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