University of North Dakota. Grand forks North Dakota

Eternal progression. 2-17-15

Dear family and friends,

                 Happy late Presidents day to all! We should always take a moment to honor those great Presidents of our Nations History. And we should keep in our prayers the current President, and future Presidents to come! The work has really been picking up here in Grand Forks. This week we hit a personal record of receiving 5 referrals (that's what we get when Sisters accidentally "poach" our area." But it was still a personal record for Elder Smith and I! We contacted one of the referrals named Collin. He is in his 20's and studying to become a leader of a Non-Profit organization. He knew members growing up, and he felt he should learn more! So we are excited to continue working with him! It will be awesome! This past week we met with Randall. We have been working with Randall for about 2 months now, and it has been on and off. He contacted the To our surprise he contacted the first Ward Sisters that originally taught him, and told them he "knows the church is true, wants to be taught everything, and get baptized." We were very shocked at this! I think he knows these things our true by the fruits of the Gospel. He has really seen a change in himself for the better. And he feels that God is lining things up for him. It was awesome, and we had a very spiritual lesson with him on Valentines Day. And we were able to set him on date for March 21st! We are so excited!! We even told him that God will help him make that date, but Satan will do everything he can to make it so you can't get baptized. So we warned him in a way. Johnathan's baptism is this upcoming Saturday!! His family confirmed they are flying in from Sunny Florida to Frozen Tundra North Dakota this weekend. So we are very excited it will be an awesome day! His Father is baptizing him, and Elder Smith and I are giving talks. We are really looking forward to it! It will be an awesome week! Were hoping Randall can attend the baptism! Well another Transfer has gone and I am staying in Grand Forks at least until March 31st (That is the next transfer van day.) I get to be with Elder Smith! He is a good missionary, and fun to be around! He is from the Castle Rock, and Parker area of Colorado. So he kind of lives near Cheryl and Glade. But there are a lot of great changes happening in our Zone this time around! 

                Yesterday we got it approved to go tour through the aviation center at U.N.D. And take a tour with some members who are currently studying there. It was awesome!! Recently I have been praying about, and taking interest in the Aviation field. I am not sure what section of Aviation I would like to go into just yet. But the member here in town plans to hook me up with a pamphlet or two on the program and different things I could Major in. As we walked through I thought to myself "This is going to take a lot of work." Here I am just a normal person who plans to tackle this huge degree. When I looked at the real life simulators I only knew the basic instruments and that's it. The rest of everything else was a blur. But I thought to myself schooling for anything is not going to be fun. I believe that aviation is the funnest degree you can chase after. But the schooling and the work to get there is not going to be fully enjoyable. But then I thought to myself the college degree for anything is not going to be fully enjoyable either. In that moment I took a thought on the eternal progression of us all. Here we are as normal humans some more educated and capable than others. But we are all shooting for the same thing. To live with God again and the chance to become like him. Right now nobody would be capable of becoming like God. But as we go line upon line and precept upon precept. We will reach our goal, and our eternal reward. It was a great lesson I learned. Well I hope you all have an excellent week! I love you all!

Elder Corey Barber

All is Well. 2-9-15

Dear family and friends,

                  It has been a great week up here! This transfer has been really fast! And I feel like next transfer will be even faster. I know my time is always running shorter and shorter. Not to be trunky but you only get 18 emails after this one. But that is still plenty of time in the Lords work! Recently Elder Smith and I have been working hard to crack down on our potentials list! It is literally 15 pages long. So it is taking us a while. It is a blessing that our cars get so many miles up here. We are really abundantly blessed with cars that have enough miles for all of us! It keeps us out of the cold ALOT! I can only name a couple of times that we have had to walk in the blistering cold this winter. We have been really blessed. I pray for the weather to continue to stay above 0. I know once we hit March it should stay in the 20s relatively. We had an awesome miracle happen. We were at a less active named Chads house for a lesson. We were just getting Elder Smith acquainted with him. When his girlfriend walked in with a friend that lived nearby. Her name is Chanita. She asked us why we don't stop by her house. We thought she was joking, but she was serious! So this week we plan to make Chanita an investigator! It will be awesome! We are very excited. Johnathan is doing awesome! He is looking great for his baptism on the 21st! We are so excited! This week we had the opportunity to drive out to Bemidji, MN. I believe this is the town where the T.V show "How I met your mother" takes place in. That is what I have heard at least (I wouldn't know I have never really watched that show.) I was able to go on exchanges with Elder Docking for the third time in a row! This time we were in Grand Forks. Elder Docking will be flying home at the end of this transfer. It is kind of weird because I met him when he was a year out. And now he is almost gone. It is crazy how fast the time goes! Every day the mission feels shorter and shorter. But the work is still going forward, and strong. Next Monday I will not be emailing due to President Day. But we got it approved to have two hours of P-Day to go explore the aviation center here in town. It is a museum along with a member pilot will be showing us around the schools airplanes. It will be REALLY cool! As I have been on my mission I keep getting the feeling I should master in aviation. All throughout my mission I have met all different likes of career options. And I have pondered them all deeply. And I really can't find anything I enjoy. I can find careers that could make me "money" in the long run. But I always come back to what will i enjoy doing. And honestly the only thing I truly enjoy and would be actually excited to learn about is aviation and airplanes. I personally would love to say my "office" or my workplace is in the sky. I don't know if I desire the airline industry. But I have been thinking of teaching aviation at a college, and help others learn how to fly. One of these P-Days I hope to meet with somebody over aviation here at UND and talk to him about their program. Well I am happy that all is well at home. I know recently there has been some scares, but it brings me great comfort to know the Lord is over all. And in the end ALL will be well. Well I love you all, and I hope you have a great week!

Elder Corey Barber

Out with January in with February 2-2-15

Dear family and friends,

                  I am so happy that February is here!! January was a doozie. And I have to be quite honest I'm happy January is over. Mainly because with January brought transfers. And many companionships in the zone got transferred which drove a lot of cars to Fargo at the beginning of the month. And then of course we drove to MLC which is always a fun time. And then we had our Zone Training Meeting which drove a lot of cars to Grand Forks. And then we just had our Zone Conference down in Fargo which drove a lot of cars to Fargo again. You could safely say January taxed a lot of cars with a lot of mile requirements. But we safely squeaked by and stayed under on our mileage cap. So we are doing great! And we welcome February with open arms. This month we won't be driving down to MLC. So we will be able to give more cars more miles for this month. But it feels good to welcome this month because every day we are getting closer and closer to warm weather. This winter has been an awesome winter up here! The temperatures have been really good compared to last winter where there were 100 days straight of temperatures in the negatives. I believe I was here for at least 80 of those days (yes God has a great sense of humor.) But this week was good we had an awesome Zone Conference. I feel like our training went well overall. I could pick out some things I would change and some mistakes I would correct, but overall I feel like it was good and it taught missionaries well. Something cool that we did at the end of the training was we had each district come up with what they are going to work on to help their investigators teach 50% of the lesson. We had them write it down on a blank white puzzle piece. We then gathered the pieces and put them together on the board and taped them. We then flipped over this puzzle and it was a well sketched out picture of the savior. It was really cool! We promised them that as they apply these commitments it will help their investigators come closer to the savior. We met with Johnathan this week! And they are all excited to have this baptism coming up on the 21st. Elder Smith was chosen by Johnathan to give the talk on baptism. And I was chosen to give the talk on the Holy Ghost. This will be the first talk I give on my mission. I'm still striving to go 24 months without talking in sacrament meeting once. So far I'm doing good! We also got a new investigator this week. His name is Jean. He is from Africa! And he had some friends in Africa who were members. He seemed pretty interested when we shared the Gospel of Jesus Christ with him. The reason we taught that to him was he grew up Muslim, but converted to Christianity not too long ago. So he doesn't really know what the gospel of Jesus Christ is. So it was cool to teach that to him, and we look forward to working with him! We will have to apply our training and use pictures to help teach him! Yesterday we went to another church and it was one of those southern churches with the clapping and the dancing. It was actually really fun! My ears hurt afterwards due to the loud music. But now I can say I have experienced an African American clapping church. The pastor was really funny as well. At one point he was talking about how their trying to pass a law that allows pastors to carry firearms in church. And he shared a story of a guy that would attend his church regularly who was always packing. At one point the pastor said "It was good I was preaching the right thing or I would have been shot!" Coincidentally we were sitting at the exact bench this man sat at every week. He then looked to us and said "I hope you two aint packing!" He was a really nice guy! Well that is about all for this week! I hope you all are doing well! I love you all and have a great week!

Love, Elder Barber