First zone conference lesson with Presidente Whitehead

Hola!

     So....I have to apologize. When I said that we weren´t going to be emailing this week, I was thinking that this would be the first Monday of the month....half way through the week, I realized that Monday still fell in September, and had no way of telling you guys...sorry.  So this week was a kind of normal week. With a lot of stress, not a lot of sleep, and mosquitos biting us at night. haha. I wake up with 3 new bites every morning on my hands. haha. My comp. and I just bought some stuff for it. This week was kind of rough on the zone. Some areas blanked and had 0 investigators at church, so we were trying to find out why and what they were doing throughout the week. Then a few of the sisters are having problems with health and they aren´t really excited to be here. And every night that we receive the numbers, there are at least 1 or 2 errors in every text. We have to send the numbers to the assistant, so when there are errors, we have to call the areas directly to ask why and get on them a little bit for not sending their numbers right. It results in less sleep and more stress.  But it´s fun. I´ve never had this much responsibility regarding other people and trying to find the way to fix it for every area. I´m just grateful I´m in a small zone for now. So this week, we had zone conference with Presidente. I got to share my first message in a zone conference. My topic was how to ask inspired questions. I thought it would be easy but then I heard that I had to only to practices. It´s hard enough asking an inspired question on the spot with investigators. But I had to come up with something to do in front of the zone and Presidente.  You can´t really plan what inspired question you are going to ask, but I think I did pretty well with it.  President and Hermana Whitehead shared messages from chapter 10 from Preach My Gospel. Which teaches us how to be better teachers and how to develop differenc attributes. It was great as usual. So this week for reals this time we have the meeting of zone leaders with Presidente. For reals this time, we will be emailing on Wednesday. haha. I´m sorry for the confusion...Thanks for all your prayers and thoughts. I can feel them all the way through the pollution of Mexico City. haha. I love you all!

Con amor,

Elder Barton

the 2 sweet watches I bought. I bought them both together for the worth of 25 dollars. 
The Tacuba Metro is full of steals like that

(mom note: (my thought) why did he use the word "steals"? I know that the reason you buy 
two watches is so when one is stolen you still have a watch. Also, I seem to remember sending
 him to Mexico with 4 watches....)

Busy, busy, busy...and super missionary

Hola!

     This week was full of stress and getting to bed late. haha. Zone leaders almost never get to bed on time for the responsibilities. But i´ve had fun so far! Elder Cabrera and I get along great and we are having fun as we are working hard. It´s weird having to be in charge of a whole zone, but I got put in a smaller zone to get warmed up. haha. I´m loving it so far! Also, my birthday came and went in a blink. I was treated well by 2 families here. Someone asked me how old I was, and I said almost 20, and they found out that my birthday was Saturday. That family called the family that we were going to eat with on Saturday and told them. The family we ate with on that day bought pizza, made spagetti and bought a cake. It was so nice! Then the hermana that first found out that it was my birthday soon bought us delicious hamburgers when we were heading home. It was a great day! I also got to know the ward yesterday at church. The overall attendance was 137. A little bit bigger than Las Torres, and we are going to get it up higher. The bishop is awesome, and he has a kid who´s 17 preparing for a mission. Him and I automatically became great friends. He works with us a lot. His name is Domingo. Also, my kid, Elder Higbee, kinda screwed up. haha. Because I left Las Torres, he was going to be in charge of sending the numbers from our last week together. I told him where to go and how to do it online. I got a call from the assistant on Friday saying that Elder Higbee didn´t send anything. And when he was called, Elder Higbee replied,´´Elder Barton didn´t leave the numbers for me to send.´´ But really he had them all in his planner and all he had to do was add them up....so the assistant called me to tell me that we lose half a P-day. I tried to explain that I actually explained how to do it and everything, but he had to hang up and deal with something else. As of right now, I´m waiting for his reply to see if we can rest until 6 or if we have to go to work right after writing. But if we don´t end up getting to rest, I know that it was for something, and the Lord will bless us with a family to teach. As for next week´s P-day. For us it will be on Wednesday. Because every first Monday of the month, the zone leaders and sister training leaders go to President´s house to have a conference. My comp said that we normally get back at 5 pm. So what every zone leader does is just have P-day until the hour of the food on Wednesday. So be ready for that! As for my new area, I like it a lot. I love being in the city, there is just more pollution and more crazy people. haha. Well that´s it for me this week. I love you all!

Con amor,

Elder Barton

ward party

super missionary

I think he feels like a super hero

ward party

Metepec friends

Surprise birthday party

Elder Higbee always has a smile

birthday party in Metepec for Jared

"goodbye son!"

Great and spacious building

zone conference minus most the zone 

Giant spider

Sad...happy...sad...happy....DL to ZL Crazy week!!

Hola!

     Well this was a very interesting week with everything that went down. It´s hard to believe that another change has gone by and that I have another new companion. First, I´ll start with some things that happened in this week. First, I was in Metepec with Elder Everett to do 4 baptismal interviews. All of a sudden we got a call from a member saying that a member had just died in the Tollocan ward (las hermana´s ward) so we went over there to see what was going on. Turns out, it was a guy who passed away from old age and a lot of sicknesses. But the thing is, we got there maybe 15 minutes after he actually passed away. We knocked on the door to the house and one of his daughters came down to open it. We could tell she had been crying but what we didn´t know was he was still there in the house. We followed the daughter up to the room and we found that this guy had just barely passed away in his bed. With his wife and 3 daughters around him. I don´t think I have seen a sadder sight....his wife was going crazy, throwing the blame to just about every person possible. The daughters were trying to comfort their mom, but she was just out of control. We gave the wife a blessing and offered a prayer in the house and we left. But later we got a phone call from the hermana´s bishop saying to come again and help get him ready to bury him. We went back and we helped get him ready. Which I actually learned a few things about how to do it to an endowed person. But the whole situation was just sad. The other main thing that happened this week were the changes. The whole change, I was 100 percent sure that I was going to stay there for one more in Las Torres, and the day before the changes, I got this weird feeling that I was heading out. Saturday night came and I got the call from Elder Guevara. He tells me first my companion´s changes. He told me that he was staying, and was receiving a new companion. Which meant that I would be heading out for sure....my heart sunk and I got kind of sad, thinking of all the plans that I had going here. Then I got my changes. I was told I would be going to Tacuba in the stake of Camarones. My new companion is named Elder Cabrera. I got thinking....wait. Elder Cabrera is a zone leader. Elder Guevara then told me that I would be a new zone leader in this change! I was so overwhelmed with the thought and just thought,´´well, here come my last few nights of good sleep.´´ haha. My zone has a great reputation and my companion as well. I´m so excited to take on this new challenge. But on the other hand, that meant I had to say bye to all the people who I love in Las Torres. Bishop asked me to give a talk yesterday, so it was perfect to kind of say goodbye as well. I went by my favorite families in the area, and we finished with the Bishop and his family. Little did I know, his wife called another family and Maru and Kenny to come over to their house to say goodbye. I was so surprised and happy. Maru and Kenny brought a cake for my birthday and everything. We talked for a little, then sung,´´God be with you ´till we meet again.´´ I held the tears in during the song, but when Bishop asked Kenny to say the last prayer, that´s when I lost it. She offered a beautiful prayer, and a few months ago she hadn´t even offered one in her life. We said our goodbyes and here I am in Tacuba. I am really excited to take on a new assignment and whatever Tacuba throws at me. It´s in Mexico City, so there are many cars and pollution. haha. Here we go!

Con amor,

Elder Barton

picture from Pres. and Hna. Whitehead

I Just received this from Hna, Whitehead. It's a pic from a missionary leadership training that Jared just attended. Jared is in the back pretty much dead center.

Baptism and fun at zone conference

Hola familia!

     This week went by a little faster than the other weeks, and they all go by fast....we were working hard and having fun. We had another baptism yesterday! His name is Iñaki and he is a less active´s son. Him and his mom were driving and saw us. She pulled over and said,´´Elders! I´m less active! I want to return! This is my son! He´s not a member! Where and when are the services?!´´ We were speechless. haha. That was a few weeks ago, Iñaki and his mom went to church a few times and we baptized him yesterday. He asked my companion to baptize him and me to confirm him. I´m excited to do that next Sunday. Part of his extended family came to his baptism. It was cool to see his uncle soooo excited that he was finally getting baptized. His uncle and I were the 2 witnesses for it. When the services ended and we were going up to congratulate him, everyone had to wait for him and his uncle who were just sitting there hugging and crying. It was one of the coolest things that I have seen here on my mission. TRUE JOY IS FOUND IN THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER DAY SAINTS. Another cool thing that happened this week was we went to the mission offices so my companion could go sign his visa and stuff. I stayed back with the other trainers and we helped load all of the packages and mission supplies in President´s car. Then we went to the church of the Palmas ward to have a leadership training meeting with the trainers and their new missionaries. President did most of the presentation in english. It was way cool to hear President teach in english because he was really being himself. He´s powerful in spanish as well, but english is just different. It made me realize that someday I will see him speak in a general conference. He basically talked about how to train a new missionary and how to do it right. After that, we took the long busride back to Metepec and went back to work. So on Saturday we ate with the stake patriarch and his wife. We were sitting on their couch waiting for the food to be ready and we were looking at their cabinet that they have. It´s as tall as we are, and it has glass doors with wood framing. And for 10 minutes straight, we were trying to find out if they had put a mirror in the middle of it to make it seem bigger. We were up on our feet measuring the width of the whole thing with our arms and trying to determine if it was bigger or not. We decided 5 or 6 times that there was no mirror. haha until we asked finally and patriarca told us that there was a mirror...haha I don´t know why I wrote about that...but it was a funny moment. Anyways this Saturday we get our changes..I can´t believe how each change gets faster and faster. I really want to stay here in Las Torres for one more change, but it´s the Lord´s will!

Con amor,

Elder Barton

baptism pictures

Inaki's baptism

Elder Piñyero from Uruguay

Fun at zone conference

Jared, Elder Higbee and Elder Dubose

Elder Dubose and Elder Barton

Sister missionary in the hospital, baptisms and las Torres

Hola!

  

    Another pretty great week in la gran mision! We had 2 more baptismal services yesterday. One miracle that we found a few weeks ago named Gaby. The rule is, if there is a 9 year old kid that hasn´t been baptized, and his/her family are members, it counts as a convert. Gaby had her 9th birthday last Thursday, so it counts as a convert for us!  The services were amazing because she had a lot of family come in from different parts of Toluca and Metepec. The family basically did the services, giving talks and saying the prayers, then her dad baptized her. My comp. and I sung her favorite hymn in english in a duet. It was fun to support her and to see a big family support. Then later on in the night, we baptized the mom of la familia Brito! We completed the family that we were teaching, they just have 2 more kids that have never had interest to listen to us.  but we are working with that! We also had interviews with President Whitehead! He always says what we need to hear and gives us good advice. One thing that he said to me was that I´m basically staying in Las Torres again for the next change! it´s still not for sure, but he basically said I´m going to stay in the area with another kid! I would love to train again and I would love to stay in this ward for 6 more weeks. But we will find out the for sure changes in 2 weeks! Also this week, we had to make a run to the hospital to see one hermana in our district. She was having some problems with her heart and was having a weird heartbeat. She stayed in the hospital Monday to Thursday and left just fine. They didn´t need to operate or anything, they just needed to do some tests to make sure that everything was ok. They gave her some medicines to take and sent her off and she got right back to work. When we left the hospital doors, we saw another hermana from our mission making calls outside. We went over to see what was going on and she said that her companion was in the hospital as well...her companion is new like Elder Higbee, and was having stomach problems. We got news that she left on Friday this week and is doing well now. Also this week, I received a package from Lindsy! I loved it!  I got it way before my birthday as planned. haha. But it´s ok because she got her present early. Other than that, my kid and I are doing great. We are baptizing, and we are finding, and having fun. We are learning a lot from each other and it´s just a blast being with him. I think I´m going to stay in Las Torres and he is going to leave, but I kind of hope we stay together as well. We will see in 2 weeks. I love you all!

Con amor,

Elder Barton

hospital with hna. Baez and Hna. McKnight

the dog licked his face unexpectedly before the pic

A member signed Jared's planner committing to go to church

Baptism of Gaby

Bautismo de Columba!