They were at Church!!

11 July – 18 July
Things are going really well here. We have some amazing missionaries and member missionaries here. We love those families that will help us out with making our investigators feel at peace. If you can believe it we had two investigators at Church. This never happens. Heather is married to a less active Army member and has been taking the lessons for about two years. We just stated working with her but she seemed to open up with us. It’s so nice to have the ward support for sister missionaries, they have really good impression on sister and we hope to keep that. I don’t think I’ve been asked more about how I feel about arranged marriages than on my mission. The Bishop’s wife is all about them. Actually the Bishop’s son just left for the MTC and we got to give him all the advice to prepare him, he reminds me of Austin.

There are so many funny things going on here as spiritual I just don’t think they are funny if you can’t see and hear them in person. My English is getting worse and worse out here, its not good, i’ll tell you. The most common is mixing up past, present and future tense. It’s so horrible. I just heard from the district leader say to all of us as we were leaving “ Hey before you all get gone” Man, I’m talking like that now, so you are going to help me.

Jubal came to Church as well and brought his two boys. He’s really starting to change for the better. Some members had all of us over and we had a great lesson on the Atonement of Jesus Christ. The Members gave him the Book of Mormon Reader for him to read with him boys and he was really excited. I’m sure it will help him understand cause theses people out here don’t read very well. I know it helped me, I still remember mom reading those to Austin and me.Oh the neatest thing happened. There are some Part member Families that we are trying to work with. All the wives and one husband sit on the left side of the Chapel. Well some of the wives have told us not to preach at all to any of their husbands. One Wife told us that her husband would disown their daughter if she went on a mission (so we are not even allowed to call their home. But in spite of all this we were able to have dinner with the Pattersons. We had a wonderful spiritual gospel talk. I bet he didn’t even know we were teaching him.

The sprit witness so strong to me as we were testifying. I’m sure it was the most bold I have ever been and I knew that’s what the lord wanted me to say. At church the wife came up to us and said that her husband couldn’t spot talking about how these missionaries had this really strong spirit about them and how impress he was. The husband (Bryan) is stuck in the war chapters and told us he would finish the Book of Mormon. The only reason Bryan is reading the Book of Mormon is because he didn’t believe his wife could finish his the book. I’m glad he took that step and is reading the words of God. Bryan loves how we could be spiritual and funny at the same time. We ended up telling him that joke about the war chapters. Bryan is a very logical, he was a Dean at a School and had a lot of Mormon students always trying to convert him. He didn’t know it but he testified about the truth of the Book of Mormon. He was just over taken by Joseph Smith’s testimony.

He knew that Joseph wouldn’t write as false book to gain nothing.Just to let you know teaching Jehovah witnesses and Masons is quite interesting. And a mom who has to have every little detail explained to her. We gave her the Strength for Youth pamphlet and she said “You know that part about how it says to choose you friends wisely, well I don’t believe in that.” It’s sad and so important that we learn this as children so we don’t become stubborn by the time we are older. She says some pretty funny stuff like we will have been taking about Christ for a while and she’ll pipe in every couple of minutes and say “you mean Jesus?”You wouldn’t believe how much fun this is and how many funny things we hear. This work is so wonderful and I’m so glad I have a big mouth to share it.
Love you all
Sister Barrand