Dear Family,

     Well another week goes by in la gran misión. We finished the month of April pretty badly as a zone. Sometimes I don´t understand. We have great missionaries, great areas, and little success. We just had a slump this month, but we´ll get out of it this month of May. One cool thing that happened this week in our area. The services yesterday were a lot more reverent! We had some investigators there and the door hardly opened and shut, and almost no babies were crying. We noticed that the usual loud people weren´t there though...haha I guess the guilty find the truth to be hard. But during the 3rd hour, we gave the class as a companionship. Our Bishop is great and gives us the 4th Sunday every month to do a preach my gospel class. Yesterday, we did it on lession 1, the restoration. Our goal was to help the members know how to teach it with good examples and scriptures. So we taught each principle separately and answered questions. I had the opportunity to share principle number 6. Which is about the Joseph Smith story. I started to tell the story and went into the first vision. When I started to say Joseph Smith´s own words, a silence filled the room and I was the only one talking. The spirit was so strong, and when I had finished with his words, there was a silence for a good 10 seconds, even though there was a sacrament meeting on the other side of the curtain. It was way cool. I then testified of it and shared that those are the feelings of the true church. We had an investigator in the front row, and I know she felt something. She asked to come by today to teach a little more. I love teaching lession 1 to anybody, because the spirit is always there. We´ll have concilio next week, so I´ll write again on Wednesday. but I´m glad to hear about my baseball teammates and how they are doing well still. Keep it up!

Con amor,

Elder Barton

Elder Medina in the middle. He was an assistant for three months and is visiting from his home

Speaking in Church

Hola Familia!

This week was full of great moments! Elder Monarrez and I get
along great. We had already known each other from before so that came
to be an advantage. First of the great news, our convert moved back to
our area! Jorge came back from Veracruz and started to work here
again. He´s a huge asset for us because he´s a preaching machine! He
sells food and stuff in the street and he introduces us to everybody
that buys! He´s one of my strongest converts, and he should get to
perform his first baptism this week if all goes right. He gave us a
reference named Roberto, and he has a family of 6! If all goes right,
Jorge can baptize them this Sunday. So right now, we are having
problems in our ward with reverence in the sacrament meeting. Cell
phones go off, babies are crying and not being taken out, the door
opens and closes because people are going to the bathroom, etc. The
doors are always closed and locked during the sacrament so it can´t
open, but when it´s opened again, almost half the ward walks in
because they showed up late... We have had some problems with some
investigators not wanting to come back for the second or third time. I
brought it up with the bishop, and he asked my companion and I to talk
about it in sacrament meeting. haha. I thought about it a lot, and I
thought a gave a pretty good talk. I gave the reference to the
scripture in Mark where Christ is in the atonement and he asks his
sleeping apostles why they can´t watch for an hour with him. And the
way we can do that today is the one hour sacrament meeting. Then I
read the parable of the 10 virgins and emphasized how they were closed
out like the people who were late to the sacrament meeting. So I asked
the question,´´where are you during the sacrament? Sleeping like the
apostles? Outside like the 5 unprepared virgins? Or inside receiving
all of God´s blessings?´´ Then my comp. went after me and did a great
job as well. We hope it´ll make a difference. We also baptized this
week! It was the dad of 2 of our recent converts. Those 3 will be so
powerful together. We just lack the mom who is really apostate...haha
she still doesn´t want anything. But we´ll keep trying. Also, I was
really happy to hear about my girlfriend´s mission call to Fort
Lauderdale, Florida! I´m just glad she won´t be walking down the
streets of Mexico. haha. That´s it for me, I love you all!

Con amor,
Elder Barton

One of Jared's recent converts giving his first talk

Sodom and Gomorrah

Hola!

Well another change comes and goes. Elder Goodrich is basically
my best friend. We got along so well and we taught really well
together. We got the changes on Saturday, and we found out that he
would be heading out to be zone leader in Toluca, and I would be
staying here for my 3rd change. I received Elder Monarrez! I was his
first zone leader when he got to the mission when I was over
Camarones. He´s on his 5th change now, and he´s a great kid. He´s from
Chicago, Illinois but looks like a Mexican. haha. We got along really
well in Camarones and I´m really looking forward to our change
together. Just a brief summary, Culturas has a total of 11 areas. When
I first got here, 7 were Elders areas, and 4 were of the Hermanas.
Last change, they took out the hermans of 1 area and put elders. This
change, they took out 2 more and put elders!! haha so basically we
have 10 companionships of Elders, and 1 of hermanas. This was because
of the danger of our zone. The hermanas were having security problems
in the street. But I have named the zone the ´´brozone´´ haha. It´s
one of two zones that has more Elders than Hermanas. So we´ll see what
we can do with our new brozone. This last week was kind of a normal
week. Elder Goodrich and I were working hard and finishing strong. We
took a family of 6 to church that will probably be baptized this month
if we play our cards right. I also complete 18 months this week as a
missionary...this morning in the changes, I helped the Hermanas that I
was in the MTC with load their bags into taxis to head on over to the
mission offices to go home. It was weird to know that 18 months have
gove by so quickly. I know that these last 7 will cruise on by too. I
love this mission! Even though I´m walking up and down hills all day
passing by drunk dudes and drug addicts, I know that I´m safe. I feel
like Molinito is Sodom and Gomorra. haha. But we have fun. That´s all
I have for this week. Thanks for all the love and support!

Con amor,
Elder Barton

Alicia came to visit the ward!

Top level view

why baseball players should serve missions....or why missionaries should play baseball?

Dear Family, 

 Another week goes by! This last week was full of meetings and
solid talks. My companion and I went to work and brought 13 people to
the conference! We had the blessing of watching 4 of the 5 sessions of
conference in English. We couldn´t get the internet access for the
Saturday AM session, but we got it for the rest. My comp. and I came
up with a theme for this last session. It was,´´have mercy on us oh
random seventy'' haha because the seventy just knocked it out of the
park. It was fun basically being called latter day sinners, quitters,
and hypocrites.  Also, the priesthood session, as always, was my
favorite. It was sad to see that great young mens presidency get
released, but Elder Larry Gibson gave a great example in his talk
about the coin his father gave to him when he was a kid. I think the
best talk of the whole thing was Pres. Eyring in the priesthood
session. After general conference, we had to put the suits on again
and go to our meeting with President. We found out that Culturas took
third place this month...but we still did really good. In the meeting,
President talked about how effective we need to be on our interchanges
that we do with the missionaries. Then one of the assistants talked
about how to use the members to find people to teach. I got to talk
about President´s message and the interchanges. I put what I thought
was a brilliant example. I used the example of the relievers in
baseball. When a starter gets into trouble, you put in a reliever for
a short time to get out of the jam. So I wrote out the process of
putting in a reliever. 1. the phonecall to the bullpen. 2. the
reliever warms up. 3. He enters the game and is a gamechanger. 4. Goes
back to the bullpen after a few innings of work. So this can be
related to an effective interchange. 1. we make the phonecall to set
up the interchange. 2. We get warmed up and pray specifically to get
help during it, and that the area can be blessed meanwhile. 3. We do
the interchanges and we are gamechangers in the area. 4. We return to
our own areas after a short time. I focused on why relievers are
important and their purpose, to get out of a jam or to mix things up.
That´s what interchanges are for. To get out of a jam or to get
someone new in their with more momentum. We finished the meeting with
a spiritual blast. We put together a chain of scriptures from Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John to read the last week of Christ. We had everyone
get separated on the benches in the chapel, and we read them outloud.
Every missionary had a part, and we just read them in order. In the
middle, my companion, I, and our sister training leader bore
testimonies and shared a little message. It´s kind of hard to explain,
but it turned out good. I also got a letter from Glenn and Molly on
Monday! I always love their letters, and I actually used part of
Glenn´s testimony in my talk yesterday. I translated it on the fly and
it helped finish my talk strong. So thanks for that! haha. I love you
all, thanks for all your support! 

 Con amor,
Elder Barton
Molonito 1










Elder Goodrich


I guess the backward hand guesture is a sarcastic thank you