This week was so crazy. I got back from Guam on Monday night, and my flight was delayed, so we didn't really have time to go out and do anything. We've been focusing lately on having a member present at as many appointments as possible. Each island is setting goals for how many of these lessons they can teach per companionship. We set a goal for 6, which is a step up from last month. The last two weeks we've had 3 and 5. This week we had 13. It was incredible. We got a bunch of referrals and several new investigators. We just had a ton of great success, and I'm so excited to see what comes of it all.
On Saturday we had the APs come and train us on the Abrahamic Covenant. It was something that I felt the members here needed to hear and take to heart. So, yesterday we had Branch Council Meeting, and I asked the Branch President if I could take a few minutes to teach them about it. Basically what it entailed was that Palauans are descendants of the House of Israel through Joseph, and helping them to understand that if they reach out to their friends, they will accept the gospel because of the Lord's promise to Abraham. It was really cool. Our next step is to take it into their homes and then get referrals. I have a feeling that this is what we need right now, so I'm excited to see the results here as well.
We were teaching a less-active man on Thursday, and he's just been doing awesome. Since he started reading the Book of Mormon, he's just been on fire. At first he didn't really care. He was nice and stuff, but he would just kind of flip through pages and look around during our lessons. It took him a while, but since he started reading, he is way more involved in the lessons, and is willing to keep any commitment we invite him to. We couldn't find his records anywhere, so we told him that it may have been lost when he moved to Saipan (it's kind of a problem here in Micronesia), or that we might not be able to retrieve it for whatever reason. We told him that he may need to be baptized again in order to recreate it. He answered, "If that's what I need to do, I'll do it." Then we taught him about sacrifice and coming to church (he often works night shifts and doesn't finish until the early morning), and again he responded, "If that's what I need to do, I can make that sacrifice and do it." Being able to see the change in him has just been so awesome, it's unreal.
I don't know if you guys ever sent that Halloween package or not, but if you did. I didn't get it yet. If not, then obviously it still hasn't come. Just making sure someone at the post office isn't stealing my mail.
This is the last week of the transfer, so if we get a new missionary, he will come next Thursday. Then again, we may stay in this tri-panionship for another 6 weeks. Who knows.
Let me know if you want pictures of anything in particular, I'll see what I can do.
Love,
Elder Barlow
We're helping a recent convert quit smoking again, and he asked me to carve "no smoking" into his workbench. Luckily I got my wood-carving merit badge.
The family that was baptized a few weeks ago. The father received the priesthood last week, and blessed the sacrament yesterday. Their other son is scheduled to be baptized on the 27th.
These pigs were HUGE. They are illegal to have down in Koror, but lots of people raise them in Babeldaob.
Pickle juice popsicle. Still delicious.
This is a crazy bug that landed on my book during a lesson.
Elder Stanley (my trainer) finishes his mission today, so he took me to the airport in Guam on my way back to Palau last week.
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