A great ZTM. 3-9-15

Dear family and friends,

                  Thank you for all of your wonderful emails! We had such an awesome week! Not too much has happened since I last wrote you. We had an awesome Zone Training Meeting! Sister Woodbury gave an awesome training on Gratitude! Hearing that training for the second time has really blessed my prayers. I am now saying "Thank you" in my prayers a lot more. I remember at Missionary Leadership Council Sister Anderson gave a powerful training on Gratitude and that really touched me. She shared an experience with us of how she was trying to be more thankful in her prayers, and really striving for gratitude. Shortly after she began being grateful in her prayers her and President Anderson welcomed a new grand daughter in their family. She expressed to Heavenly Father how thankful she was that the baby was safe and healthy. She then got a text a few hours later from her son explaining that their new daughter was diagnosed with signs of down syndrome. Sister Anderson explained how this broke her heart. She began to have feelings of "no this can't be right, the doctors have made a mistake." She then turned to Heavenly Father in prayer. And in this prayer she felt prompted to show gratitude and be thankful that the baby was alive and well. And that is when she began to have more love and appreciation for the situation her family was in. She expressed thankfulness to Heavenly Father for the family that surrounded the baby to take care of it. She also expressed her thanks to the relief society for bringing meals over to the family. Even in our hardest circumstances always show thanks. We had a very powerful training on the new #becausehelives initiative the church is coming out with on March 28th. At the end we had a powerful testimony meeting. We announced at the end of our meeting that we would be watching the because of him video, and at the end of the video the floor is open to anyone who desired to share their testimony of the Risen Savior. The video brought an amazing spirit. The room was so silent and the spirit was so strong you could hear a pin drop. It was awesome and the testimonies were so powerful. It increased my testimony of the Savior Jesus Christ. I know he lives! I love this time of year where we celebrate his resurrection. I absolutely love the testimony of that Joseph Smith gave in D&C 76:22. And now, after the many testimonies which have been given of him, thisis the testimony, last of all, which we give of him: That he lives! I can add my testimony to theirs that I know the Savior Jesus Christ lives. And he cares about us, and he wants us home. I love you all and I hope you have a great week!

Love, Elder Barber 

Because He Lives. 3-5-15

Dear family and friends,

                 I am thankful to be writing you on this day! I know it has been a little while since the last time I wrote. We had such a great week! I got to go on exchanges with Elder Adair who is serving in Cass Lake, MN. That was an awesome time! I got to meet a very awesome Sister who was in there ward. She is about 75 years old, and deaf. But she can talk to you like a normal person, and it sounds normal! I was blown away by her Family History. We were going to share a message of Family History with her, but it turns out she has about 1,167 names reserved to go to the temple. If there is anyone that needs to be taught it is me! She has so many names that the temple has told her to send them 100 names a month. We had an awesome M.L.C trip! Sister Woodbury is our new Sister Training Leader so it was really cool to get to know her for the whole 18 hours we were confined in our truck. But it was really good! We got to go to Mount Rushmore! I have awesome pictures, but they will have to wait until Monday when I can get the right flash drive. We had a great training on the #becausehelives initiative. I am getting really excited for this. The video itself comes out on March 28th! So it might be difficult to actually use in proselyting until then. But we are very excited. I am thankful to be living in a day and age where the Church has such a position in the social media. I have loved all of the videos that they have produced! The spirit is always the strongest. And the cool thing about this initiative is it is intended that it goes past Easter! It will be ALL year long. I am excited to see the miracles it will bring! It is hard for me to believe that Easter is coming up along with General Conference! I am so excited to hear from a living Prophet who testifies of the Savior Jesus Christ! I love you all and I hope you have an excellent week!

Love,

Elder Barber

A great baptism 2-23-15

Dear family and friends,

                 What an awesome start we have had to the transfer! I am sorry I am emailing you all so late. We had President and Sister Anderson in town. They met us at the church around 11:30 to conduct interviews. I had a great interview with President Anderson. Probably the best one I have ever had! It was awesome! This week we have started a new transfer! And week 1 is already in the books! I was able to go on exchanges with Lake Region this week! Elder Autrey is the new District Leader, and I have never before been on exchanges with him. It was a great time! I told the people in Devils Lake that it would probably be the last time they see me until July. Which to them doesn't seem too long! Elder Cook is also serving out there (he came out with Elder Smith and I). He was told by President his main objective is to get Donnada baptized. I hope that comes true. There is not too much work out there so I am not sure how much longer the area will be open. So we need to get Donnada in the gates of baptism before the area closes. I will do what I can, but it's not my area anymore. On Saturday we were able to see Johnathan baptized! It was a great baptism! Johnathan's father is a convert of about 10 years. And he did an awesome job with getting all the words correct! It was really cool to see! Elder Smith and Elder Cook taught Randall while I was in Devils Lake, and he committed to live the word of wisdom. We followed up with him on Sunday to see if he had been living the Word of Wisdom. And it sounds like he has kicked coffee and is living it! So it is really awesome! Randall is on date for March 21st! And at this pace he is looking like he will hit it! That will be one of my last weeks here! We look forward to Missionary Leadership Council next week in Rapid City! This will most likely be my last one while serving here in Grand Forks. It has been awesome! But I loo forward to next week! President told me at the end of my interview that the assistants want to take all the Zone Leaders to Mount Rushmore for our P-Day activity. Since the mission home will be swapping to Bismarck, North Dakota in April I wont get a chance to go to Mount Rushmore with President at the end of my mission. So he is giving us the opportunity now. I don't think it will have the same feeling, but it will still be cool to say I did it! SO this means next week I probably wont be writing until Thursday! But I want you all to know I love you, and I thank you so much for writing me every week! I love the encouragement and the support you all give to me! It means a lot! I love you all, and have a great week!

Elder Barber

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