Stress filled week Jared's interchanges to the most dangerous area of the mission

Querida familia,

     Another stressful week here in Mexico! My companion and I are working hard and having fun. I can´t believe this will be the last email of the change. Next Monday, I will either have a new companion or be in a different area. This last week was really rewarding as well as stressful. My companion and I took 13 people to church. We were happy to see 6 people for the first time as well. We hope and pray that they can progress fast to baptism. We have a total of 6 possible baptisms for this week. 5 are pretty much set in stone, and we are working on 1 more to add to that list. One of our golden investigators, Jorge, has been to church a few times now and just needs to get married by the civil law to be able to get baptized. We are planning the wedding for next week. But what he does for a living is make and sell something called ´´buñuelos.´´ They pretty much are things in the shape of a honey comb with sugar all over it. They are amazing. haha. They are made basically made out of the same stuff as churros, just with a different shape. Well he told the bishop about them and how amazing they are. And long story short, he promised to make a bunch to bring to church. haha so yesterday, when we went to pick him up to go to church, he brings out a huge box of buñuelos that he had made for the ward. After the services, the whole ward lines up for a free one. haha he´s the best guy ever. So during the third hour of church, my comp. and I gave another class. Every 4th Sunday here is a mission training thing apparently. haha we gave a lesson on chapter 9 of preach my gospel. We have a lot of fun doing it, and the ward gives us a lot of support. Our bishop is such a help as well, I just all around love our ward. So this week, I got to do an interchange in the most dangerous area of the mission, Los Arcos. haha. It´s not only the most dangerous, but has the steepest hills as well. I was going up and down all day long sweating out everything I had in me. I found out that our hills in Molinito are nothing. haha. We were only confronted by a few drunk guys but nothing happened...haha. I liked it. Well that´s about it for me this week, thanks for everything!

Con amor,

Elder Barton

Jared's hymn book updated with his areas

Trip to the museum

Dear Family,

     Well I don´t need to say it, but it was another fast week! Honestly every change gets faster and faster. There´s only 2 more weeks until the next changes...The good thing is, my comp and I are pretty much kicking butt out here. I forgot to say at the start of this change, but there used to be 2 sets of Elders in our ward of Molinito 2. But on the 3rd day of the change, they closed the area of the other Elders and took them out. Giving us their area as well as ours. Our area is HUGE and hard to cover. We went to work getting around an unfamiliar area, and finding new people. My comp and I have gotten along this whole time, and that helped a lot while we were getting things re-started in this area. Yesterday, we had a record breaking day for the both of us, and we had 15 investigators at church! We filled one of our benches with a family of 9. It was such a great sight. We were really happy during the services, especially because my comp. and I gave talks as well. haha we got to talk about the retention of our baptisms and how we need to have the member´s help. I love coming up with stories or experiences to apply to the different topics I´m given. I feel like I´m speaking like a general authority in conference with a clever example. haha for example for retention, I used a Pokemon example. One time, I started a new game on my Gameboy and I played for 6 hours straight. I had a good team going, and a good game. Then all of a sudden, the battery dies and I didn´t save the game, so I lost it all. I was so upset and sad. So it´s the same with retaining baptisms. If we aren´t going to retain them, then there´s really no point in even starting the process, just like my game. haha people got a kick out of that. As a zone, we did something that I´ve never done before. We had a terrible day in the zone at bringing people to church last week. So this last week, I called for massive interchanges. Everybody was with a new companion that they never do interchanges with. And I told them that they were going to go to their new assigned areas, and they couldn´t get back with their real companions until they had found a family in the area that they were working in. haha. It was really short notice, and they didn´t have time to prepare, I just mixed them all up on the spot, and sent them out. Long story short, every area said they had found a family before 5 pm that same day. haha. We had so much better results yesterday at bringing people to church. I think we will do the same tomorrow...haha. Also, our convert from 3 weeks ago got the priesthood yesterday! He will be blessing the sacrament this next Sunday. We are so happy for him! To finish, today for P-day we went to a sweet museum that is free. It´s a bunch of sculptures and art. I thought it was way cool. Then we ate at Carl´s Jr and came back home. I love this area!

Con amor,

Elder Barton

trip to the museum

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leaving their mark

this chess set was 4'x4'..and awesome

the outside of the museum

cramming 9 investigators in a car to go to church

A marriage proposal and a baseball field. a great week!

Hola!

     So another really fast week...I´m getting tired of saying that. But it was a good one! I´m getting to know my area pretty well now. It´s hard with all the hills and zig zags, but I´m getting around. This morning, I went to sign my Visa by the mission offices. I remember doing it last year and not having any clue what the lady was saying. I just saw a line and signed it.  Then with the prints, I just looked at the paper and quickly figured out what to do. . This year was better. It turns out that I was illegal in Mexico for a month and a half. haha the secretaries weren´t calling me to come sign my visa because we were doing something different every Monday and I couldn´t come. Like our meeting with President, changes, etc. But I´ll be legal here for the rest of my mission. So that´s good. So this week was our stake conference here in Culturas. Our area seventy is Elder Johnson. He did a great job in his 2 talks that he gave. He gave a dagger message on Saturday night, helping us realize how much of sinners we really are...haha then on Sunday morning he talked more about the temple. President Whitehead also gave messages in the 2 sessions. He told us afterwards that he had about 15 minutes to prepare his Saturday night talk because he didn´t know he was going to give one. He talked about how to be a good teacher. He talked about acting out the birth of Christ story with his kids and grandkids before, and he said we can apply that to any story of the Book of Mormon as well. So out of the blue, he calls my companion, me, and one hermana up to the stage to act out a random story from the Book of Mormon... we acted out when Alma doesn´t have succes in Ammonihah and leaves, and angel tells him to go back to Amulek, and they talk to Zeezrom. I was Alma, my comp. was Amulek, and the Hermana was the angel. It´s a fun way to know if you really know the scriptures....haha I think I said the right words. I saw a lot of members there from my area from a year ago, Armas. It just goes to show that we will never say goodbye permanently to anyone. At about 5 yesterday, we went and visited the family of 6 we took to church. The only catch is, the mom and dad aren´t married civily, so they are living in sin. But we were teaching about marraige and family to them, and the dad gets up, goes to his future wife, gets on one knee, and purposes there in the moment!  I didn´t know if I was supposed to laugh or say awwww! But we are helping them with that process right now. So the last story I´ll share this week was about 2 hours ago when I got a haircut. The guy goes to trim up my neck hair, and he pulls out a single blade. And he did it old fashioned style. I don´t know why I thought it was so cool, but it did a great job and it looks good.  anyways thanks for all your love and support!

Con amor,

Elder Barton

These pics don´t do any justice to the hills. They´re a lot bigger. And these are medium sized compared to others

If you look close, at the bottom of the hill is a baseball field. That has brought back a lot of memories 

three things Mexicans do well: tacos, soccer and malls. This was at a burger king in a 5 story mall

Don't run on waxed floors the miracle of Jared's knee

Querida Familia,

     So here´s another Wednesday email! This week was full of crazy events...haha first we had our monthly meeting with President. We found out that Culturas ended up in 2nd place behind another zone called Atlacomulco. Camarones ended up pretty good as well. So we accomplished a few things this week as well. First, we baptized a man that has been investigating the church for 20 years! He got married to his wife 20 years ago. She was baptized, and he wasn´t. Their kids were baptized at 8 years old but the dad never was. My comp and I went over and we somehow said the right things and he wanted to get baptized! The baptismal service was so emotional for the ward. His family cried and half the ward came to the baptism. Everybody knows him, and everyone was so excited for him. I believe that this guy is a future bishop, he thinks only he will only be a councilor. haha. Another cool thing that happened was yesterday. I was in interchanges and I was contacting a lady in the street. It was night time, and there weren´t any light posts where we were. I was talking to the lady and I mentioned that I´m not from here, and she was all surprised and noticed that I was american. I was talking like a Mexican! haha I have been doing a lot of different things to improve my accent, and it´s paying off! That gave me a big confidence booster. Then on Saturday, we were running through the metro to get back to our area. We were running down the stairs and I made it to the bottom going at about jogging speed. Well they had just waxed the floor or something...my feet hit the floor and the next thing I know I was trying to keep my balance. Long story short, I hit the turf. My knee led the way and slammed into the floor, with my 227 lb. self landing on top of it. It was pretty embarassing...haha. But I stood up and found it hard to walk. My knee was hurting pretty bad after that. I tried to walk it off and just walk normally. We got back to our area and the hills were killing me. We went to bed that night, and my knee got all stiff and cold. I have never had so much pain in my knee before. I could hardly walk, and we had to walk to church. I limped on over there after asking for a blessing from my comp. I finished the day in pain, and I woke up on Monday morning with basically no pain at all! It was a miracle. And right now, the only thing that bothers my knee is doing a catcher´s squat. I was thankful for that blessing. And yesterday, we had our zone meeting. We talked a lot about retention of our converts again, so we are focusing more on that. President said that it doesn´t mean that we baptize less, it just means that we prepare our people better before they get baptized. That´s basically it for this week. I love you all!

Con amor,

Elder Barton

Picture of the zone of Culturas

Our Baptism, happy day!!

Baptism pictures! In the one where we are in the line, our bishop is in the middle, and the guy´s family are on the right. His son baptized him.

 all the camarones/ex-camarones that were there