first pictures from Mexico

Greenies/gringos

Hermano and Hermana Whitehead

Dear parents and family of Elder Barton,

President Whitehead and I want to let you know that your son, Elder Barton,  safely arrived in Mexico City and is working hard.  You should have received a phone call from him right after he arrived at the mission home.

We are so thrilled to have your son in our mission. President Whitehead hand-picked top-notch elders and leaders in this mission to train this group of elders that your son is a part of.   We know they are going to be valiant, obedient, hard-working, and will love the people.  We have anticipated their arrival for months. 

We fed your son dinner soon after he arrived, had a short devotional and sent him to bed in the basement apartment at the mission home with the other missionaries. The next morning we fed him breakfast and then he was interviewed by President Whitehead.  Next he was briefed on the rules of the mission by the APs and afterwards met his new trainer and companion for the next 6 weeks at least.  We took him to an authentic Mexican  restaurant for comida (lunch), took pictures and then he was whisked away with his companion by taxi to his new destination to go to work.  

Thank you for raising this wonderful young man.  We love him already.

President and Hermana Whitehead

unpublished

P.S. don't include this in the public address. haha. But I had an amazing experience in the temple today. I went into the Celestial Room with my companion to pray before we left. When I was done with my very sincere prayer, I was just sitting down and pondering what will happen to me in the next few months. All of a sudden, I felt an overwhelming feeling. I just KNEW that Grandpa Rees was right beside me. I felt him, I felt his love, and I felt his support. I said,"I love you" in a whisper. And I felt him say it back. I KNOW that he said it back. I lost it and started crying. I know I have felt love from both sides of the veil. I have felt Adrianne as well. (the special needs girl I danced with my very first time at Kauri Sue) We have angels of God watching over us. They know a lot more than us, and they are ALWAYS with us. They're protecting me as well as you. 

So I got a picture with Jeffery R. Holland. haha we watched a talk of his on Sunday night on the TV. The other Elder is Elder Worthington

We got doorbell ditched by the district next door. I looked through the peephole to see this....they meant business.

This is Hermano Urquhart. He's a stud. He was one of my favorite teachers.

I made this binder to help me organize my lessons. I put in pictures from pamphlets to decorate it.

It's been a long day... we were given a ten minute break right before our last in field orientation meeting.

Ran into some school friends. Elder Butler on the left and Elder Bagley (he's in our stake) on the right

I forgot to tell him, he didn't have to wear them all at once

Work it!!

Showin' off

This is Hermano Holman. He was the teacher that sparked the most ideas in our head about some really deep doctrine. He speaks Spanish and a native Nicoraguan language called Mesquito. (to pronounce it, say the Nevada city Mesquite, and add 2 O's on the end. haha) And yes, I'm wearing all the tie bars I received,  I forgot to take them off.

By the way, the other two elders are from another district that leaves the same day as us. Elder Mielke and Elder Christensen

Again, no need to say it. I got skills

Yup....explains itself I think

This is my district. Our last photo session...

Hey Everyone!

     Here's my last email before I head out to Mexico!!! One problem is....i only have an hour layover in Atlanta. Which means no call time because that hour will be used running through security and boarding the next plane. But I'll call if we have a delay. But I may be able to call in the morning before I leave the Salt Lake Airport. My flight is scheduled around 8:30 or so. So you'd have to get up early to talk to me...and it would only be for an hour or so. But I will get to the airport around 6 a.m. and probably will be able to talk around 7 or so. If I buy a call card, you have to answer the call or else it charges me like $1.30 just to attempt the call. If I don't get a chance to call during the day, I will for sure beg and plead for President Whitehead to let me call home. On other matters, this week has been pretty eventful! I sung in the MTC choir for my last Tuesday night devotional and it was so fun. I love singing songs to the Lord. Also, yesterday we had "in field orientation." Which is just what it sounds. An all day meeting telling us what to expect and what to do when we get there. Like get in contact with the ward mission leader and bishop and such. It was pretty cool because all the teachers at the MTC are recently returned missionaries. One teacher was apart of "the district" that we are supposed to watch before going on our missions. It was Elder Christensen for those who know what I'm talking about. We went up to main campus for it and we stayed there pretty much all day. When we got back, we checked our mail and I got even happier than I already was! I got my jacket and boots and the "13 lbs of love" haha. I was so happy! I am so grateful for everything I received. I'm not sure exactly who contributed what, but please tell them thank you. Because it made my day! But there is one small problemo...haha. The razor blades you sent don't fit on my razor handle because they're a different kind from Gilette. But the good news it, I have the handle that they go with in my bathroom drawer back at home. I don't know if you can find it in there and drop it off by Sunday night, but I need it or else I can't use the razors. If you can't find it, just bring all of them in the drawer. haha. It should say "Gilette Fusion" on it somewhere. But thank you so much for everything. Also, Cheryl needs to know that we can check our mail more than once a week. haha apparently she got in a scuffle with someone on the phone. We check our mail 2X every day, so I'll likely receive her package tonight. I'm so excited to leave for Mexico right now. I know it's going to be some of the hardest few months of my life, but I'm going in with a full head of steam and I'll be ready for whatever the Lord has in store for me. This morning was my last opportunity to go to the temple here. My companion and I decided to do a sealing session. It was so cool to do that for other people. The temple worker performing them said that he is so sure that the people that we perform them for will personally thank us in the next life. As missionaries, we can only perform them as a son or daughter. But it was so cool! The Spirit was so strong. It gave me a better testimony of eternal families. I had an old Tongan couple be the proxy for the parents for me. And after we were done, the man came up to me and said,"you're a good son" and laughed really hard and walked away. haha. Anyways I'm gonna start sending pictures now so I got to go! I love you all, and I look forward to emailing you for the first time in a foreign country! Thank you for all the love and support. I can literally feel it, and I hope you feel mine too. I have grown so much since being at the MTC, and I wish I could share with you all the knowledge I have obtained from my teachers. We have the best teachers here. One of my teachers, Hermano Holman, put the MTC experience like this. "You're going to forget everything about the MTC. You'll forget your teachers, your districts and fellow missionaries, and all you'll think about is the mission field. Right now you're probably all thinking that this isn't even possible to forget the MTC, but I believe we felt the same way in the pre-existence. We were ready to come down to earth, we were told that we wouldn't remember anything, and we couldn't believe it, but here we are." It is really hard to think that I won't remember a lot of this place, because I have grown so much here. The time has flown by for me, and I hope to make the best of the next 2 years. I love you all so much!

              Elder Barton

 Elder Duke(the only elder taller than Jared

 Elder Munoz

 Elder Ollerton

 Elder Reid

 Rice crispy man (has boredom set in?)

 the sign they touch before they leave their appt

 Elder Worthington

Elder Reid

 getting creative...or bored

plan of salvation (2 hour lecture he wants us to save so he can explain to us)

Snowy temple day

Hey Family!!!

     I got my travel plans yesterday! I leave for Mexico a week from Monday! We fly to Atlanta, Georgia then straight to Mexico City. I was upset we don't get to go to Dallas because I was excited to see Nate. But oh well...One thing you need to know is that Delta Airlines charges 100 dollars for the second bag. I can use my card to pay for it, but you just got to know. I'm fine to take my shoulder bag and carry on bag on board, I just need 100 dollars for my second suitcase. Anyways now for the good stuff. The stuff I need! haha. I'm going to want a new watch because I just can't find mine anywhere. Also, I forgot to bring my baptism clothes with me. Like my white pants and tie. I also will want more razors. I've gone through 7 up to this point. I'm praying that they will last longer but I'm going to want more. I also need like 5 more pairs of socks because if i want to change them after gym everyday i won't have enough. I also forgot my oil vile in my room....sorry it's a lot to get in the last week. I also will want address from anybody who would like a letter. But keep in mind that I don't have time to write a lot of letters, but I will write anybody who gives me an address. But I definitely need Aunt Cheryl's address!!! This is optional, but I'd like another sweater if that would work out. I think that's everything I need....if you don't want to send it through the postal service, you can just drop it off at the Wyview multi-purpose building and I can go pick it up. Sorry that's a lot of stuff...

     Now for the other good stuff! We heard from L. Tom Perry at the Tuesday night devotional! It was so good. He's such a funny guy and his message was so good. He said a lot of simple things, but in a different way. And it made some simple things more clear to me. And he also said some things that were a little deeper and harder to understand. So it was a good mix. 

     My companion and I taught a few more lecciones this week. We totally knocked one out of the park. Our "investigator" had a very firm belief that the Bible is complete and we can't add anything to it. Which was a problem when the Book of Mormon was brought up. We talked about it more and more, and we pulled out scriptures off the top of our heads. One scripture hit him hard and he realized that it is necessary to have the Book of Mormon as well. After that, we talked about baptism and he accepted! It's our first time getting a baptism!!! We were so excited. It was our first lesson that we had a legitimate conversation instead of just teaching prepared lesson. We were able to trust our spanish enough to have a conversation. It was so cool and we got complimented on our lesson afterwards from the teacher who was playing the investigator. It was definitely a confidence builder!

     I got to get to sending pictures now. I love you all!!! 

          Elder Barton

Elder Romo wanted to feel tall so he got on a chair.  On the right is Elder Knight. He joined our Companionship when his district left because he had a broken thumb. He was with us for a week and he was one of the funniest guys I've ever met. We all got along well.

Me and Elder Knight

This is our man Latrell.  He's 12 and just so full of the spirit!
Hey Family!!

     The only eventful thing that happened this week was yesterday. I woke up at 4:00 a.m. to make it to the Wyview Chapel at 4:30 to catch the shuttle to the airport. We would be traveling with 5 Elders and 3 Sisters. Well the shuttle didn't show up until 5:30 so we were just sitting there for an hour. We got to the airport and went through security. I quickly found out that airport workers are very uptight. Haha especially for being early in the morning. We got through security and our flight was scheduled to leave at 8:41. When we were all done with security and such it was 7:00, so we had some time to relax. Being on an airplane for the first time was really cool. My favorite part was the takeoff because it was cool to see how fast we were going and then all of a sudden seeing everything get smaller and smaller. After a 50 minute flight, we got off and were picked up by a senior missionary by the name of Elder Greer. Elder Greer took us to an institute building so we could talk until our consulate appointment. Little did we know that our appointment was at 1 o'clock. When we got to the institute, it was 10 o'clock Vegas time. Elder Greer said,"anything I say today will not pertain to your personal salvation, but I hope you retain some of this information for your future boyfriends or girlfriends. If you want to sleep, I don't care. If you need to use the restroom, just go." Then he goes on to talk about the lineage of Abraham and all the family issues they had. It wasn't a group discussion, it was a lecture. And he talked all the way up until 12:30 and we had to leave. All of us sighed with relief. Then Elder Greer says,"when we come back we are going to talk about the different dispensations." and I turned to another Elder and said,"WHEN we come back???" and we all groaned to ourselves. The consulate itself only took a half hour. Then we got back to the institute at 2, and he told us he was going to drop us off at the airport at 4....so we got to hear another long lecture about lineages through the dispensations. 4 o'clock finally came and we all rejoiced. When we got back to the airport, we went to get our boarding passes and we found out that the church voided our round trip... so we made a call to Salt Lake and found out that they switched our flights and switched airlines. That took a half hour to find out. Our new flight was scheduled to leave at 7:00 pm. It was 4:30 at this point. So we reported to our gate and got dinner. After we had dinner, we found out that our flight was delayed until 10:20.... So my companion and I decided to go proselyte. Haha we bought a B.O.M. the day before for this purpose. So we had 5 hours to talk to people. Long story short, the only people we talked to were members, stopped talking to us as soon as we brought up religion, or just plain ignored us. This went on for 5 freaking hours. My companion and I kept walking around with hope though. When we sat down at our gate again, we decided to go around one more time. We figured one more time wouldn't hurt. We went around and......nothing. We came back with 20 more minutes until our flight and needless to say we were frustrated. We were sitting down with our heads in our hands. We had just declared we were done trying when we heard a voice say to us in a loud whisper,"psssst. Are you missionaries?" we looked up to see a young boy. We whispered back excitedly,"yeah!" and we stood up to go talk to him. (he was sitting 10 seats over from us) He was this little ball of joy. He told us his name is Latrell and he was 12 years old. I have never seen a young boy so excited about the gospel. My companion and I were talking to him and he noticed the other 6 missionaries sitting down, and he wanted them to come over too. So I got everybody else to come over to talk to him. He was so happy! He said,"I feel so......spiritual!" and it just made our day. We kept talking to him and he told us his favorite scripture is James 1:5. We shared with him our favorite scriptures and he was just so happy. My companion and I decided to give him the B.O.M. we bought and we told him,"we want you to read that, mark your favorite scriptures, write your testimony in it, and give it to someone else that needs it. That was you can be a missionary too." and his face just lit up. He was so happy to do it! He said,"I am never letting this out of my sight until I give it away!!" We were so happy! Then we sat by him on the plane and read about Samuel the Lamanite with him. Long story short, the 5 hours of frustration were erased and all we could think about was Latrell. I just remember thinking,"the Lord answers our prayers in mysterious ways." all we prayed for by the end was SOMEONE to talk to. As soon as we threw in the towel, we heard his loud whisper, and we forgot about all the rejections. You never know who's life you will change. Always be ready to share the gospel, no matter with who. I love you all, and I'll send the pictures from this week in a couple minutes.

            Love,

               Elder Barton

Found this map at the main campus when we were over there the other day.

This is my branch president and his wife. President Sanchez is a great speaker, and he reminds me of grandpa Barton. Just a great guy to be around, and he is so in tune with the spirit.

Dear family,

     It's P-day again! I have a few more pictures that I'll send in a second. In a nutshell, this last week was pretty good. Mi compañero y yo taught a few discussions to our new investigator. We made it a goal to no longer use notes in the lessons that have all of the phrases we need to say, and just go in with it memorized. Since we have started that, we have noticed a big difference in our lessons. I´m looking at our investigator in the eye and bearing my testimony with words I know. This new investigator is harder than our last one. He is pretty shy and doesn´t look at us a lot. But when we look him in the eye and we are talking effectively, he looks at us and listens. He looks really interested when we ask him about his family and about what he likes to do, so we try to include those things in our lessons. We teach him again this afternoon when Prep day is over. My español is coming better each day. We have 4 hours of spanish class every day besides Saturday and Sunday. Sunday´s are pretty crazy around here. We have sacrament meeting at 8 a.m. followed by priesthood session. The church we go to is right across the street from where we enter LES on Canyon Road. After priesthood, we walk back to our classrooms and have personal study time for about an hour. We wait for the branch presidency to be done with meetings. Then we have branch council. It´s basically BYC. All the district leaders, the zone leaders, the sister training leader, and the branch presidency is in there and we talk about our districts needs or problems. Then after that meeting, we have a leadership meeting for the same people as in branch council. We learn how to be better leaders and we learn different ways to be a great leader. In my recent studies of the Book of Mormon, my mind has been blown. Mostly by the facsimile of Abraham (the second one) it´s so cool to study that and see connections to us. Also, I´ve read about Ammon, Helaman, Limhi, King Noah, the priests who escape, and so on. I´ve learned a lot from them. Also, Doctrine and Covenants 130 is pretty cool as well. What am I saying? It's all pretty cool. The teachers here have only been home from their missions a couple months or a year or two, so they are fresh off it. They are such powerful teachers and they have given me really cool things to study and think about. P-day is fun because we get to go to the temple. But they have shown the old film all 3 times I've gone, because there has always been at least one person that needs headphones for the translation. And apparently they don't have the translation for the new film. It shouldn't be that hard to do, seeing as it's the same script.... oh well. Keep me updated on Playoff day. I can't wait to hear about it. Thank you for everybody's dearelder.com letters, and I really appreciate the cookies from Aunt Cheryl (so does my companion) haha. Thanks to Lindsy for the posters and candy. I have my posters and pictures all set up on our bedroom desk. Also, I need an email address from Glenn and Cheryl. I'd like to email them on Saturday's as well. I was happy to read Glenn and Cheryl's letters. I'm sorry if I don't write you enough during the week. I try to write as often as I can, but by the time we finally get back to the apartment and shower, pray, and write in journals in time for bed. So every Sunday and Tuesday night we have a devotional. They are so cool and we see some cool people. We haven't seen an apostle yet, but we've had 2 members from the seventy speak to us. Hopefully we get an apostle soon. Apparently Dallin H. Oaks spoke the night before I came to the MTC. Again, thank you for all the letters and packages, I never get sick of them. I love you all!

     One request I have is from Mom and Dad. On Tuesday, our branch president came into our classroom after the devotional to talk about it with us and he asked us a question. He asked if we knew who the first member of the church was in our family on both sides of our parents, and I realized I had no idea. So if you could email or write me about how the church got started in my family, I'd love that. Well, that's all for now. I love you so much!

             Love,

                Elder Barton