogden
and he is freaking awesome! We were already good friends before so it has been cool to be comps. This week we had some great lessons with some elect investigators. Daniel passed his interview and will be baptized this Thursday! We are pumped for him! It has been a lot of fun teaching him. His mom is really great and super nice. She is a convert of 4 years and really loves this gospel. She bore her testimony this Sunday and it was powerful to hear her testify of how grateful she was that she found this gospel. It has been a true pleasure teaching her son. Also this week we taught Andre which went great! We moved his baptism date up. I told him I would quit drinking soda if he stops drinking beer and now he is all excited to make me stop drinking soda. Tomorrow is when he quits beer so I guess it's my last day for soda haha. He is the guy we have been teaching in the yert tent thing. He is super elect and ready for baptism. He has such a strong testimony of change its crazy! He tells us that he wants to be a better man and wants to stop sinning to the point of being perfect. It's been fun teaching him about the Atonement and how we will be perfect one day but for today we just need to give our absolute best. I love teaching people with such a desire it's inspiring. We are also teaching another kid who is such a stud! He is in seminary and not even a member. He has amazing questions. We taught about the Plan of Salvation and it was really awesome to answer such great questions but the highlight of the lesson is when we taught about the Atonement. It was such how powerful moment to teach a teenager that the Savior knows him and loves him enough to die for him. As we testified to him about the Saviors suffering I could see in his eyes how much it really meant to him that someone loves him that much. Daniel always pay attention when we teach but once we started talking about the Atonement he was on the edge of his seat hanging on to every word. We hope to be inviting him to baptism this next lesson which I can't wait for! So other than some awesome lessons and transfers that's about it for this week. Oh expect with transfers I ran into my son, last comp I trained, Elder Hatch.

Things are all good! Hope you have a great week!


-Elder Barney


2 Timothy2:3
Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.

11-2-17

Angie Kolo
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Benjamin Dean Smith (529858-R)
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10-30-17

What up!!

So this has been a nuts week!!! First off I will start with my transfer call. So I will be staying in Bear Mountain and be getting a new companion, Elder Ogden. Elder Ogden is one of my good friends out here so I am super stoked to serve with him! My companion Elder Pauga is sadly leaving to go be the Zone Leader over a new Language Zone in Anchorage. I loved serving with Elder Pauga and learned a lot from him! He is definitely a friend for life! So that was the big news! I am super pumped I get to serve with one of my really good friends for my last transfer so that's dope! Anyway the rest of the week was super busy. Tuesday we had one of the districts in our zone go to the institute building for district meeting so the institute director could teach them about working with the YSA. That was interesting because there was a whole Zone of missionaries there when they got there so we had to go show up and it just was kinda crazy but it ended up working out. We learned a lot about institute which was cool because not to many missionaries know a lot about it because we came right out of high school. Anyways that was Tuesday but then Wednesday was really busy with teaching. For some reason the only day any of our investigators could meet this week was Wednesday so it made for a crazy night of teaching but made the rest of the week kinda suck with no teaching but hey at least Wednesday was legendary. We taught Andre first that night and it was sick! He is on date for December. It was a super spiritual lesson. He told us in the beginning of the lesson how happy we was that he met us and how thankful he is for us teaching him. One of the most powerful moments of my mission is when he said with tears in his eyes that he is grateful that we are here and all I could think of is how thankful I am that I'm here too. We taught about the restoration and it was really powerful. On Sunday he came to church but told us he had a bad leak in his yurt so we left and helped him patch it because it was raining really bad but after that we taught a lesson. He told us he was struggling with drinking and smoking weed. He gave us his pipes and told us to throw them away so we chucked them in the river. He is so ready and committed! It's crazy how strong the spirit is in that little yurt each time we teach him! After teaching him Wednesday we taught a new investigator who is friends with one of our priests. He is really elect! We then went to a part members house after and put the wife and kids on date! It was such a great day! Those days make it so worth being a missionary! It really makes up for all the sucky days! The rest of the week has been finding and getting things ready for transfers. We have some Elders moving apartments so we spent some time moving things around. All and all it has been one amazing last week with my Soa. I will really miss Elder Pauga but I'm excited for him to go back to the Tongan Ward. It's crazy to be starting my last transfer but I am finishing strong!!! A lot of my friends went home this transfer but I was able to say bye to a few of them. See them in 6 weeks! Well I love you all and hope you have a great week!

-Elder Barney


2 Timothy2:3
Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.

10-23-17

Hey guys!

So this has been a shorter week because I just had Pday on Wednesday but hey still had a good time this week. So first of the Temple was super awesome and I had a great time playing frisbee golf afterwards! We saw a ton of moose as usual and they wouldn't move out of the way! Moose can be so annoying! Anyway I realized this week how Alaskan I have become. I really find Moose annoying and no longer cool and I eat a ton of ice cream! Seriously I didn't think much of it until someone pointed it out but almost every dinner we go to the dessert is ice cream and when all the missionaries get together we celebrate with an ice cream cone at McDonald's. We have a ton of ice cream in our freezer and always are snacking on it! No joke Alaskans really love their ice cream and find moose annoying. So ya that was my thought of the week. Other then that this week has been fun and crazy. Lots and lots of meetings and figuring things out with transfers. We definitely have been blessed with amazing people to teach! Our teaching pool isn't very big but the people we do teach are super elect. We have a new investigator we are pumped to meet with this Wednesday. He is friends with a priest in our Ward and sounds really elect because he is enrolled in seminary and loves learning about the Book of Mormon. Also Andrea is still on date and doing good. Daniel is also getting close to his baptism as well. He is so cool and very excited! He is getting baptized the same day his mom and sisters were! Lots of great things this week! Excited for this next week. This is the last week of the transfer then I start my last transfer! What the heck!? Time has gone by way to fast! Well love you all and hope all is well!

-Elder Barney

2 Timothy2:3
Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.

10-18-17

Hello friends and family!!!

Wow! What a crazy week it has been!! Today we get to go to the temple! That's why our pday got moved to Wednesday. So this was an extra long week but man there was a ton that happened! Okay first I'll start with Zone Conference last Wednesday. It was soooo AWESOME!!! We did a Zone Talent Show! So we had a spiritual part in the beginning with trainings and stuff. That was weird because for the first time we didn't have to wear suits and got to wear regular clothes. It felt just weird giving a training in those clothes but hey it was dope! After the spiritual stuff we had a crazy fun time with the talent show! Everyone's was so funny! We had Elders teaching us a fun Irish dance all the way to a the sisters doing a funny cooking skit! There was a lot of crazy funny stuff. Each companionship did a talent or skit and each district did a talent and a skit. For mine and Elder Paugas talent we arm wrestled our mission President hahaha! It was such an intense fight! I went first and man we gave it everything we had and he took me down! It was so much harder then I thought haha!

For sure will be a rematch!  My companion won after he was tired out so that was awesome! Since he won the first one he won an Alaska tie and since we won the 2nd one he has to spend a pday with us. Im glad my companion won because if he didn't then President was going to crack an egg over our heads so we lucked out there! The district talents were really awesome! Our district did a trick shot! It's hard to explain so I'll try to send the video but it was sick! I have never laughed so hard in one day! That Zone Conference was so great! After Zone Conference we went on Exchanges with the APs and we had interviews with President Toone. (I was hoping for rematch but it will come later ;) anyway it was super great interview and had fun on Exchanges. That was the fun highlight of the week for sure! The rest of the week was awesome as well! One miracle this week happened when we were out seeing people. I had the thought to stop by one of our potential investigators that we were considering dropping. We showed up right when he pulled up so the timing was perfect. We sat down and talked for a bit. He started talking about how his life has led him to this moment and all the hard times and hard things led to meeting us. He then told us that he wants to be baptized! We freaked out with excitement! We testified with all our heart of the happiness he will feel with his past burdens gone. The spirit was super strong! He came to church Sunday and you could tell he was nervous but when everyone started saying hi he loosened up. We had a lesson with him during third hour of church and had another crazy spiritual experience with him. We planned on going over the restoration but something just naturally made me and my companion just go right into the Plan of Salvation. It was weird we both just started teaching it and were completely on the same page. It answered all of his main questions due to having lots of family members pass away. After the lesson we talked about a date for baptism and he should be good to go on December 22nd. We hope he will be ready sooner but right now he is shooting for that. It was so great to see things just fall into place for him to be taught. He doesn't have a house and is currently living in a cabin type thing. Lots of Alaskan do that type of stuff by the way and it's always a race against winter but no one ever wins haha. Anyway we are just so excited for Andrea! He is so ready! We also have had some other miracles with finding new people. We have had some great referrals and have another super solid investigator who we think will be put on date soon too. I am really excited because honestly I was really nervous at the begin of this transfer because it just seemed like there was not a lot of work and things just were not going our way all the time but finally and I really mean finally things started getting great! You know I look back on hard crapy weeks where nothing went right and it is cold and dark. Those times make weeks like this feel sooo much better. The trick is it stays this way! I have truly come to know if we just focus on having faith in Christ then even the crapy times there will be light. The trick is out here is you are constantly put in a corner and you have 2 decisions when it's cold and dark, you can either choose sin or God. The more we choose God the more Faith we gain and the happier we are. Okay so sorry if this was such a long email but it was a crazy awesome week. We had lots of fun with Exchanges with other elders in this zone and lots of good hard work. Well I love you all and hope all is well!


-Elder Barney


2 Timothy2:3
Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ

10-2-17

Hey guys!

So this has been an amazing week! First off General Conference was crazy awesome! I love hearing from our prophets and apostles! It seemed like every talk given had a message specific for me. It is always crazy listening to Conference as a missionary because you are constantly saying oh man I wish this investigator or this less active was listening. It gives us lots of good messages to share through the next few weeks. One big thing I got out of the messages was becoming what God needs us to become. Elder Hollands talk really hit me. I know we try our hardest to become like our savior who is perfect but we always fall short of perfection but that is where the Atonement comes in. I thought I knew a lot about the Atonement until this week when I realized I haven't even scratched the surface. Although I don't understand everything Christ did for us I know it happened. I am so grateful for the Atonement of our savior and so amazed at his love. It is 100% possible to change and improve. Something I have realized is that it is important to feel some sorrow to feel some gilt to feel just a portion, and it will be only a small portion of what he felt. It's important to feel that to better understand what he did for you and to better appreciate it. It has been an eye opening week as I have studied and pondered the true meaning of the Atonement of Christ. So that's something huge I have taken away from Conference and throughout this week. On top of a great Conference we had a really awesome week with working hard and having fun. I went on exchanges with Elder Paskett who is a new missionary. I had lots of fun but it was a weird experience because they cover the military base and part of that base was my first area. So there was a lot of déjà vu with memories rushing back. After exchanges we met with our Mission President and man oh man was that an amazing meeting! I love President Toone! He is such a knowledgeable man. He taught seminary for years and was a CES Director so he knows a lot of good stuff! We asked a lot of questions and our minds were blown! This church is so true!! Anyway it is always nice meeting with him and getting a energy booster! The rest of the week was running around meeting and talking to everyone we could. We did a crazy service where we were suppose to help build this guys cabin type thing but ended up shoveling gravel into mud in the rain. We were soaked and covered in mud! So ya that has been my week. I hope you all have a great week!

-Elder Barney


2 Timothy2:3
Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.