Busy week of zone conferences

This is a quote Hermana Whitehead sent to Jared:

Parley P. Pratt gave us a vision of what the gift of the Holy Ghost could mean to us when he said:

“The gift of the Holy Ghost … quickens all the intellectual faculties, increases, enlarges, expands and purifies all the natural passions and affections; and adapts them, by the gift of wisdom, to their lawful use. It inspires, develops, cultivates and matures all the fine-toned sympathies, joys, tastes, kindred feelings, and affections of our nature. It inspires virtue, kindness, goodness, tenderness, gentleness, and charity. It develops beauty of person, form and features. It tends to health, vigor, animation, and social feeling. It invigorates all the faculties of the physical and intellectual man. It strengthens, and gives tone to the nerves. In short, it is, as it were, marrow to the bone, joy to the heart, light to the eyes, music to the ears, and life to the whole being” (Key to the Science of Theology, 9th ed. [1965], 101).

Hey yáll!

     I want to first apologize for not writing yesterday. We have had zone conferences every day since Wednesday of last week except for Saturday and Sunday. Yesterday, we were in Zitácuaro from 9 am to 2 pm, and then we booked it to Atlacomulco and started there about 4 pm and went to 8 pm. Then we slept in my old house in Atlaco. This morning, we traveled about an hour and a half to Toluca to do another zone conference, and we got permission to write to you guys right now. Life as an AP is totally different from the life of a zone leader or district leader. We are in the offices a lot with President´s 2 secretaries just making sure everything is perfect around here. Making sure reports are done, making phone calls, confirming appointments with stake presidents, etc. We get to work in our area of Molinito 1 only on Saturdays...so that´s going to complicate things a bit. But my comp. and I are getting along great and we will find a way to get people to church and baptize. On Sunday, we managed to get 4 people to church. So there´s a start. I´ve gotten to give a few talks this last week in a few zone conferences. I spoke yesterday in Atlacomulco and today in Toluca about the imprortance of unity. I´ve learned some pretty cool things, and my testimony has been strengthened about the holy ghost, because in both of the talks I´ve given, I´ve said some things completely out of my game plan, but they were the highlights of the talks. Tomorrow, we will be in another zone conference in the zones of Las Torres and Metepec, then on Thursday in Lerma, then on Friday in Chapultepec, then on Saturday we will be welcoming in an apostle of the Lord. We are trying to get the whole mission ready for that, and the church where we will be at is being cleaned inside and out all this week. We´re excited! Being by President´s side a lot has been cool, especially because I can ask him a lot of stuff. I´ve learned a lot about his life and his knowledge. Hermana Whitehead is amazing as well with knowledge and her love for everybody. I´m going to take advantage of that for these next weeks while I´m here. It´s pretty sure that I´ll finish my mission as an assistant, so I´m going to figure out the best way to be one, and learn from all the people I´ll be around while I´m here. I love you all!

Con amor,

Elder Barton

Saying goodbye Acambay Hello to his new assignment

Hola Familia!

     Well, I got a huge surprise these changes...to set up the story, we did a ward family home evening on Saturday night with our ward of Atlacomulco. We did a few activities focusing on the responsibility to take care of recent converts and less actives. Between the 4 of us, we put together a pretty good activity. To finish it all off, us 4 were going to share a brief life story to show how we got to the mission and what we had to drop. I went last of the 4, and I finished my life story. I went into my testimony and my phone starts to ring. I pulled it out and it was President Whitehead. I stepped out into the hall and asnwered and he gave me my changes right there. I have been assigned to work in the mission offices here in the city as the new AP. I´m so excited to take on this position, but I´m horribly nervous as well. I was pushed right into it today. Usually the changes happen on Monday, but I came into the offices on Sunday night to be able to start Monday early. My new companion, Elder Medina, and I went to the Mexico City MTC to pick up our 7 new missionaries that came in. We brought them back to President´s house for their training session and to get their trainers. Elder Medina and I explained the rules and set things straight. haha. After, we ate pizza and sent the new missionaries off with their trainers. I can just tell that my sleep schedule will be worst and worst for the rest of my mission...haha. One cool thing about being an AP is we get a sweet phone. haha it´s not a piece of junk phone. And this change is especially cool because one, we have zone conferences this week and next week, two, the temple redidication is this change. And 3, Elder D. Todd Christofferson is coming to our mission! I´m excited to see how much we are going to do with those events. Yesterday, it was really sad saying bye to Atlacomulco. Even though I was only there for 2 changes, I fell in love with the ward and I left great converts there. The last visit of the night to say bye to people was to a recent convert family of Arturo, Doris, Arturo, Josué, and Fernando. They invited a ton of members over to their house to say bye to me. They bought a cake and all said some words to me. I was in tears as well as everyone else...it was sad but I finished with my key phrase when saying bye to wards. ´´If we don´t endure to the end, this is a goodbye. If we endure to the end, it´s just a see you later.´´ It was hard, but I´m excited to move on as well. I love you all! Thanks so much for everything. 

(mom insert: Jared feels very nervous about his new assignment. He's excited, but asks for prayers. Assistants get little sleep and travel so much to speak in zone conferences etc. He has to speak in 11 zone conferences in the next 2 weeks.

Con amor,

Elder Barton

saying goodbye to Acambay

New companion

his sweet technology

"Atlacomilagros" zone of miracles

Hey Fam!

     Last email of the change...It really is incredible how fast each change goes by. This one has been frustrating with the comp and all, but it still found a way to slip by. I experienced another miracle this week...haha right now the mission knows our zone as ´´atlacomilagros´´ which in english is ´´atlacomiracle.´´ We are finding a lot of prepared people to baptize that have already been to church and received the missionaries in the zone. But this last week, I had a miracle with my cell phone. It has been announced in concilio and zone meetings for a few months now that the sister missionaries lose 80% of the phones that are lost. haha. In the zone meeting last week, everybody got a kick out of that announcement and were giving tips to the hermanas to not lost their phones. haha. On Thursday, I was in a taxi going to a certain part of Xonacantlán (another area in the zone) on interchanges. I was talking to the driver about the church and he seemed interested. He gave us his address and what time he´s home during the day. We said thanks and got out at our destination. When we were 2 blocks away, I realized my phone wasn´t in my shirt pocket or my pants pocket...I ran back to the taxi base, but the guy had already left on his route again. We waited to see if he got back, but he didn´t get back. It turned out that his address was in the area of the hermanas of Xonacantlán, so they went to try to find him and get my phone. Turns out that his address doesn´t exist...haha he gave us a false address. But we were using the phone of Xona to call mine over and over again. I might have called it 100 times. No luck. The next morning, I was still in Xona and I was calling it over and over again because the call was going in and everything. Someone was bound to answer. Long story short, someone answered it at 10 am on Friday morning, and we set up a time and place to meet to get it back to me. We get to the place, and I get my phone back. Curious, I asked the guy where he got it (because it wasn´t the taxi driver that we had contacted the day before) He said that some kids sold it to him the day before because they wanted money to play arcade games. haha. So in less than 24 hours, it was sold, given to little kids, and sold to this guy....#mexico. But I was able to get it back for a reasonable price from the guy. haha. So first was the keys, and now my phone. I wonder what´s next...haha. Anyways we were also going to have a baptism yesterday but it turns out that our guy didn´t get it all out in his baptismal interview...he doesn´t feel ready because he still has some things that he didn´t tell the district leader that he´s done...we are going to help him understand the atonement a little more and help him feel our support even more this week. And we´ll get him baptized this Sunday. I love you all!

Con amor,

Elder Barton 

concilio

Hola Familia!

     Another concilio week flies by. This concilio was full of the spirit and subjects that we needed in the mission. We had the meeting in President´s house this time instead of in a stake center in a stake called Tacubaya. It was fun being in President´s house, especially because he pulled out the grill afterwords and made hamburgers and hot dogs for everyone. That was AMAZING. haha I haven´t had a hamburger with the black grill lines for about 22 months. haha. The most special part about that was that his family was their visiting. Their daughter and grandkids that had lost their dad recently. They had a special musical number that the kids sung, and the mom played the piano. They sung families can be together forever. I´m pretty sure there was not a dry eye in the room. The spirit was so strong, and that family just got stronger after their tragedy. Yesterday, we had our zone meeting where we had to relay the messages from concilio to our zones. I got to talk about ´´internal pressure´´ and how it compares to external pressure. External pressure comes from others. Mission president, companion, leaders, etc. But what we need to develop is internal pressure so that we can motivate ourselves to work instead to relying only on external pressure. I liked giving that message, and I learned a lot while preparing it. We were going to have a baptism on Sunday but it fell through because the guy had to take a double shift in his work and worked all day on Sunday...So we are going to get him either during the week or this Sunday. He´s a great guy, and he had asked his work to let him rest on Sundays. They gave it to him, but someone didn´t show up to work and he had to cover them. On Sunday night, we traveled to the assistant´s house in the city to sleep so we didn´t have to wake up so early for concilio. When we do that, we meet with the assistants, secretaries, and another pair of zone leaders that are also far away in the mission offices. When we got to the offices, the secretary tells me that we had made it to the elite 8. I was confused and asked him why. He took me back to the secretary´s office and showed me a bracket of the mission. haha. He had seeded every single area according to the success they had in recent times. We were put up against other areas in a bracket and according to our success of the week determined if we won or not. haha. Out of about 100 areas, we were in the elite 8 going into last week. During the ´´tournament´´ we had beaten a few companionships of zone leaders, regular companionships, and we had beaten the assistants. haha but this last week, our baptism fell through and we were going up against a pair of hermanas in my ex-zone camarones. They baptized 3, and we were eliminated from the tournament. haha they find great ways to entertain themselves in the offices. That´s all I got for this week. I love you all!

Con amor,

Elder Barton