Christmas week

Dear Family,

     First of all, it was great to see you all on Christmas! I was so happy to hear all your voices and to talk for a few minutes. I´m still sure that I don´t have an accent. haha but whatever you say. So about other important stuff, we baptized 3 this week! We baptized a little girl named Celina, and 2 youth named Brian and Lina. I think Brian and Lina are 2 future missionaries. We´ll talk to them about that! We ended up having a White Christmas here in Mexico as well. But it wasn´t with snow, it was with white baptismal clothes.  We ended up with 5 in December. As a zone, we finished below what we were hoping, but it was still a good month for the zone. We finished with 19 baptisms. With an average of 2.37 baptisms per companionship. I´m so nervous to see the results next Monday in our meeting with President. It´s a great month for us, but I´m just not sure if it´s enough to get us on top again. We´ll see! So on Saturday morning, we went to an área called Cuitláhuac to help them get someone to get baptized. She´s a lady who has gone to church a lot but just wasn´t getting baptized. So we went over there with them. It was 4 Americans against one lady. in about 20 minutes, we had the lady convinced that the church is true. I did the baptism interview and she got baptized yesterday.  it was cool to see. After that, we went up to the corner of the street and we were waiting for the bus talking to Elder Floisand and Elder Monarrez. All of a sudden, this guy comes up and starts talking to us about he can help us baptize more people. I asked him if he was a member of the church and he said no, he just knows how the Mexicans are. haha. He was explaining how to convince people socially before doing it spiritually. I asked him,´´ so how many people have you baptized?´´ He paused and said,´´.....nobody. But I want to help you!´´ haha we got a good laugh out of that. So I was just looking at the pictures that you sent me of my cousins. They´re huge! haha it´s amazing how much older they look. I think the biggest surprise of the picture was Brooks! Beast! haha. I love you all!

Con amor,

Elder Barton 

Hola Familia!

     Well, this week is Christmas!! When all of school is out, all the responsibility comes on the zone leaders to plan a zone activity on the 24th...haha I´ve been dumped with more things in the last week than my whole mission. But I´m having fun anyways. Anyways, the question that everyone wants answered....skype! We set up our skype time with 2 awesome members. We will be making the call around 10 am Mountain Time (11 mexico city time) in the house of some members. I can´t wait to see you guys again! I´ll be sure to prepare some things to say...haha. We´ll have to be prepared because we only have 40 minutes this time. But here are some of the things that happened this last week. First, we had another baptism! We were going to have 3, but all of a sudden the kids didn´t want to do it. They are 25 and 18 years old. I love them to death, so we´ll see what happens this weekend. But the mom still wanted to be baptized without her kids. This family was a reference from a bishop that lives about an hour from here. He found us walking through the alleyways of Tacuba and stopped us in our tracks. He took us to that family and had success! We just have to hope for the kids for this week. Also, we had our special Christmas Zone Conference with President. We had good messages given to us and after that, we got to watch Meet The Mormons. The new movie about our church. There´s a segment on that movie about the Navy football team´s head coach. Let´s just say I was getting the chills and kind of losing focus when they were showing clips of his team and some of their games. haha. I also got my package!! Thanks so much for the new suit and other stuff! The suit fits well, I just have to get it hemmed here pretty soon. I´m looking for a member to do it. If not, Hna. Whitehead will do it in January when we have interviews. I also got another one of Cheryl´s funny cards! I loved it all! So as a zone of Camarones, we have a ton of potential to repeat as the zone of power...we are going into the last week of the month. It´ll be harder because we won´t be working on Wednesday from 2 pm and on, then Thursday morning because we will be talking with families. So we will be praying so hard and going to work while we can. I got to baptize 4 people for the hermanas in our district yesterday as well. They were all so happy to be getting baptized, and it was such a cool experience to see them. Well I´m ready to go to work again and hardly get sleep. haha. I love you all, and I´ll see you on Thursday!! Merry Christmas!

Con amor,

Elder Barton

Jared's companion from the MTC

4 baptisms for the sisters

"White Christmas"

Hola!

     Well there flies by another week in la gran misión.... it went by so fast that there´s not much to write this week...haha. The Christmas season for the missionaries is definitely in full swing and we are sharing a new message called, in english, He is the Gift. It is bringing the spirit so strongly into our lessons and it is helping us find new people to teach. The members are helping us out a bunch. My companion and I have to run around to other áreas, and it´s hard to keep working in Tacuba for a lot of time, but the members have made up for it. We have 5 more baptisms planned this Christmas season all thanks to them. Right now, we can focus on making sure that all the others have a ´´White Christmas´´ this season. Not a White Christmas with snow, but with baptismal clothing. We have a lot of potential to finish out the month strong and get our goal of 20 baptisms. We need to work work work, but we can definitely do it. I´m excited to see what happens. So tomorrow, we are getting 5 zones together to have a special zone conference with presidente. I remember the christmas zone conference from last year. It was the first time I understood 95% of Presidente Whitehead. haha. We will all receive our christmas gifts from Presidente and Hermana Whitehead tomorrow, a flu shot!!! Whoo!! haha. Always the best time of the year. I´ll have more to write about next week....but just know that my companion and I are getting along great and I´m having fun still. Really stressed but I´m having fun!

Con amor,

Elder Barton

A little piece of heaven

Hello!

     Another change has come and gone. Long story short, I get to stay in Tacuba!!! I´m excited to take charge of another month in Camarones with my new companion Elder Bradford!!! I got another American!Elder Bradford is a great guy with a lot of great ideas. We´ll get along great and we we´ll work good together. Not a lot happened this week, we just finished up the change and we had another baptism yesterday. We found Lupe through a family that got baptized recently. She had been to church before and we got her baptized in a week and a half. haha. Those are the types of miracles that we enjoy in Tacuba.  We received our changes on Saturday night, and I got my new squad of missionaries. We are still really young, but we have a lot of great missionaries. I´ll get to meet them all tomorrow when we have our district meetings. So I´m sure that you guys know about our message that we are sharing this month called, He is the Gift. We received new cards to pass around and we have permission to share the video that goes along with it. We have found a lot of success with it and it really brings the spirit of Christmas. It seems like we get a reference every time we share it with the members. Our bishop is amazing and he played the video in front of all the members after sacrament meeting yesterday, and passed out the cards to all of them. We received some more references after that. I´m looking forward to another successful month and to see if we can fight for that number 1 spot again. That´s all I got this week. I love you all!!

Con amor,

Elder Barton

our baptism

We sent some recent converts and investigators to the visitor´s center del templo. Before they left, I took some pictures in the combi.

Sándwiches that I always buy. (the closest thing to DP) A little piece of heaven

Our recent converts

Message from Kenny

Thanks sister Barton! For those words my mom and I are trying our best to be better every day and helpful.
Last Sunday an Elder from our new ward let us talk with Elder Barton for about a minute and it was so good, he inspired us with his words to keep working hard in the Lord's plan, we could held the tears, we miss him so much.
My mom asked me to tell you this: "you have an amazing son, he's a leader and he has a very special light on him, we can see it, the members and the Elders can see it too, wherever we mention "Elder Barton" people's expression and comments are always the best, also president Whitehead (we met him last Sunday) says that he's very very powerful and full of spirit and good attitude on helping our Father in Heaven bringing people to Christ"

This message came from Kenny today. It made me cry happy tears

Mission Fun

Buenos días!

     Well, another month has come and gone. This month of November was certainly the month where I was the most tired, most frustrated, stressed, but rewarded in my mission. We went to our meeting with President on Monday with the other zone leaders and found out the results of the month. As a mission, we had 231 baptisms! It was the 2nd best month of the year. As a zone of Camarones, we had 24 of those. In the meeting, they have a slideshow of the numbers of every zone, and the zone leaders of that zone stand up in front and present what they did. Usually they do it in alphabetical order, but on monday they did it a little different. They started with the zone with the lowest average number of baptisms and worked their way up to number 1. I was sitting next to my ex-companion, Elder Cabrera, waiting for the results. Long story short, we were left with the 2 top spots left. They were us and Elder Cabrera...haha. We were waiting for the next slide to show up to reveal who ended up in 2nd place. After playing with us a little, the assistant turned the slide to reveal Metepec!!! I was filled with relief and so much joy when I realized that we had done it! We are the zone of power!!! I´m so grateful for the opportunity to see how hard our young group fought and worked. Especially last Sunday when we NEEDED to put 6 under the water to assure us a spot on top. My companion and I baptized one, and we helped other areas get 5 more. Then we found out that we ended up on top! After that, we had our zone meeting yesterday and we revealed the results to the other missionaries. I drew a Camarón on a whiteboard with our names and our number of baptisms. haha. I don´t think I have mentioned this, but camarón in spanish means shrimp. So when I send the picture of the whiteboard, it´ll make sense. haha. So we received some announcements from President during the meeting on Monday. One of them was about skype on Christmas day. Usually, the time we have is 1 hour to talk to our families. But this Christmas, we will only have 40 minutes. It was announcement from the area seventy, not from President or Hermana Whitehead. So just be ready for a 40 minute talk instead of an hour. That´s all I got this week, thanks for all the love and support!!

Con amor,

Elder Barton

silly missionaries 

Cute little girl who told Jared a joke. What did one stop light say to the other? Turn around, I'm changing.haha

Jared's awesome shrimp

Mexican smiles

numero uno in November (they were kinda excited)

this sisters asked the Elders to pose how the girls do....Nailed it!

? I think they're making an 8....I don't know

happy dance

Tyler told me about the poses. Jared is posing like Collin Keapernick Elder Floisand andt he Hermanas are doing Tim Tebow

Hola!

     Well this week was full of ups and downs again...haha. As a zone, we did great! Our young group is tearing it up right now! One of our assistants told me that our zone is fighting for the number one spot in the misión for this month! There´s still one more Sunday left in the month, and we have a lot of potential in the zone for people to get baptized this Sunday. Hopefully we come out on top! Here in Tacuba it was a little frustrating. We had 2 baptisms planned, and they fell through Sunday morning....one of the worst feelings of life. But the zone covered for us this week and almost every área baptized! This week will be even better in the zone. Anyways part of this week, we had to go pick up a divorcement paper from someone who lives outside of our misión. We got permission from the assistants to go get it, and the meeting spot happened to be the temple! We arrived at the house of the Lord and it was such a cool sight. We obviously couldn´t go in, but it was still incredible considering that I hadn´t have seen a temple in about a year. I took some pictures and everything. It´s a pretty big temple in comparison to some in Utah, and the lawn is just beautiful. It´s cool because when we were in the little bus, we were watching the streets of Mexico City go by, then all of a sudden there´s a huge white building out of nowhere. I loved it! So this week is my second Thanksgiving out of the US....it´ll be hard. But there´s a sister in my ward who makes the best pies in the world! I´ll see if she can make something for us...haha. And also, I complete one year in Mexico. It was really slow at first, but ever since 6 months in started to FLY. Sorry this letter is a short one, but there´s not much to say this week....haha. There will be more to say next week after our meeting with President and when we get the results of the month!!

Con amor,
Elder Barton

Temple

Lots of baptisms and Jared is cute (I miss him!)

Hola!

     Well, I completed 13 months in the mission yesterday! I honestly didn´t notice it until the night before. For about a month, I was stressing to the zone how important it was to baptize on the 16th because we were going to have stake conference. I had the idea of doing all of our baptisms together after the conference. I got permisison from the stake president, and my comp and I got everything ready to go. A lot of things happened and only 2 areas baptized yesterday. Those 2 areas were us and the hermanas in our district. So it was a great day for our district. haha. From Tacuba, we baptized a family of 3 and another lady who already had family who were members. La familia Olvera have made so many sacrifices in order to be baptized, and the Lord has absolutely poured out His blessings on them. The mom, Alicia, has cried so many times trying to express how grateful she is for her new life. I got to baptize one of the daughters of Alicia, the other lady whose family are already members, and the baptism that the hermanas brought. After we were changed and came back, our whole zone of 14 missionaries sung If The Savior Stood Beside Me in spanish as the special musical number. We were pretty powerful. So we also had stake conference. It was really cool because we had a satelite broadcast from downtown Salt Lake City. Elder Daniel Johnson, President Richard J. Maynes, Sister Reeves, and Elder Neil L. Anderson were the people there. Elder Johnson was the area seventy here for a long time. And President Maynes was a mission president here in Mexico. They all spoke in spanish, even Elder Anderson. It was cool to hear that, and to feel the same spirit in them. We also had interviews with President this week. He gave me a great council that I could use to get more references taking advantage of when the spirit is present. Sorry this letter is so short this week, but that´s all I got. I love you all!  

Con amor,

Elder Andrews (Jared wore his glasses ( I don't know why..)

baptism pics

baptism

more watches

lots of baptism pics

Hola!

     Well this week was full of events since Wednesday! On Friday and Saturday, we went to conferences with of the Seventy. Elder Jesús Ortíz came to our mission to give us some advice and just say what the Lord wants us to hear from him. He said he was sent from Elder Dallin H. Oaks for the assignment. Him and his wife are an incredible tag team and they were really powerful. All the missionaries in the city went to a session Friday morning with just us missionaries, then at 7 pm with our Ward Council members. Then we had a special meeting with him as Zone Leaders and Sister Training Leaders on Saturday morning. He was so full of the spirit and said some really direct things to us. I learned a lot and I have a lot of things to apply and change. One thing he said was kind of funny but really serious at the same time.  He said a missionary asked him what he should do if his companion was being disobedient. He said, and I´m translating,´´Go with your companion wherever he goes, except hell.´´ haha. Meaning we try to help our companions who are disobedient. But after 2 tries if they still don´t want to, we leave them there and we call President. And we tell President that we want changes because we want the spirit in our area. That´s in extreme cases, but it´s something he told us to do if we need to. I learned so much from Elder Ortíz, and he said something in one of his talks that I was asking myself for a long time. It caught my attention, and I made sure to ask him about it later on. I got one on one with him for about a minute by strategic thinking, and I asked my question.  He answered in the most simple way, and I was able to get that answer. So at the conference with missionaries and the ward council members, the ward leaders from Las Armas came!!! I got to see 2 of my favorite families in the mission. La familia Sanchez, and la familia Fuentes. It was so great to see them and to talk for a bit. It made my day and it made me even more excited to go see them again when I´m heading home in September. Also, yesterday we baptized Juanita!! She´s my oldest convert, 80 years old! She´s been Christian all of her life, and those are normally the hardest to convert!  Her baptism was great, and she was so happy to be baptized again by immersion, but this time with the proper authority! That´s all I got this week. I love you all!

Con amor,

Elder Barton

la familla Sanchez

Hno. Fuentez

awesome baptism pics

I'm guessing they're looking at heaven

day of the dead

Had an interesting experience this week. There is this alley-way in our área that is really creepy. And we have to use it to get to one of our investigators. The alley is wide enough for 2 cars to pass through really close together, then in gets to where only one can pass. Half way through this alley, there´s a huge glass case with a statue of la santa muerte. Which is basically the grim reaper. It´s a belief that was started here in Mexico City. They worship this idol and give it money. Saturday night, there was a huge party for the day of the dead (dia de los muertos) and that alley was a site of one of the biggest parties. There was a ton of drugs and just crappy stuff. Well we were going to pick up our investigator to go to church in a van that a member has. He helps us every Sunday pick up investigators. We were going down this alley and 5 guys stopped the van to tell us the alley was closed off. These guys were obviously drugged out of their minds, therefore really dangerous to be around. We started to back up but they started to hit the windows and basically trying to get in. Then one guy pulls out his pistol and starts shooting which I hope were blanks into the air. We made it out safely but it was still interesting. I didn´t want to include that in the main email, but there ya go. Then the day after, one of the main subjects of our meeting with President was safety. haha. I know that we are protected here. I don´t know if this is good or bad, but I had no fear at all in that situation. I was just guiding our driver as he drove in reverse, and watching that unfold. 

el Día de los Muertos

Hola!

     Well another Wednesday email! This week and a half was another grinding one. First of all, we have had our first few zone meetings. I wanted to find out the average time we have as a zone in the mission field because I noticed that we are all so young in the mission. Our average time is 7.8 months in the field. For our first zone meeting, I used an example of the 2000 stripling warriors and how great they did together, and how we can do the same. We are seeing a lot of success so far! So this week was Halloween and el Día de los Muertos here in Mexico. Halloween is the same. The kids go around asking for candy. There were a ton of families in the street, but we had to give them what they wanted in order for them to listen to us. So I went and bought a bag of candy and we went around passing it around contacting every family we saw. haha. It was fun and we set a couple of appointments that way. We were walking down one street at around 8 pm, and we see a group of people clapping and dancing to music. When we got closer, we saw that the group of people were clapping around a witch that was doing something on the ground with dolls and stuff...haha we just kept on walking. Well, I didn´t see the cable on the ground connecting the music speaker to the outlet. I kind of tripped over it, and the music went completely silent....My heart sunk. haha. I got the cable and was trying frantically to put the music back on, and it finally turned back on before anything happened. haha. So on Monday, we went to our monthly meeting with President Whitehead. One of the main topics was about our safety. The APs really drilled that subject and what we need to do in a lot of situations. And President talked about how the spirit in the secret of having success. If we don´t have the spirit, it is impossible to have success. I liked all the messages a lot. Yesterday, we had our zone meeting to share what we had learned with President. I got to share the message about our safety and what to do, and about how to have a lot of excitement what we are inviting people to go to church. To give an example of that, I casually started with a debate. I started saying that the USA is the best country in the world and why. Then, a sister (which I had prepared before so she would know what to do) started saying why Mexico was the best. So with the sparks beginning to fly, I get 2 americans and 2 mexicans debating which is the better country to live in. I choose our missionary from Uraguay to choose who won. Of course, he choose the USA. haha. One of my favorite things said by the americans was,´´my friend, if you live in the USA, you can drink water from. the. tap!´´ haha. The point was, in the debate of the countries, there was a lot of enthusiasm, and the 2 sides were using all sorts of imagination to convince the guy. The same should be used when inviting people to church. We need to say all of the benefits we receive and the blessings of going to church with the same spiritual enthusiasm. haha so that´s all I have for this week. I also received 3 cards from Cheryl! I laughed so hard at all 3. haha. When I was transferred from Las Torres, those cards were already in the house of the Zone leaders to give to me, but they forgot, so they just barely got to me now. But thanks for those! I love you all!

Con amor,

Elder Barton

A few pics of home

Dear Family,

     Well we had the changes this morning! My companion and I went to the terminal to meet with a lot of other missionaries and we started shipping groups of people off. Elder Maldonado got to the terminal and we had to wait a little bit to see that everyone was with their companions and going to their new áreas. This week was yet another stressful one, but we saw rewards in our área. We had a baptism yesterday for Zenaida! She was a miracle contact that ended up getting baptized one week earlier than usual. She is such a great lady and she was so happy to get baptized. But after the services yesterday, we ran over to one of the hermana´s área to do a baptismal interview and try to get another lady to accept to be baptized in the same day. haha. My companion did the interview and he took an hour....the lady wasn´t quite convinced yet. But he ended up getting her and she committed. We had to leave because my companion wanted to say goodbye to everyone in the ward. We were visiting a few families and we got a text saying that the lady didn´t get baptized because the bishop wasn´t going to be there to see it....the bishop had already given them permission to do it. But they threw it away and we basically lost a few hours there....then another 2 baptisms fell through in another área, and we ended up 3 baptisms under the goal that we put. The change ended, and those 2 áreas didn´t baptize in the month because of that...but I guess the good news is that they will get baptized in this month. I´m going to have to adjust to my new host of missionaries in my zone. Everybody is really inexperienced in the misión  minus a few. So we will see how my ragtag team does. haha. Lots of prayers please! And also, I have to give a birthday shoutout to Tyler! I´m sorry I couldn´t get a letter off to you, I ran out of envelopes for one and I almost never have time anymore on P-days. But I can´t believe that you will be 11! In one more year, I will be home to see you ordained a deacon. How cool! Well that´s all I have for this week. I love you all!

Con amor,

Elder Barton

Jareds breakfast

Part of the zone

Um, there's a parrot on my shoulder

baptism