Met Some Desert Turtles


 
Desert Turtles, Princess & Peanuts
One of the families we had dinner with have these turtles.

 What is up everyone! So good to be able to email all of you :) I can envision all of your smiling faces and you all are looking good ;) Just kidding. This week was pretty awesome. At the beginning of the week, we were looking at the schedule and thought it would be a slow week, but hey, the Lord always provides.
Me and Brother Beebe's sick elk...made me feel like I was at home again.

 Notable events for this week, on Saturday we took the E Family to the Mesa Arizona Temple Visitor's Center, which was an awesome experience. They have
a walk through program that talks about God's plan for families, and it was such a
spiritual experience. It made me miss the fam a little bit (Love you Barlow clan ;)) But it was so good for them to feel the spirit. Sister E kept bearing her testimony without being asked and we were just like dang, we could baptize you tonight if you wanted to. But I think we can wait until the 24th ;) Anyways, we brought another family, the L's with us, and they invited the E's to dinner last night, which we were there for that as well. It is so cool to see the effects of fellowshipping. It is so important. So all of you that know what I am talking about, do better. We can all do better. For those who do not
know, ask someone who does ;)

I was trying to take a picture of the sunset because it was sick, but ended up taking a perfect selfie that was totally unintentional...and didn't get one of the sunset. #mybad

I haven't talked about my ward much, so I figured I would talk about that. I am in Casa Grande 1st Ward (a congregation), and the boundaries are HUGE. There are about 500 people on record in the ward, only about 100 or so come regularly, and also only about 40-50 of them will accept callings. Our ward mission leader is inactive and I have met him twice in the month that I have been here. So it is a little difficult to get the members involved. Don't get me wrong, they all are good people, but they just need a little push to get back to a missionary mindset :) I can help with that ;) But yeah, the ward is pretty boss.

Another interesting story. There is an investigator who was baptized in November but not confirmed. Our bishop refused to confirm him due to some rumors that were flying around. Yeah. If I explained the whole situation I would be here all day. It's complicated. But anyways, his wife was also baptized in November and wasn't confirmed until like
April. And since then there hasn't been a way to find them, get ahold of them, or anything. UNTIL YESTERDAY. Miracles happen, especially on the Sabbath. We found them! We talked with them for a good 40 minutes about their situation, and a lesson I learned is not to judge people. They were nothing like I was expecting. They want to start meeting regularly and have us help them start trying to find their way back. It was a really cool experience. So lesson learned, never give up on people.

So there is a summary of my week. I love you all. Keep being awesome and let me know if there is anything that I can do for you.

Elder Barlow

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