Elder Kaden Barlow - March 19. 2014

Elder Barlow

 

Hey family!!

 

Wow sounds like you guys had a great week! I loved reading your email even more than usual for some reason! :) Yes dad it is getting hotter! It was super ridiculous because every day we don´t have power from 11:30 in the morning to around 2:30 or later so when we are in the house after lunch it just is really not great when our fans don´t work. Just as the temperature has gone up a ton, the power has been out two nights! I swear it was over a 100 in the house and then with all the mosquitoes!! It’s ridiculous.  Rainy season is coming up here in about two months maybe that will cool it down?? Somehow I doubt it :)

 

As for the work progressing here in Mendoza (My ward is Villa Carmen but I work in an area called Mendoza). It’s a big neighborhood that only has about 10 active members. Actually I was talking to a member of the stake presidency yesterday and the plan is to make Mendoza a branch! But it will be after I leave this area most likely. But right now the work is a little slow. We don’t have too many investigators progressing. Just James. But we are working with a lot of new people. We even found a family that we are working with so we will see how that goes.

 

We had an exchange on Tuesday. I went with Elder Cardoso in the morning and that was really cool. He is a good missionary and we taught James probably the best lesson that I have had with him! We had never practiced together and totally changed what we were going to talk about. The spirit was there and that was cool. I really learned this week to recognize when the spirit enters a lesson how to grab it and kinda how you have to roll with it and not over use it. I have been able to do this more because when ever Elder Ponce is grumpy he doesn´t talk, so I have been giving a lot of lessons almost solo this week. Kinda fun actually!

 

Elder Marin and Elder Cardoso had a baptism this Saturday. All the Elders (there were close to 20 there) at the end sang “The Spirit of God.” The first verse was Spanish and the second was English and then they did both for the third and then the congregation joined for the fourth. I played the piano!! :) I made a mini arrangement nothing too special but I’ll tell you the spirit was super strong during that song! All the missionaries had the chills and we had a ton of members tell us we have to do musical numbers at every baptism haha :) It was really cool. Also Elder Cardoso and I gave a talk during the time that the converts were changing after the ordinance. Basically we just taught the restoration but I was super nervous because there were a ton of people there! But it all turned out great!

 

On our p-day we did a zone activity at the Acuario Nacional [an aquarium] which was really cool! It’s actually only like 5 to 10 minutes from our house in a taxi and there is the ocean too!! I didn't even know it was that close! The sign on the front said it was either 60 pesos or 3 dollars to get in so I’m glad that I can read Spanish because it’s pretty much double if you don't realize that haha. My Companion and I went to Elder Kirk and Elder Cunico’s apartment where we had sloppy joes (SOOO GOOD! It’s been so long!) and mashed potatoes!! Oh... you have no idea! I felt like I was in heaven! I mean I love rice and beans and really don´t have a problem eating it every day but it was nice to have a change especially for American food. One other cool thing we did was one night we went up on the roof and played some dominoes under the full moon looking out over all of Villa Carmen! It was super beautiful and I always love me some dominoes.

 

Kaden