Party in the YSA!

Happy Monday everybody! It’s been quite the week, and pretty much nothing is the same as it was 7 days ago. Let me walk you through some of the changes:

I am no longer in the South Mountain Ward! After 7 months, it was time for me to head elsewhere, so now I am serving in the Towne Lake YSA ward, which is a pretty good chunk of Tempe and West Mesa. It’s pretty intense. I am still a zone leader, but over a lot more missionaries than before. They reduced the number of zones from 9 to 6, which means the zones are now a lot bigger, so we went from being over 18 missionaries to 34! Quite the jump if you ask me. So yeah, pretty intense. My companion is Elder Morgan from Layton, Utah! He has been on his mission for about 10 months and is a baller. We are very similar, like creepily similar, so it’s going to be a party. #PartyInTheYSA.

Anyways, with all of this change, probably the thing that has been on my mind the most is how important it is to trust. There is a saying from one of the leaders of the church which says (paraphrased): “It is more important to be trusted than to be loved”. Trust is something very important, and something I am taking a lot more seriously with all of these changes. This ward is one of the best, which means it deserves my very best effort. I am very excited to see what will happen. I know that God gives us commandments so that we can be trusted, and receive blessings as a result. When we disobey or rebel, that trust is gone, but the love is not. Do we take advantage of that love? 

In the midst of feeling every other emotion on the planet this week, The Bushnell family went to the temple on Saturday to be sealed for all eternity! Such a powerful event to be a part of. Another miracle, one of their daughters has accepted to be baptized in December. The joy that filled that room was so thick you could feel it. On top of that, Lucia Cano, who I was able to baptize at the beginning of October, spoke at the New Convert Devotional last night, and her testimony was so powerful. This gospel leaves such a lasting impact on so many lives, and I love being on the front lines. I love you all. I hope this week is the greatest ever. 

Love, 
Elder Barlow

 P.S. New address is 2155 S. 55th St. Apt 2004, Tempe, AZ 85282

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Closing Time

Image
It's hot. Hello everyone!! As you may or may not know, this week is the final full week of my missionary service! That is a really crazy things to say but I am so grateful for the things that I have learned and the people I have built strong connections with. I wanted to share with you three lessons that I have learned during my missionary service. There are many, but you’ll have to ask me for details later ;)  First off, I have a deep conviction of how much God truly loves all of us. I know that we are His sons and His daughters. There is nothing more valuable to me than that important fact. I get to interact with lots of different people as a missionary, and the coolest thing I have experienced is that for some reason, whether I know these people well or not, I develop such a strong love for them and a desire to help them. I know that is because I am doing what I can to help people come closer to God. So remember that! God loves you and He always will! Second. It
Read more

The Inferno: The Final Week

Image
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
Read more

Attending Baptisms!!

Image
Mother's Day Skype! Hey!!! I hope all of you are going awesome. This week was pretty awesome and busy, which is always a good thing. We had some pretty cool experiences that really helped me, so I hope they will help you too. First off, this week my companion and I did something called "Zone Recommendations" where we meet with the missionaries in our zone and review their strengths, improvements, and just think about what we can do to help them improve. It took up about 6-8 hours to do, so it was spread out during the week, but it was awesome to see how many changes people can make when they set goals and make plans for themselves to grow. I would encourage every single one of you to set personal goals for you, your schooling, your career, family, whatever it may be, and I promise you that will help you see change and see improvement, and you will know how you can continue to do so. I have tried it out and it has made a huge difference for me in my life. I'
Read more