Another great week

Dear Family,

 

It has been another great week on the mission! This week are teaching has been a little bit slow. It seemed as though every lesson just wouldn't work out, or we would notice a new challenge with an investigator. We walked over to this one inestigators house to check on her progress, and she wasn't home. So we had to walk all the way back to our apartment after a long and humbling day in the rain. And as we had just faced an extremely long day we opened the schedule to see a wide opened schedule for the next day with no appointments. So the next morning we came up with a game plan. We decided to trust God and go forth, and place all our faith in him for the day. So we wrote down every potential investigator that we had in our book! We then went at it for the day and we ended up teaching a lot of people, and gaining a new investigator. It was a great testimony builder to me that day, that if we put our trust in the Lord he will make us succesfull through him. I thought I would share that story with you.  But I noticed that in my last letter I didn't really give many details about this area or my companion due to the shortage of time I had. My companion is Elder Garfield, he is from Moscow, Idaho. He grew up in Kearns, Utah most of his life but just a few years ago hs family went up to Moscow. He has been out just a little over six months! He is a great Elder, and I definitely have much to learn from him in the twelve weeks I will be with him! We live in a house apartment just above a man and his wife, there names are Jeremy and Wendy! We live at 818 3rd Ave. NE in Devils Lake. But please send letters and packages to the mission home so they can ensure the letters get to where I am at safely. We live near this really cool park that has a swimming pool, and a really cool bike path that is about 1.8 miles long. We have an extre bike but it is a crappy Wal-Mart bike and the seat hurts when I ride on it. So I will be buying a new bike hopefully this Friday I think that is the 26th. I really love the great people here! We actually got a new investiagtor named Layel, he really wants to take us fishing with him on the shore of Devils Lake! And so we told him we can only go fishing frequently with him if were teaching lessons to him! So he accepted to become an investigator and take us fishing! I am really excited about that, because I wanted to come home from my mission at least a decent fisherman. It shows that Heavenly Father see's the desire in our hearts and makes a way for it to happen! We are in the Lake Region Branch, it is in a church building about the same size as your relief society room and all the doors to other rooms are in the chapel (in other words there is no such thing as a hall way in the building). We got to go have dinner with the Perisho's, they are a branch family. They live about thirty miles away in Oberon, North Dakota. We got to have dinner there and after we went over to this old barn where these amazing musicians have shows. They play what we call "gospel country", but they also payed some Johnny Cash. It was a really cool setup they were in a Garage with license plates lining te walls with all these cool restored 1950 cars. And it was just three of them one on acoustic a lady on the piano (who was also backup singer) and this amazing guitarist. They are all older people but they were really good, and one of them was a potential new investigator! So we stopped by for just a little mini concert!

It has been quite the week here! We have had an incredibly busy P-Day today! We just had a lunch appointment with this investigator Denada, and I am absolutely blown away by how prepared she is. Elder Garfield and the Elder before me gave her all the pamphlets to look over, and when they returned she had read all of them with just a few questions on each one. She reads all the Book of Mormon assignments we give her, she prays about the things she reads. So we are still working with her to work towards baptism. We have a lot of potential here in Devils Lake with a lot of great and prepared ivestigators. Please tell Uncle Mark that I love him, and am praying for him every night along with his great family. It can not be easy to watch your Father go through so much medical trials. I love Uncle Mark very much, and I look forward to when I can return and we can go fishing up on the Weber River again! I am also keeping Blake in my prayers as he requested, and I hope they are helping as much as they can! I miss all of you very much, there is not one night that goes by where I don't dream of home or the life I had before this one. And I definitely think of a lot of you every day. I wanted to answer moms question about the Morning Doves. There are more morning doves in Devils lake then I have ever seen anywhere else. I look out my big window every morning and I can see morning doves flying around outside. Then I go to my back kitchen window and theres a morning dove on the telephone wires. Everywhere I walk, bike, drive out here there is a morning dove. It is really a great place. It has been storming like crazy up here for the past few days! Me and Elder Garfield went out walking in the heavy rain yesterday. You could say that my pant legs were absolutely drenched after that one! The one great thing I love about North Dakota is the great BIG skies up here! When you are driving on the freeway the ky takes up most of your view here. And North Dakota has some of the greatest sunsets I have ever seen! Every night the sun goes super orange or red around sunset and they are beyond words sometimes! You can definitely tell when a storm is going to hit here because it gets super humid and muggy outside and you can look in the sky and see one coming for miles. The Utah mountains will sure look really big when I get home. Well I love you all! I am facing every challenge out here with a smile and optimism, I hope to become a better missionary that way! I love you all!

Love, Elder Corey Barber