12 July 2010

Family,

Good afternoon one and all. So my companion is still in Guam, but arrives tonight. Apparently there are some major changes happening to the way missionary work is done. We all have our conspiracy theories, about a new Preach My Gospel or electronic area books or something else crazy, but really we have no idea. All I do know is that all the District and Zone Leaders are being flown to Yap (I don't know what the significance of Yap is, but that's where they decided) for some leadership training in August. I'm really curious to learn what's going on.

We got a referral about a week and a half ago for this man and his wife, and so went to contact them, and we just couldn't seem to catch them at home. Finally we went and the husband and his daughter were home. We soon learned that they had met with missionaries about a year and a half ago (they still remembered the names of the missionaries, which was encouraging). They invited us back the next day to teach them. We came, taught them about the Restoration, and set up a time to come back. We decided to watch the old "First Vision" movie, since its the only one in Palauan, just to make sure they understood what we were teaching. As we were watching, I had the impression that I needed to ask them to be baptized, but this being only our second meeting with them, I wasn't sure. I started to think about dates and trying to find what the date would be for a Saturday about a month away, and then just kind of catalogued it as we continued with the lesson. We gave them the Book of Mormon challenge, which is a plan for them to finish the Palauan Book of Mormon in 84 days, and mark references to Christ. We were about to end the lesson, when I got that feeling again. At the surprise of my companion, I invited them both to be baptized. They looked at each other and the daughter answered, "ochoi" (yes). Her father said he wanted to keep meeting with us before he answered, and asked us to come the next night. They had read from the Book of Mormon together and marked it together. I was so impressed and ridiculously happy. We're supposed to meet again tonight, but at least Risong, the daughter, is scheduled to be baptized on the 7th of August.

We even had a less active family stay for the full 3 hours of church, at the request of the non-member father. This week was just great. I think things are really starting to pick up here, and if not, I at least feel like they are.

My mission president hasn't let me know about the email situation yet. So that's still pending. If you've written me, and you haven't received anything from me, just keep writing, hopefully they'll fix whatever the problem is.

Until next week.

Love,

Elder Barlow