56th Letter: "Barrus-bunch what up?!"

Hey y'all!! Sorry to keep switching up on you when I am emailing... I don't like it either! Our mission has a weird p-day schedule. So every week of transfers p-day is on Monday, but every other week it is always on Tuesday. So Elder Black is getting transferred and I will be staying in Rio Rancho for another transfer. There is a pretty good chance that we will be emailing tomorrow as well so that my companion can tell his family where he is, so feel free to still email me tonight because I should be on tomorrow sometime! :) Well I am really going to miss Elder Black it has been great being his companion! We have gone through allot together these last 2 transfers, and we definitely have learned allot! He is a really great missionary, he is going to do great wherever he goes. There are going to be quite a few changes happening in the zone as we will be getting 6 new missionaries into the zone, the change will be really good for the zone. Allot of the areas are really starting to improve, but the changes that will happen are going to help the zone improve even more. We had 3 missionaries die (go home) in our zone and they got super trunky and kind of brought the work down in the area because of it! It is super sad to see when that happens. That is one thing that I am not going to let happen to me! I love this work to much to work hard for 20 months and then just kill over when I am starting to get tired. I am always tired so I cant imagine it will get much worse in 7 months. 

No but things are going really well for me! We kind of had a rough week last week as it seemed like every appointment we had cancelled on us and I got a really bad sore throat for most of the week which never is fun!! But we still saw many miracles as we pushed through it all. Since many of our appointments cancelled on us we spent allot of time trying to find new people to teach, by just walking everywhere and trying to talk to as many people as we can. We were able find some really great potential investigators that we are going to try back again this week. It has been amazing to me to see our teaching pool expand over the last two transfers! Missionary work is really depressing if you arent teaching very much, so it has been super exciting to see this area improve in that sense.

Unfortunately Emery's baptism date got moved back again... His grandpa cant come in till the 8th of March now, it has been kind of frustrating now that his date has been moved so many times. The sad thing about it is that he desperately wants to be baptized and he gets super sad when we keep having to wait. We are struggling to think of things to teach him as we have gone over all of the lessons with him like 2 or 3 times so now we are having him teach us. He will be getting baptized on the 8th or else I will be giving his grandpa a call and we will have a chat! I love Emery a ton it has been a blast teaching him. Super funny kid! 

Other then Emery we are seeing great progress with Dulcy and her kids. We had an amazing lesson with them on Saturday night, the spirit was so strong as we testified that this is the path that Heavenly Father wants her to go. She was really touched and we were able to resolve allot of her concerns. One of the biggest miracles though with Dulcy is her father Steve. He is super devote catholic, but loves when we come over. He has accepted everything that we have taught the whole time. Last week he accepted a Book of Mormon and said that he would read and pray about it. When we followed up on it this last week he said that he has been reading, we were like great where are you in the book? Oh I am about half way he said. He was ecstatic about it, saying that it had answered so many of his questions and that it always makes him feel good. It will be tough because he has been Catholic his whole life and is still very very active, but we are seeing a great change in him. 

Well that is all here in Rio Zion! Love you all so much!! Definitely have the greatest family and friends that a man could ask for! Thanks! :) Know that all of you are in my prayers as I hope all of you are happy! Take Care
Love Elder Barrus