Dear family and friends,
This has been another great transfer out here in the Casper 5th ward. We really saw the Lord work in our area. I believe this has been the biggest transfer for teaching that I have ever seen. Transfer call Saturday was an exciting day. Most everybody predicted that I would leave. To I think everybody's surprise I am going to be staying another six weeks out in the Casper 5th Ward. There was a mix of emotions that came over me. One part of me was looking for change and a new experience. The other part of me didn't want to leave all of this behind, especially the great members down here. Regardless of the mix of feelings I had on the inside I heard the spirit tell me to not dwell on my feelings and get to work. Excitement filled my heart and I committed to work harder this transfer than any other transfer so far. Instead of battling with emotions the Lord wants me to stay, and the Lord wants me to work. And that is the plan for the next six weeks is to work. We have an exciting transfer ahead of us! We have put Erika and Aaron on date for August 11th! And they are looking forward to that date. They said they want the Elders to baptize them. So it will be another great experience to baptize another person! We are still working with Tammy, Drew, and Ashley! Tammy was out of town this past week so we couldn't get her to Church! I am also really excited this Transfer because Elder Anderson the Elder I trained back in Devils Lake has become a District Leader here in the Casper Zone! I am really excited to work with him this transfer! Well I hope that all is well at home I love you, and have a great week!
Love, Elder Barber
Dear Family and Friends,
It has been an excellent week! This past week we got to teach Tammy three times with a member attending the lesson. Tammy is doing fine her daughter has been in Utah this past week and will be returning soon. And her son is home, but it is hard to get a twelve year old interested in the gospel. But that wont stop us from trying! On Tuesday I was able to go on exchanges with Elder Jameson. On that exchange we received a referral for a married couple named Erica and Aaron. Erica and Aaron have a good friend who is a member of the Y.S.A ward here in Casper. They had investigated the Church before but the missionaries who taught them did not really respect them and came off the wrong way. So they stopped investigating. The Y.S.A ward put on a demonstration of "The Mormons Next Door". Aaron attended that and was very impressed with the statistics the Church has with married couples staying together and not getting a divorce. He was also impressed with the health statistics of Latter Day Saints. So he wanted to investigate. When we taught them Aaron told us he knew the Book of Mormon was true. Erica is still investigating the subject and is trying to find out if it is true. Aaron wants to get baptized with Erica so we will have to continue to work with her to get her that testimony. The Lord truly is preparing people in our area!! Elder Jameson and I were out tracting one morning and we found Ally who is sixteen years old, but was interested in learning about God calling another Prophet. So Elder Bench and I went over there and taught her the Restoration. We weren't able to actually finish the lesson. But we will meet with her once she gets back off of vacation. We also tracted into Zack a couple doors down from Ally, and he works for a member of the Church. He was super nice to us, and said we could stop back by! We haven't been able to get in with him, but hopefully soon!
Dear family and friends,
This past week out here in the Casper 5th ward was great! We had a lot of member involvement! We taught Tammy, Drew, and Ashley twice with a member. The first time we taught them we had a wonderful talk about baptism. Brother Geddes is a solid member missionary. You can tell he was an awesome missionary! When he extended the invitation to be baptized Tammy was hesitant at first. He then helped us address her concern about baptism. He then re-committed her and she still gave us a hesitant answer, but she said she would. We will continue to work with her! We took Slade out teaching with us. He is an eighteen year old in the ward who is still doing his papers. He came out and taught Tammy with us again. We talked about the Book of Mormon. That was a really spiritual lesson! We went over and taught this elderly man named Allan with Slade. While we were teaching it rained cats and dogs outside. And then of course like it always does in Casper the Tornado Sirens went off. Except this siren was for a flash flood warning and not a tornado. We went out tracting yesterday and we tracted into a guy who grew up a member and fell away but was really open to us. And he wants us to come teach him and his girlfriend! We also got back in with Bryan and we followed up on his Book of Mormon reading, and he is almost done with 1st Nephi! So that was all of our successes this past week! The Lord is really blessing our area!
Love, Elder Barber
Dear family and friends,
I hope you all had a wonderful fourth of July weekend! We had a wonderful time on the fourth of July. President Anderson approved all missionaries to stay out and watch the fireworks this year! I would say the Fourth of July is equal to or more than the homesickness of Christmas. But the Lord knew this so for both fourth of July's he approved me to stay out and watch the Fireworks. But we had a fun time! Bishop Gallup signed up for Dinner on the fourth so we got to hang out with his family. And they also took us to the firework show of Casper. There fireworks were pretty good! But nothing beats the Kaysville fireworks! Thank you for sending me those videos and pictures of the Barbie-Q. I will have to wait until later in the week to watch the videos with sound. But I did love the pictures that you all sent to me! The reason I title my email "heating up" is because it is getting HOT in Casper. Now it is nothing compared to St. George heat, but when your apartment doesn't have an AC unit it can be challenging! But the Mungers said they have a spare AC unit they can lend us for a while. But I still love the summer season where I don't have to wear a thousand pounds of coat. This past week we were able and very blessed to find a new investigator named Sharon. Her husband recently passed away last December and it is still really hard for her to talk about him. She brought up to us that she doesn't agree with "til death do us part". We taught her about how she can live with her husband again, and how they can be sealed for all time and all eternity. It was an awesome lesson, and we can't wait until we can teach her again! We have been teaching Tammy for quite a while. We had to quit teaching her back in April. But recently we have been teaching her and inviting her out to church. She had never attended Church with us before. So we were able to invite her to Church this past week and work out a ride for her. And she came to church! It was definitely a long awaited blessing to see her at Church! Well that is about all for the week! I love you all and I hope you have a great week!
Love, Elder Barber
Dear family and friends,
What a great week we had this past week! This past week we were able to meet up with Alicia. We had not been able to get in with Alicia for a couple weeks. But we had dinner over at the Goodman's and Alicia wanted to come have a lesson. We learned from Sister Goodman that some misinformation from friends had crept into her life. So we spent the lesson resolving concerns. I felt the lesson was successful because at the end we told her that she has one side contending that we are wrong, and she has another side contending that this is the way that will improve the quality of her life. So we told her the ONLY way you will learn if this is true or not is to pray about it. Only Heavenly Father can give her the answer. We are continuing to work with her. Her husband isn't too supportive of the LDS thing. Which will be hard to overcome, but we will pray for him to soften his heart to our message. We are getting back in with Tammy again. We are trying to help her progress in the gospel, but it will be difficult because she is paralyzed from a stroke. So getting her to Church is pretty hard. But she does have a couple of kids that could progress in the gospel towards baptism. Just yesterday David and Cynthia were able to make it to church. We sustained David to receive the Aaronic Priesthood. And after church I was able to confer upon David the Aaronic Priesthood. That was an amazing moment to give the Priesthood to someone else. That was definitely a highlight of my mission.
Dear family and friends,
This week has been a longer week out here in Casper. Things are kinda slowing down here. Mainly because our investigators that we taught all the time are baptized. Which is definitely not a bad thing! It just means that we need to be out finding more. This week we were out tracting on Poplar Street when we knocked into the door of a guy named Brian. We told him we had a message that would strengthen and bless his family. He seemed interested off of that and let us into his home. We taught the Restoration to him, and explained how this could bless him as an individual and his family. When we taught the Book of Mormon you could tell the spirit was strong in the home. He was tearing up and he told us that he had never considered reading The Book of Mormon. But now he wanted to read what it had to say. He told us to try him back in about ten days. So we will be over sometime this week to teach him. We then got a referral from the Elders serving in the Third Ward for another guy who lives on Poplar. We haven't been able to contact him yet, but definitely this week! I know that the Lord is preparing people out here in Casper to be taught the Gospel.
Dear family and friends,
It has been another great transfer out here in Casper. I am excited to say that I get to stay one more transfer out here in the Casper 5th ward! This transfer we got to see Jeramie and Stephanie baptized and confirmed as members of the church. We got to see David and Micah baptized. We had a wonderful stake conference this past weekend! They had a lot of youth speakers. Many of them preparing for missions. One that I recall is headed to Tokyo Japan in four months. I talked to David yesterday at the Munger home. He made me aware that he would be receiving the Aaronic Priesthood this upcoming Sunday on Fathers Day. And since me and David are great friends he has asked me to confer upon him the Aaronic Priesthood. I was definitely shocked at his request. But I can't wait for Sunday! I think that will be a great day! We are still working with Alicia. We were not able to meet with her. But we are crossing our fingers for this upcoming week! While we were teaching David his Aunt Kristina was present who is a non-member. Sister Munger invited her to take the lessons, and now Kristina is an investigator. The Casper 5th Ward is continuously being blessed
