An even greater week

Well its been another great week here in "la ciudad bonita". We're still working like crazy and it’s looking like our goal of a "noche blanca" (white night) is going to turn out great. The zone is out of the slump it was in when we got here and for July we already have over 30 people with baptism dates as a zone.

The weather has been great, a little rain but nice and cloudy so it doesn’t get too hot and everyone is still going crazy over the world cup (The US lost and got knocked out by Ghana... they'll just have to wait till we play em in Ball). But I have to admit that after 2 years in South America I have grown to like and even understand soccer.

This week we did 2 days of splits with the missionaries in Central and Gijon. I went to Gijon for a day and worked with Elder L. He is from chile and is from my group(ends in August). We studied together and had a very good day. He started in the same zone as me and I worked with him a little as AP so we are kind of buddies so we had some good talks during the day about the mission and ending well etc. We worked hard, got another baptism date for them and set some good goals. Divisions with missionaries, just like lessons with investigators, should always have commitments. so we set goals for them to always pray as a district (the 4 that live in Gijon) each night and morning. It’s really cool to help the other missionaries, you almost have to treat it like when you work with an investigator and think about their needs, plan how and what to do and try to lift them and get them excited. And if you really don’t love them and want to help them, it will never work. They say things are going much better and they now have a good list of progressing investigators so we are very happy.

We have been working very hard with the investigators I mentioned last week. Unfortunately the Garcia family (the ones that knew the Camargo family) went to Bogota for the week so we haven’t talked to them but we have plans to go back. We've been working very hard with the Gomez Family and Lia and Claudia. On Saturday we had 2 baptisms - one at 10 and the other at 6 and between them we had Elder Mura (our district leader) doing all of their interviews. And they all turned out fine!!! Mura was about spiritually drained because an interview can be a very spiritual thing and he was there all day doing them. But that night we bought him some ice cream and had a little celebration.

Afterward we had Lia (22) and Claudia(20) call their mom. She lives across from the church and has been member for almost a year. She has tried with all the missionaries that have been here to get her daughters to follow her example but they just weren’t feeling it and when we started teaching them, she explained to us and told us that all the other Elders had tried and that it was likely that nothing would happen. After they told her (she is in Bogota for a few days) they gave us back the phone and she started crying and thanked us for the way we helped them feel the spirit and our patience with her daughters. We seriously feel like it’s a miracle how the Lord has touched these peoples hearts and they have all progressed just as we planned. So this Saturday the 6 of them will be baptized at 6 o clock and we have possible one more baptism depending on how this week goes. The week really turned out great, our weekly stats improved again and we were able to teach 16 lessons with a member present and 29 lessons in total. I can’t help but feel like the Lord is specially blessing us at the end of my mission with so many great people.

This week was ward conference so the bishopric has been working hard for the last month to get out invitations etc. All the stake leaders came and its turned out very well. Elder Butler and I sang with the ward choir the tenor (I think?) part of I am a child of God. We felt like it was way too high for us but we squeezed it out and the choir sounded good. Also, here the chapel as I have said is very nice, its only a year old and is supposedly the nicest chapel in Colombia. In the Sacrament Hall the piano is big like a normal one but its digital and has all the hymns programmed into it. So you can put it on a special mode where you just push whatever key to the rhythm of the hymn and it plays it as you go. For some reason they haven’t been using it in sacrament meeting so I told the bishop I could program it for ward conference. Ha I tried to make it look like I was playing by myself and afterward a bunch of people congratulated me on how well I played. . Maybe I will keep doing it for the sacrament meetings.

Anyway we had 12! investigators in church. We are yet to have less than 10. Its really ridiculous how much we are being blessed and how well things are going with the ward. We got a reference of another sister from Barranquilla who has been inactive. We visited her this week and invited her to come back and she was very happy, and the best news is that she brought her 2 kids (16 and 11) who aren’t members yet and they are all loved the church.

Also another member brought a friend named Lury. She spent over 10 years as a preacher and missionary in evangelical churches but says that in the end she found out that it just wasn’t what she thought it was. She knows the dang bible from front to cover and had some crazy questions in the class on Sunday but we answered them and taught her a little about the restoration and she left really interested. Later we visited her and she told us that during the stake presidents talk and during our lesson she thought she saw a special light coming from us and him and she felt like she was where she needed to be. We taught her about prophets and gave her the new Liahona from General Conference and she loved it. She told us she wanted to start over and wanted to start working for Jesus haha. She wants to hear from us again ASAP so we set up another lesson and were going tomorrow. She also brought her teenage daughter so there are 2 more great references. She would definitely be a good ward missionary to go and help some of the Protestants.

So basically things are going great. This Saturday will be the "white night" and we are going to hold all the zones baptisms at the same time in our chapel. There will be 6-7 people from our area and possible another 6 or 7 from the rest of the zone. We invited the stake president and he will be coming and somehow President Hacking even heard about it and called to say that he was going to be there too!

I wish I had time to tell you all about our investigators. The Gomez family who will be baptized are people who I really can see going to the temple. They have also spent months investigating the church and gone through various pairs of missionaries but for whatever reason we are the ones who will have the blessing of helping them reach baptism. Cesar the dad is a stud, I think he’s gonna be a bishop someday. Aside from the baptisms Saturday we have more investigators who are going to church and are there with family or friends who are members, at least 7 more. I am very grateful that the Lord has blessed me to be here right now and I know he has heard our prayers and my prayers. I have been praying since I left Barranca for the chance to bring a family into the church and now there are several. The Gomez family will be one..., Lia and Claudia will now complete a family of members and I have been talking every once in a while with Guillermo and Lina and it looks like they will get married this week and then baptized in July

I can't imagine ending my mission in a better way. I’m not trunky by any means but I feel at peace with the way I have lived my mission and the way it is ending. Its hard to believe there’s only 7 weeks left but I feel great. I've just about done what I was called to do. But there is no time to talk about that yet, we've still got much more to do. I know that this is Christs true church and I feel so blessed and humbled for all that I've been given. I love you so much familia, you’re in my prayers and I hope you’re loving life. Love Elder Barnard