28 June 2010

Family,

We had a pretty good week. The APs came this week for their usual tour. There are two things that I look forward to every time they happen. The first is Zone Conference, and the second is when the APs come. Being on a island with only 4 missionaries and a senior couple, you get pretty secluded, but when President and Sister Dowdle or the Assistants come, I finally get some contact with the outside. The Assistants come every other transfer, so they are always different (at least one of them), and I finally get to meet a new missionary. Plus, it's fun to tell stories to people who haven't already heard them all. One of them is Elder Worton, who spent most of his time in Yap, and the other is Elder Colemere, who was on Pohnpei. They both go home in October, I think (maybe November).

Anyway, we have a woman scheduled to be baptized on Saturday, and we're just trying to get through the last couple of things we have to teach her. She has some really great people fellowshipping her, so she should be great. She and her "husband" were married culturally, but had since separated apparently. After discussing the idea of getting legally married with him, she told us that they have different beliefs now (he belongs to the same church that she used to) and until he accepts that, they can't be together. We made it very clear that we didn't want to break up her family or anything, but she seemed pretty set on it. He's kind of an alcoholic, so I think the separation will be good for her. We're really trying to get her family to come to the baptism so they can support her too.

I have another story. So there's this white guy named John, who is the pastor for some other church here in Palau. I'm not sure of the denomination, but it's some Christian church. Everytime we teach someone in a certain village, he shows up the next day and tells the people to never meet with us again, or he'll ask when our next appointment is, and then come at that time. He's pretty ridiculous. I guess it's understandable since most of those people in that village are of his congregation, but it's still pretty interesting. We've had a few run-ins with him, and he's a huge nuisance. He drives a big blue pick up with eight, fourteen year-old girls in the back at any given time. What a character.

Picture time. So the first picture is of the youth, their parents, and leaders (and the missionaries), with President Del Valle of the mission presidency. He was in Palau for Branch Conference, and this was their youth fireside. The second picture is of me at the Ngardmau Waterfall. Speaking of pictures, my camera has somehow developed a black spot on the lens. I'm not sure exactly where it is, but it's not on the outside, and it's not on the display. It ruins the pictures though. Any suggestions?

Until next week.

Love,
Elder Barlow

Happy Father's Day!

(For some reason my last email got deleted, so I'll start over)

Family,

First, I'll do some shout outs to the fam. This one is for all the June birthdays, so Kristen, Clark, and Matt, happy birthday.

Moving on.

So this last week was Zone Conference. Being the companion of a Zone Leader is pretty weird. I still have to run all the errands for other missionaries and mission business, and I still have to help prepare for Zone Conference, but I don't get to do the fun stuff, like go to Guam every transfer for Zone Leader Council. Oh well, I'll get used to it.

There has been a pretty depressed feeling here in Palau for the last little while, since we haven't been having much success. At least it didn't feel like it. It was pretty apparent I guess, President Dowdle must have noticed the tone of our letters to him. Anyway, he addressed it both in his training and in each of our personal interviews. He said that we cannot base our happiness and feeling of success on how many lessons we teach or who we baptize. Rather, those things should come from whether or not we know that the work we are doing is acceptable to the Lord. It reminded me of the way that I felt for the first few months of my mission. I left each morning and came home each night knowing that God was happy with me. That's something I haven't noticed that I've been missing until President mentioned it. It's not because we're disobedient or lazy or anything, we (at least I) just haven't had the same attitude. After doing what I can to change it, things have just been so much better. I've been a lot happier, I'll tell you that much.

To top it off, we got fed fruit bat again. Gross. Elder Lyman (my companion) will never admit it, but he feels the same way. This stuff is not good. I won't say that actually - it's just not my favorite. Usually I would just eat the meat, and maybe some wing, but we have to follow the example of the host. This guy loves fruit bat. So he cut it open, tore off the wings,.and first thing, he popped a piece of fur (fur+skin) into his mouth, chewed and swallowed. Then he scraped the insides out with his fingers, and those went in right after. So then we went to work. We ate the meat, the wings, the insides, the fur - everything. All that we left was the bones, a little fur (we can only swallow so much hair), and the brain (we just couldn't figure out how to get to it). I even scraped the meat off the skull with my teeth. Once I popped that first piece of fur in my mouth, I gagged and almost threw up. We soon learned that if you followed it quickly with rice, then you can swallow it. Sick. Once all was said and done, we were pretty proud of ourselves. The only reason we were so determined was because the guy that made it for us isn't a member. He is Evangeline's (I think I mentioned her before) husband. He usually ignores us and acts like we aren't even there. I think we actually impressed him, which was our goal. We helped them move some tables a few days ago and he actually came out and offered his help and said thank you to us afterward. We're making progress! It was still gross.

We still have someone on the road to be baptized July 3rd, so we're pretty excited about that. All she needs to do is get her marriage recognized by the court, and then we're good to go. She was married to her husband via a cultural marriage, but without the papers from the court, the church doesn't recognize it as a legal marriage. Luckily, all she needs is a witness from each side of the family who was present at the marriage, and the cultural marriage is valid in court. At least I hope that's fortunate, I don't know how hard that will be to get.

We started another one of our investigators on the Book of Mormon challenge. We gave 2 months to read the entire book and mark references to Christ. He wants to be baptized, he's just not sure when. We're hoping this will kind of speed up the process, and that it won't actually take the whole 2 months for him to decide. He's having a lot of pressure from his family (mostly his mother) to not get baptized, so I think that's the only thing holding him back. However, he's pretty independent, and like 30 something years old, so I doubt it will stop him in the end. He's a really nice guy.

This week was pretty slow since we had Zone Conference, then Branch Conference (like stake conference, but we only have one branch - it just means a member of the mission presidency comes and trains the branch leaders, and then there's a 2-hour Sunday meeting, and a Youth fireside). I think that's all I have to report. I'm still getting accustomed to my new area - trying not to get lost.

I hope all is well.

Love,

Elder Barlow

Transfers

Family,

So the big news this week is that I was actually transferred. After almost 8 months, I'm in a new area now. I live in a place called Ngarias, in the nicest apartment in the mission. We drive a 2006 Toyota Tacoma. My companion's name is Elder Lyman, and he and I came to Palau at the same time. He spent most of his mission serving on Guam, and has about four and a half months left (he extended one transfer). He's the Zone Leader (we only have one now), so I get dragged around sometimes to do administrative business.

Time for the sentimental part. After having spent so much time in my last area, I feel like I'm kind of abandoning it. I've been working with a lot of the same people since I arrived, and I feel like their problems have become mine. It's almost as if I'm just putting my problems onto someone else. But, I don't choose transfers. If God needs me elsewhere, then I'll go.

I will say this though - this area seems a little easier. We have someone scheduled to be baptized next month, and about 5 more pretty soon (I'll talk about them more later). There aren't as many less active people in this area, so that's one obstacle taken from my path.

I'm sorry but this letter will be pretty short, I'm running low on time. I don't have much to report, I'm in a new area and I don't really know much about anything here. I knew my last area like the back of my hand - it's weird not having that anymore.

I'll be sure and get some pictures of my new apartment.

Love,

Elder Barlow

7 June 2010

Family,

First off, Dad, here are the pictures you wanted. If you look closely at the one of our apartment, you can see the awful guard dogs that are always tied up at the top of the stairs. They bark and bark and bark all day, and they smell. I haven't been bit yet - at least not by them; maybe by their fleas.

In the picture of the church building, the right building is the chapel - which is really just an open space that we set up chairs in. The left building has the classrooms.
Today starts a new transfer, but we don't find out about transfers until Wednesdays now. That makes things hard for Palau since we would get the call Wednesday night, and the flight leaves just a few hours later. What will probably end up happening is we will either get the call on Tuesday night, or they'll give us a later flight. We'll see. We don't think anyone is leaving island this transfer, so it's not really an issue this time.

We got both the Conference issue and the June issues of the Liahona this last week too. I don't know if you noticed, but every single picture of a computer in the June Liahona is an Apple computer. It really shook my testimony, but then I realized that everything is okay. Just like typos in the Book of Mormon, using an Apple computer can be attributed to the mistakes and follies of men - the Church is still true though. So any of you who had the same worries as I did - let there be peace unto your souls.

Since Elder Lyman was off gallavanting at Zone Leader Council in Guam, his trainee, Elder Bano was with us for a few days. He's Marshallese and really doesn't talk much. Anyway, we went up to see Tobi (the man who was just baptized), and we helped him prepare to bless the Sacrament. He was so nervous because he thought it had to be memorized and everything. Well, he did it yesterday, and only had to say it once. Impressive for a 60+ year old man that has only been baptized for 2 weeks or so.

Yesterday was Seminary graduation here too. There were only 3 consistent students, and none were graduating yet, but a lot of the kids who had come throughout the year came to the graduation. I don't know what it is about seminary and mutual, but it's a great chance for youth to be missionaries. I really slacked in that aspect.

We took the branch member list to a less active guy that we meet with and we asked him to describe where some of them lived (we previously selected all the members on Meyuns island that we didn't know, and counted 43 households - way more than we thought). He was able to tell us where they lived, or if they moved, and where they moved to, or if they were in the army. He then offered to go with us to talk to each of them. It was pretty cool. Many of them were the only member in their family, and just emphasized to us the importance of teaching and completing families. It's hard to stay strong on your own.

This week could be an exciting one. Especially if I get transferred (which I won't), I could be emailing you from somewhere else next week.

Love,

Elder Barlow