3 Semana

Hola!!!
Well this week has been jammed pack with goodness and fun!! I have seen the Lord's hand in every aspect of this work and I am amazed daily at the miracles here in Texas!! First off... Mom and Dad HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!!!I love you both so much and hope you are so happy!! thanks for being the best parents EVER!! And Amber Nicole Varley Every I hope you have the BEST 21st Birthday.. wish I was there! Landy Jane I'm still waiting for that long DETAILED letter but thanks for the little note so I know you are still alive. Lacee Lee I also got your letter (and e-mail.. he he he) I started your letter already so I'll send it out today.. Give Beck and Teme a HUGE hug for me! Did anyone go to logan and Dani's wedding?? If not Whitney please give them hugs for me and tell them I wish them all the happiness in the world and I'm so excited for them! P.S. whit how is Travis doing?? He should have just gotten to Mexico if I am thinking right! Mike and Kara I'm getting so excited for ya'll!! Three weeks and counting till little Stewart huh?? I bet your are so anxious... I can't wait to see pictures... give him a hug and a kiss for me and tell him his aunty Katie loves his face! Matt...BYU huh?? wow do I not deserve all the crap I got when I went there! How is the house searching going? How is my sweet little (tall) Jules? Bean how are you feeling with the little baby in your tummy?? Mindy and Tales.. i love you! Nothing sounds really new in your lives but I still pray for you daily. Bradley B...how is Chicago.. I was thinking about what to send you for your birthday the other day and then I saw this perfect sticker on the back of a truck and since i know you love stickers on your car i'm gonna find you one.. it says HIGH CLASS WHITE TRASH!! ha ha.. (love you!)mom thinks you need to get married she said and don't worry about it.. i found you a wife already and she comes home from her mission in four weeks!! Her name is Jessica Brundage and she is my AMAZING trainer... and plus she is already writing mom just to get on her good side (ha ha... she wants to kill me right now!! ha ha) But really on Saturday we go to the mailbox to get letters and I was so excited to see who I had letters from because you don't get some for a couple days and i open the mailbox and there is a letter from MY MOM.. to MY COMPANION!! thanks mom!! ha ha This week has been amazing I don't even know if I am going to be able to do it justice with this e-mail but I will try. So last week was a really really tough week then to make a great ending to the week we met with the Bishop of the spanish ward and he doesn' t like Hermana let's just say and kinda told us we were worthless for an hour and my trainer was crying.. i don't know how to speak spanish so I couldn't really do anything.. lets just say it was a rough day. So we decided that we were going to work our tails off this week so no matter what he said to us on Sunday we knew that we did our best and God knew we did our best. So Monday after P-day we had some appointments at these one appartments and one of our appointments weren't there so we went to visit some other families we know in the apartment complex. After visiting we started walking home and Hna. Brundage stopped us and said we should walk the other way... the long way.. so we did and right as we rounded the corner there was Eduardo sitting on his truck bed just smiling at us. We started talking to him and he is GOLDEN. We met him a week ago and we have already taught him twice and he came to a baptism on Saturday and we have already commited him to work towards baptism on June 20th...He is just searching for the truth and it is sooooo cool to hear him talk about how good he feels and how he doesn't feel alone for the first time in a long time. This gospel changes lives! But Satan is also so aware of the work we are doing.. Eduardo never works on Sunday and yesterday we called him to see where he was for church and he said they had all of a sudden called him into work. That is the hardest thing about teaching hispanics is they have the best work ethic ever.. always working which means they are never home for us to teach or can't come to church! That is the problem with another family we are teaching the Ibarra Family.. they are so cute and they read the scriptures everyday and pray as a family.. the only thing that is keeping them from becoming progressing investigators is the parents have work on Sunday and won't let there kids come with out them. They don't have the faith to quit and let God take care of them...To our appointments with the Ibarra's and Eduardo's we invited the Relief Society president Hermana Rodriguez who is so super cute. Well she showed up with her little girl also named Daniela who is 8! Daniela gets out of the truck with a FUTURE MISSIONARY tag on and her scripture case. During the lessons she said either the openning or closing prayer, read scriptures, and even bore her testimony. I have never felt the spirit so strong in a lesson ever! It is amazing how this church blesses families. Kids grow up with knowledge that practically no gown adult even knows about the love of their Heavenly Father, the power of the Atonement, and who they are meant to become! On Friday this week we went to visit a member (Claudia Moran) to talk to her about a referral she had given us and we showed up and she was surrounded by mounds of pictures so we offered to help her out for a little while. Which was good because we hadn't done a service activity for the week yet. But I was so humbled listening to her life. She told us of how she crossed the border, how her ex-husband is in jail, she can't get child support from him because he is not a citizen, she has been looking for work for months and finally got a job at Taco Bell, she is raising two little kids all on her own, and she just got into remission for Breast cancer... then to top all of it off she tells us she just qualified for food stamps and wanted to know what OUR favorite food was so she could get stuff we could eat... the members and really so loving and would give you the shirt off their back even if it was their last one. We of course assured her we had food and to spend them on her kids but really that type of love and charity is so humbling. Talking about member feeding us I had my favorite food ever this week at familia Segovia's... it was chicken tostada's and then for dessert we got BLUE BELL ice cream.. amazing.. and we never get dessert here because the hispanics give you a piece of fruit for dessert..!! not then I really feel like eating it much because i am so stuffed by the end of the meal! Another fun meal with members happened on Sunday. We went to the familia Orozco's house with the Segovia's and the other four spanish Elders. They were fixing dinner and we didn't think anything was up until they started setting up the video camera and I was super confused... then we had me and Hermana Brundage sit in certain seats... ha ha then they brought out our food and everything on my plate was dyed GREEN!! it was my GREENIE breakfast... green pancakes, eggs, milk, and orange juice.. it was so cute of them and I was laughing so hard. Then they brought out Hermana Brundage's food and it was all dyed RED since she is STOPPING her mission! They were so
cute and I love these families.. they loves us! Well Texas is really filled with such interesting people. I used to hate knocking doors and talking to random people but now I love it... honestly you never know what character will appear behind the next door especially since my area is not very densely hispanic populated I get all sorts of funny people that speak all sorts of fun languages... and yes Texan is the hardest to understand! ha ha... but while we are knocking doors I really try to listen to the phrases Hermana Brundage says then use them on the next doors. Well it was really hot, I was tired and obviously not really thinking and we walked up to this door and knocked I said we were missionaries, asked the ladies name, then said, "Soy la Hermana Brundage..." then Hermana Brundage looked at me and said, "Soy la Hermana Brundage tambien?" ha ha I was laughing so hard luckily the lady told us later she couldn't read but I think she was really confused! Other fun things about being in Texas is that we get to work with people from all different cultures.. mainly from Mexico and El Salvador but also Argentina, Honduras, Peru... it is fun! I get to try different foods and hear differend dialects. Just two more stories to show how much the Lord's hand is in this work... On Saturday night we were running to get gas right before we had to be home for the night... we weren't going to stop but we thought we should better be safe then sorry! Well we got gas and our reciept didn't print so we had to go inside to get it. We started talking to the lady behind the counter and of course she asked what our tags were for.. we told her the church name and said, "Oh are you the church that gives out free dvd's.." and we said yes and she continued to tell us how she had an appointment with missionaries to get her dvd and is really interested and the missionaries never came!! We gave her the dvd then got her information for the english elders.. but the Lord really puts people in our path constantly everyday ready to hear this message. Well at the beginning of the week we decided we wanted to find a familiy and bring them to church that Sunday so we drew a picture of them on our whiteboard at church and wrote familia desconocido..(family unknown).. so every prayer we prayed for this family to come to church and all week long knocking doors we would say okay.. this is our family and we never found a solid family to come to church on sunday but we still had faith we wouldn't find them even till Saturday night... well church came and we were a little disappointed because not even Eduardo showed up and we just said oh well... definitely next week. Then we are sitting in a combined Priesthood and Relief Society class with five minutes left and one of the other spanish elder's slide on the bench looks at me and whispers "Follow Me".. I was super confused but we did.. then we got into the lobby and all he said was "Go get 'em.. there is an investigator waiting for you outside." We walked out of the church to a family... Mom, Dad, and four kids talking to the Primary Presidency already... saying they were coming to mutaul on Tuesday. We made an appointment with them and found out they are friends with the Segovia Family so they already have a fellowship family too!! Heavenly Father brought our family to church.. an even better and bigger family then we had drawn on the board at our appartment. Familia desconocido's name is Familia Morano! Really faith and prayers bring about miracles in this work! God has prepared people just for us to reach and brought me to Texas at this specific time to meet specific people. I know this gospel is true and when we truly understand it and who we are and the power of the Atonement it can change any life! I am so happy to be here as a representative of Jesus Christ... and no it is not easy at all.. it is actually the hardest thing i've done in my life. But like Elder Holland said how can I expect to call myself a servant of Jesus Christ one of his soliders and not expect to go through even a little bit of what he went through! This is the most rewarding thing I have done.. It is a different kind of Joy... I've never been so happy to hear someone else pray, feel the love of Christ, or walk into the church an dfeel the power of the spirit! Please pray for my investigators... Eduardo, Familia Ibarra, and Familia Morano especially!! I love you all and appreciate your love, support and prayers!!
con amor-
Hermana Katie Barber