The Inferno: The Final Week

When Sister Benjamin gives birthday presents.

 Hello everyone! That's right, we are coming up on the last week of what I classify as the inferno. It's been a pretty brutal summer as always, but actually not as bad as it was when I came in last August. I'm definitely becoming more accustomed to extreme heat ALL the time. But September and October will still be 90s and 100s, and once Halloween hits then we get into the good stuff. So next week I'll actually have more exciting subject titles.

Anyways, this week was awesome. We had something called "stake Conference", which basically means all of the congregations in the South Phoenix area met together in one building for two hours to be taught by some leaders of the church. For us, since we are both adults and mission leaders, we had two more two hour meetings on Saturday, and then the normal meeting on Sunday. So 6 hours of church! I LOVED it! 

You may or may not know that we believe that the same organization that Christ established is here on the earth today (prophets, apostles, teachers, evangelists, etc.) We had the really rare and awesome opportunity to have one of Christ's apostles come and speak to us on Sunday! His name is Elder Neil L. Andersen, and he is amazing. He talked a lot about Matthew chapter 7 in the Bible, and how it is so important to ask, seek, and knock in order to receive answers to questions, guidance for the future, and just peace in general. I know that we can find that peace and those answers, and all it takes is to be willing to get on our knees and ask God for help. If you have not prayed before, or just haven't prayed for a long time, I invite you to pray EVERY DAY. I'm not kidding. If you do that, I promise to you that you will know God loves you. If you want to feel God's love, pray every day. I'll get off of the soapbox now. ;)

I've been in this area for about 5 months now, which is super crazy to think about, but when I first got into this area we met a guy who hadn't been coming to church since his baptism 15 years before. We were working with him, he had tons of struggles, and we promised him over and over that church, prayer, and reading the scriptures (CPR for the soul) would change his life. He would not do it. Then, about 8 weeks ago, we received a call from someone at church saying that there was a man there looking for us, so we booked it over there and saw him there! His name is Jonathan. He has 4 kids, and his girlfriend hated us the first time she met us, she was pretty set in her beliefs. But
after that Sunday, he started to come every single week, and about three weeks ago she came with him for 1/3 hours, and then last week she came for 3/3 hours, and on Friday she told us that she wants to be baptized on her birthday (October 3)!!! Miracles!! It was so cool. She came to the conference this weekend and got to meet Elder Andersen,
and she is super excited and motivated. Jonathan continues to make good choices. Miracles happen all the time.

Anyways, it is experiences like that that help me to realize how God loves every single one of us, and wants us to be happy. I know he does, and I know that he will help all of us with our struggles if we are willing to ask him. Try it out. 

Have a great week everyone, and for all of my North Idaho friends, enjoy the last week of your summer break! :)

Elder Barlow

Video: our recent convert Kyra didn't believe that Elder Gardea could do push ups. He changed that fast.