54th Letter: "February!"

Dear Family, 

I come before ye to write another letter home, to tell you of my wonderful experiences that I have been having here in good ole Rio Rancho!! :) Life is still good! I am happy!! It is hard not to be when you are a missionary having such awesome experiences daily! :) I continually pray that each of my wonderful family and friends are doing great as well! Life is too short! Do all that you can to fulfill the measure of your creation! Learn! Grow! Become better! Understand what Gods priorities are and make them your priorities! There in-lies true happiness! :)

First off it snowed last night in Rio Rancho!! Its a miracle! Haha I miss snow so much and it felt great to me able to see it fall again!! I miss the wonderful state of Idaho!! The weather here has been kinda bi-polar lately, sunny one day, then dark and gloomy the next! Those dark and gloomy days are the hardest to get passed the 7 hours of sleep that you get and work hard! But we do! :) 

So on Saturday, our wonderful Kat Andrews was baptized! And it was a wonderful service! There were tons on non-members and less-actives that attended. One including her Mom which was incredible to come see her support her daughter!! :) There was so many people at the baptism, we were forced to move the service into the chapel for the meeting portion of course. So during the waiting period while Kat was changing after the actual ordinance. Elder Black and I taught the whole Restoration! It was super powerful and the spirit was way strong! Afterwards members came up to us and said that they had never felt the spirit so strong, so consistently in there whole life. One member said that he was going to tell the Stake President and have us do it at a Stake Conference or something haha!  

Allot of many other wonderful things are happening in our area, as we taught more lessons this last week then this area has ever had before. We are being super diligent and are just praying that the Lord blesses us with opportunities to help bring his children closer to Him, and He has done just that. We are willing! And that is all it takes!  :)

I hope you all took my challenge last week, and are praying for someone that you are acquainted with. Maybe you wont see an immediate change in them, but I do promise that you will witness one miracle, if you are praying for somebody by name! 

Family Rio Rancho is taking off! Missionary work is now becoming a priority!! Lifes are being changed! This last month Rio Rancho had 4 baptisms the most it has had in a month for almost a year. God is blessing us! How grateful I am! This Thursdayis MLC (when mission leadership meets) and then Friday will be Zone Training. So excited to be able to teach the Zone again! I love it!

Take Care my wonderful family! I hope everyone spoils Zac for his birthday, he needs a pick me up after the Broncos got slaughtered... ;) Love ya! 

Elder Barrus