83rd Letter: "Hola mi amigos! :)"

Hey Family!
Just down here in El Paso practicing my spanish it basically is Mexico here! Well I have been doing really good! It is hard for me to believe that this transfer is about to come to a close as we will be doing transfer planning next Monday. 25 new elders and sisters enter the MTC to come to ABQ on the 4th, tomorrow. I have been thinking allot about how that experience was for me, getting dropped off at the MTC and all. Honestly it was kind of traumatizing. I definitely feel for those missionaries!

Well I dont have much time this week, but know that things are going good! I have been lost in the work! It is a wonderful experience being able to get so caught up in the work of The Lord that it is your everything! I have told you many times in my emails, but I love this work with all of my heart! I realized it again yesterday as I was able to see Esequiel Flores and Reese and Sarah and Brenda Chavez, of just how much of an impact missionaries can have on an individuals life! It brings so much joy and happiness to me to be able to witness that!! :) Its hard to believe that I have about 5 months left until I come home and go to school, it actually has been terrifying to think that one day this will come to an end. I have been studying allot lately about being converted and mastering self discipline, as I dont want to change or loose the valuable things that I have learned on my mission! I know that as we all focus on The Lord and live the gospel of Jesus Christ that we will all be alright! We will face challenges but nothing will be too much for us too bare! :)

"The Power of Self Mastery" By James E Faust

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance,
I have not winced nor cried aloud:
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed. …
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
-Invictus

Love you tons
Elder Nic Barrus

Hi, your son Elder Barrus was on splits the other

day with a missionary from our ward. We had the

privilege of having them to dinner. I took this

shot knowing how fun it is to get a pic. I also

have a son on a mission, a grand daughter on a

mission and my husband and I are serving a

service mission here in our town of Albuq.

We are the directors of the Bishops Storehouse.

 

Enjoy

 

Janet Hess

82nd Letter: "Yah'teh! :)"

Hey Family!

Well well it here we are again!! It sure looked like you had a fabulous time in Island Park, man I love that place. Probably the one of the things I have missed the most from being on the mission is camping. Grandpa and Grandma Barrus really instilled that love for the outdoors in me at a really young age and I have missed being able to sleep in the wild! haha even though I usually got scared and convinced myself that there was a bear outside my tent every single night, usually it was just Dad snoring!! Nah but thats great thats great that allot of the family was able to come I am sure it was great to see them all. Well my week was amazing! So so much stuff happened that I don't know even where to start. 

First off we have the wonderful privilege of calling all of the new missionaries before they enter into the MTC and ask them how their preparations are going, its a pretty fun experience. Most of them are so excited and nervous that they dont know what to say when we tell them that we are calling from ABQ. President has asked us to ask them a series of questions that include worthiness, study skills and if they have a girlfriend. The girlfriend question is always the funniest on to ask, most of the time they respond timidly. It has been pretty exciting though as we are getting 25 new missionaries into the mission! Definitely another influx. With that it is also our responsibility to find out which areas we are going to be opening throughout the mission, it looks like we will be opening 5 new areas this transfer! :)   

Well miracles galor this week as we taught 8 member presents and found 3 new investigators which is pretty much unknown of in Nob Hill, but it looks like it is going to be a new normal hopefully! We have seen incredible miracles with those that we are teaching, one of which is with Rudy who I told you about last week! He is doing great and still has a definite desire to be baptized. We set another date with a guy named Daniel Cruz who is promising as well. Went to the temple with an investigator named Ilya and had an amazing experience there, I will send pics later. Absolute miracle with our investigator named Alex. He has serious health problems and has been in the hospital for weeks now. He passed away for about 10 min and when they revived him he said that he had to tell us something. He told us that he needed to get baptized immediately, and that he knows everything is true now. He is still in the hospital but as soon as he is healthy which hopefully is soon, then we will baptize him. The work is going great!! :) 

I have allot more to tell you, but we have to leave to go to Alamo for P-day! The Crofts go home next week, and I wanted to spend the day with them! :) We will pick up Elder Lish in Los Lunas on the way down. Should be a blast, I will make sure to take plenty of pictures!

Love you tons

Elder Barrus

Good Times

Saying Goodbye to Las Cruces!

Heading to El Paso after church today!

 

81st Letter: "Happy 8th of July!"

Family!

Hey hey hey its your boy Elder Barrus! :) Its so good to hear how good each of you are doing!! It most definitely brings a smile to my face! Sounds though that each of you have been crazy busy! Which is good because I have as well!!  I described to you last week basically everything that was going to be happening this week, and everything happened, and much much more... Everything went great but it was crazy!! So MLC went great, it was a little nerve racketing training the best missionaries most of which I had been companions with before, but the spirit that was in the room was incredible. Revelation flew from all of our mouths as we sought for inspiration of how to lead the mission. After that on Friday we went up to Espanola NM for Zone Training and had a wonderful time with those missionaries in the Santa Fe zone. After which I stayed in Espanola on exchanges with Elder Morris (who was the only spanish elder that came out with me) he is a fantastic missionary, and a good friend! We had a great time there teaching all of the druggies of Espanola. Everything was going as planned, and we were to have the weekend and yesterday to focus on proselyting in our area! Until we get a call from President Miller telling us that we needed to emergency transfer a missionary as soon as possible and it was on us to do it. Just as we got done with that we texted President and we let him know that the transfer went well, he responded "Perfect, call me later tonight we have another ET situation." So in the last 48 hours we have had to ET two missionaries... Its been quite the ride! Needless to say I am excited to relieve some stress by playing some bball in a couple hours!

Things have been good though. It definitely has been different, and really stressful and kind of discouraging at times, but I have been happy for sure. The hardest thing I think has been leaving an area like Mesilla Valley (LC) that I loved so much where I got to know so many wonderful people that I grew to deeply love, and then coming here where when I came in they were teaching 2 investigators that weren't progressing and really don't even want us to come over. This hasnt been something to terribly new for me I have had to deal with that literally in every area that I have entered. I came to a humble realization that Heavenly Father he wanted me to gain that same love for this area just as I have had for my other areas. That meant that I needed to have more faith and work harder at finding those that are prepared! Since I realized that on Wednesday we have seen incredible blessings. We have found 3 solid investigators, one of which I want to tell you about. His name is Rudy, we came into contact with him by receiving a referral for him from one of his friends that is serving in the Las Vegas mission. Rudy wasnt too terribly surprised when we showed up at his door, but still wasnt expecting it. He accepted to meet with us and we had one of the most powerful Restoration lessons that been apart of on my mission! It was incredible how powerful the spirit was as we taught him, he was listening so intently and you could definitely tell that he was feeling the spirit. After the lesson we proceeded to invite him to follow the example of Jesus Christ by being baptized by someone holding the priesthood authority of God, and he immediately accepted, there was no hesitation. Right after he said yes he began to smile and you could tell he was excited for what laid before him. Truly was an incredible experience and I have already grown to love Rudy. Its amazing how we were taught in the MTC to invite someone to be baptized on the first and every lesson, I never really gained a testimony of that until I have applied it. God is working miracles among us, what a blessing it is to witness and to be apart of that! :) 

We also had a crazy experience this last week too, as we were teaching Jesse for the first time. The lesson started off great and the spirit definitely was with us as we taught about the Restoration, and we got to the point where we invited him to read the Book of Mormon and his facial expressions changed, and he got a creepy like possessed face on and just said straight up "NO", we were really confused because he just said how much he wanted to change and that he believed everything. We asked him with a puzzled look if there was a reason why and he didnt say a word back. We told him that it would bring him happiness, and he said that he was already happy... And just stared us down. I thought he was going to kill Elder Jensen. I am convinced that he got possessed like immediately as we invited him to read the Book of Mormon, it was weird. Other than that things are going great though! haha 

Love you all tons and hope you have a great week! 

Elder Nic Barrus

80th Letter: "Hola from ABQ!"

Dear Beloved Family,

Hey hey Family what a week it has been! Cant believe that I have now been up here in Albuquerque for 2 weeks, time has flown by since I came up. Doesn't even seem like we went through June feels like we skipped right over it! I sure hope that everything is going well for you all! I love you all, I hope you know how much I miss you and desire that each of you are doing good! I have been doing good, my mission has changed quite a bit lately as my responsibilities have grown, I will try to tell you just why. So after transfers were over, I think I told you that President asked us to go down south and do trainings with certain missionaries in Cloud Croft, Alamogordo, Las Cruces, and El Paso. It went super well, it was a ton of driving but all in all it was a good experience as we were able to give appropriate trainings to the missionaries. We were also able to do exchanges with the Zone Leaders in El Paso. El Paso is basically Mexico, nobody speaks english and nobody is white. haha The transfer isn't going to slow down either, definitely Transfer week is the busiest, but this week is MLC so we have to prepare a meeting for the leadership of the mission for Thursday that goes from 8am-3pm its going to be fun! With all of the work and stresses that we have, being able to work closely with President and Sister Miller makes it very worth it. Most nights we are over there from 8pm to 10 or 11pm discussing missionaries or planning trainings. It is so incredible I have learned so much from them!! It was neat President Miller said that he has never felt so good about a transfer since this one. There was so many changes and missionaries moved, truly the hand of The Lord was with us as we moved them. It definitely was a blessing for me to have been able to be a ZL in 3 different zones, it gave me the opportunity to get to know so many missionaries and understand their struggles and know where they will be the most successful.

Just kind of a outlook at what this week will be like. In a couple of minutes we will be going to the ABQ-E zones p-day activities and spend time with them. Elder Figgins is a ZL in that zone. Wednesday we will be planning for MLC most of the day. Thursday is MLC. Friday we will be going up to Santa Fe for Zone Training and then afterwards we will go on exchanges with their ZL's who cover the Espanola spanish area which is about an hour north of Santa Fe. Then we will reunite back up Saturday and head back to ABQ to proselyte in our area. Its going to be a pretty fun week. I know that I am going to blink and I will be back emailing ya. Well family I really am doing great! I love serving The Lord in whatever capacity that he has called me to serve in. I have been blessed in great abbundance with many spiritual experiences that have uplifted and strengthened my testimony. Amidst the many responsibiiltes that we have out of our area, still our focus is on strengthening and hastening the work in the Nob Hill YSA university branch. I am not planning on putting that on the back burner. We will continue to baptize and we will continue to find, and I know that The Lord will bless us with incredibly prepared people, as we do all that we can do! :)

Love you tons!! Thanks for your continual support!! I cant begin to put it in words of what you all mean to me! 

Elder Nic Barrus 

Picture: Arrival group at the temple Monday.