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