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

Rain and stress

Hola!

     Well again, another really stressful week in the zone. I´ve had to take more advil than ever. haha. So to start the frustrations, the hermanas of the zone are still going to the doctor pretty frequently. One of the assistants told me that half of the mission is going at least once a week. We have one hermana who has a problem with her back, and we found out this morning that she will have to go to the doctor once a week for a long time. That might have her sent home soon...she´s a brand new missionary full of energy and love for the work. It would be hard to see her go, because the zone would take it hard. But she´s fighting and she´s trying to stay here. Also, we had about 5 baptisms in the whole zone planned this week, 1 of them in our area of Tacuba, and they ALL fell through Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. We ended up blanking in the zone yesterday with 0 baptismal services. We should have more this week, but it is still unacceptable to blank as a zone in a week...Our baptism candidate was another tender mercy from the Lord. It was a lady who has gone to church like 50 times. Just has never gotten baptized. We talked to her again after general conference, and she said that she received an answer that she needs to get baptized. We rejoiced and put the date for the next Sunday (yesterday) All she wanted for her baptism was that her mom was there to support her. Her mom is not a member and it would be awesome if she saw it. Well on Thursday, we got a call from her saying that her mom all of a sudden got sick and she had to go see her. She left about an hour from our area and we didn´t have any contact with her until Sunday at church. She said she will get baptized, just when her mom is better and can come. We hope it is this week, but it´ll probably be next month. Speaking of next month, the next email I send will be in the next change....this change flew by! Actually, Presidente called all the zone leaders together this morning to talk about next change. We went to his house for a training session on how to be an efficient zone leader (that´s why I am writing this late in the day) and he gave us our changes early! He just gave the zone leaders their changes. I am really surprised about mine....because I am getting back together with an old companion that I have already had....Elder Maldonado will be coming to Tacuba with me. We´ll see how that goes. So in the zone leader companionship, there is Zone Leader 1 and Zone Leader 2. Zone leader 1 is basically the senior companion. This change, I was LZ2. But this next change, I will be LZ1. I hope I can make the adjustment. It´s still raining pretty hard here. It rains every day, but it rains super hard every 4 days or so. Today is one of those days..haha. Well that´s all I have for this week. Thanks for all your love and support!

Con amor,

Elder Barton

Stress, the cigarette and the Mexican sized baptism jumpsuit

Hola!

     Honestly, one of the most stressful and hardest weeks of my mission. First, we have a lot of health problems in the zone. We have 6 Elders, and 8 hermanas. 7/8 of the hermanas have health problems that are pretty serious. With back, knee, feet, blood pressure, missing family, and stress. It´s pretty fun to hear about all of it and keep track where everybody is with the doctor and if they are keeping up with their medicines. haha. I haven´t had a full night of missionary sleep since my first night here in Tacuba. Because after we get home, we have to either do the numbers, talk with the district leaders, or talk with the sister training leaders. After that, we have to plan our next day, then go to bed.  This week, we went to help out 4 areas. 3 of those were of the hermanas, so we weren´t in our area for a lot of time. The good thing is, the areas that we went to had success yesterday at church. It was rough running around through the metro all week trying to get back for our appointments that we had, but it was fun dodging people and trying to fit in the metro car with 1000 other people.  one time, there was a wall of people in the door, and nobody could get in or out. It was literally packed full. I was kind of frustrated because we were in a hurry, so I tried to push my way in. And I was denied by the wall of humans haha. One funny thing that happened this week was we were taking money out of an ATM and we saw one guy walking down the street with an unlit cigarrette in his hand. He accidentally dropped it and it went into the water drain part of the road. (where the metal gate thing is and it´s only half a foot deep) he tried to reach his hand down through the bars, but his hand didn´t fit. He looked determined and pressed on. He later lifted up the metal and got his precious cigarrette. He wiped it off with his hand and lit it.  I thought, well the garbage that´s down there is the same stuff that´s in the cigarrette. Also, we had another baptism this week! Her name is Gaby and she was a tender mercy from the Lord. She´s 10 years old and we found out she wasn´t ever baptized. She always go to church alone because her parents work. Her parents and brothers are now going to church and she was baptized yesterday. Well that´s all I got for this week. I love you all!

Con amor,

Elder Barton

I found out a new way to put pictures on my planners

finding shelter from the rain

Here´s our baptism picture. I forgot my camera so I had my comp. send that to me just barely. It was funny because I didn´t have my clothes to do a baptism. We had decided that one of the priests in the ward was going to do it. But he had to leave for some reason and wasn´t in town. So Gaby choose me to do it and I was a little nervous to see if there were clothes my size. We have several overalls in the church closet but they weren´t even close to my size. So I got one that fit my legs and got around to my waist. Then I tucked in the shoulder and sleeve part of the overalls so they looked like pants, then I put on my white shirt and my comp. lent me his tie that he happened to have. haha the only draw back to that was that my butt looked a little bit bigger than it already is;) haha it was great. 

Wednesday Email...Spanish Conference

Hola!

     First email on a Wednesday! This last week and a half was full of meetings, baptisms in the zone, and being in my suit all day. First, I´ll talk about general conference. I watched all 5 sessions in spanish... I understood nearly all of it. My favorite talk from all the sessions was Lynn G. Robbins from Saturday morning. I never thought I would hear the word apostasy used like that in general conference.  it´s normal in the mission field, but it was awesome to hear it from a general authority. But I do have a question, are there things going on with the prophet right now? Like are there people protesting and stuff? Just a question because a lot of the talks were focused on him and how they sustain him and love him so much. It made me wonder if there are some things going on. Anyways we had a few investigators in the sessions and they loved it. We also baptized 2 after the Sunday morning session! We found Rosanna and Daniela through a less active, and they got baptized 3 weeks later. It was especially cool because Rosanna shut the door in our faces the first time we went over. We were about to walk away, when we both felt the impression to knock again to ask to talk to her 2 little girls (one of them is Daniela, and we were thinking she could go to church with her less active aunt) So we knocked her door again and she let us in....? haha she started listening to the lessions in the back corner of the room, then slowly moved to the baptismal font. haha it was a miracle and now she´s so happy in her life. Her daughter as well! So another exciting thing that happened this week was on Monday. We went to a meeting with all the zone leaders, sister training leaders, the AP´s, Hna. Whitehead, and Presidente. We basically talk about the total numbers for the month in every zone. My zone, Camarones, I´ve heard usually doesn´t have a good report and doesn´t usually stand up next to other zones. The way we compare the zones is how many baptisms there were for every companionship. We take the total number of baptisms, and divide it by how many companionships there are, and that´s what we care about. The zones were giving their reports, and my companion and I started getting excited. haha the AP´s put up the order of the zones with the most success in the month, and Camarones showed up on top! It was an amazing thing to see and to be apart of. The only thing is, we have to repeat it in this month. haha. We also had our zone meeting yesterday. I got to talk about some of the things that Presidente said in the meeting on Monday. It was a great meeting and we are excited as a zone to keep it up in October. Well that´s it for me this week. I love you all!

Con amor,

Elder Barton

Baptisms!!

the happy day that Jared found a sandwich maker in his home

la gran zone de Camarones