Together Forever

Carl Jenning's pet Buffulo's. We can't teach him til may but we got to take pictures with really big animals? Majic tricks at the Bishoff's. They gave us real eggs from real Chickens and a cheap huge monster box of Froste Flakes from a Amish Store.

I forget what was so funny but i do remember it being funny.

Oh how I have been loving this work. This has been such a blessing to have Sister Hill here with me. We have been running all over the place like cockroaches when you turn on the lights. We have had some pretty amazing things happened that I’ve yet to experience and it’s only our first week. People think Sister Hill is not older than a thirteen year old but then again people think we look alike!! lol, The rumor is that Pres. Cowley likes to put people together that have the same names; Webb and Webb, Johnson and Johnson, Richie and Frichie (honestly), but there is only so many and none of the sisters have the same names, so he has to put together people that look alike. But honestly, we are very similar; we both have 6 kids in our family, and we are the 4th. 3 boys, 3 girls, we both use the same face moisturizer and went to BYU-Idaho…I.

We even recorded our answering machine the other day and couldn’t tell in it who was who!! Crazy. She’s great though.We went tracting last week and for the most part she didn’t feel comfortable yet, but we got her to take the last house. I’ll tell you the truth I was in the same boat I didn’t know what to say as a greenie either. Sister Hill started, and the lady was really mean and said no thanks and that she wasn’t interested at all. There’s a huge Baptist church around here called “Thomas Road” that a 2500 people belong to. So they always put that one in our face. What ever they teach the don’t like Mormons!!! It is so aggravating; the Baptist, protestant, Lutheran etc. Churches all started because the Reformers were not happy with the Catholic Church. They knew that that church didn’t have the fullness of the Gospel, and that it was corrupt, so they took the pieces they wanted and formed their own churches.

If Martin Luther and all those other reformers were on the earth today they would join our church!! It’s been restored! It’s the same one Christ set up when he was here!! But now they are so long gone that people forget why they had to form those churches in the first place. They are so caught up in saying how wrong everyone else is, and in telling everyone that they are right, that they forget these seemingly small details. It pretty frustrating.For example: Just about 10 minutes ago, when I was writing a letter to Sister Larsen this man looked over the top of this desk that i was sitting in on my letter and asked a couple of questions. We got some sneaky people here. He said that he was a retired Baptist preacher and that we were a cult. He seemed nice enough, but he was telling us that he had learned about Mormons in school, and that we are a cult because 1.) We believed in additional scripture, 2.) we don’t believe that we are saved by grace alone, and that we have to work to be saved, and therefore 3.) We don’t give enough credit Christ’s Atonement. Of course we believe in the Book of Mormon! It’s true!! Christ said that by the mouth of two or three witnesses will his word be proclaimed. And of course we need to have good works! Faith without works is dead!! We can’t be saved in our sins. That is crazy talk! And the Atonement is the only thing we people have that can save us.

We set up an appointment with him and his wife for next Saturday, but I can’t imagine we’ll get very far with him. People like that are not teachable. The best thing we can do when people want to bible bash is to bear testimony and leave.There are other people who are so ready though. In the week since I’ve been here we have received 5 media referrals (people who have called to order a movie or a book of Mormon from the commercials or online), which is rare. We were able to go see two of them yesterday. One was a man named Wesley. He has 7 kids, has been married 3 times, and is looking for more in his life. He says that he is looking for a not-so-showy church and one where the members practice what they teach.

He kept telling us some of his personal beliefs, and they were exactly what we teach!! We gave him a the Lamb of god video, finding Faith in Christ (cause I’m a big idiot and grabbed the wrong dvd) and a Book of Mormon. We told him he could gave personal testimony of the Book and he said “I already believe it.” He has great faith, and hopefully we’ll be able to keep teaching him. The other media referral went really well as well. Both of these people offered to come to church. It was crazy, nobody does that!We had dinner and a movie with the part member less active family the Bennett’s (Pat and Genesia). We had this really good noodle stuff and watched Together Forever.

We thought it would be good cause she had been asking about sealing and she just had a miss carriage. I t went really well and the spirit was strong as we bore unwavering testimonies on eternal families. It was blowing up a storm outside though as it rained and poured Pat Bennett worries about us young girls so much that he wants to build a apartment on his property to keep us safe.Tommy has been really hard to read lately. it seems like he is so open on the phone but when we teach him with a member he so shy and doesn’t say anything. Oh exciting news in the past couple of days we have been finding all these members that haven’t gone to the temple but have thought about it. We are going to get the temple prep class started so these members will progress. That’s what it’s all about getting them to the temple. Do realize the covenants that we make there. They are incredible.
Love you all
Sister Barrand
Hey dad I know what you should do about the fixing that car or not… pray about it. Your Father in Heaven will let you know.