22 February 2011

Family,

Our P-day was switched to Tuesday this week because we had Zone Conference yesterday. That was so crazy. There are 20 missionaries in Guam (compared to the 3 or 4 in Palau) plus 2 senior couples and a senior sister, and President and Sister Dowdle. It was nuts.

Saturday we had my first baptism here in Guam. One of them has gone through several sets of missionaries and I was actually able to teach her a few times when I would come to visit from Palau. Finally she decided to be baptized. Her brother is actually the one that has been coming teaching with us all the time. She asked me to confirm her, and I was so nervous. The ward (it was just officially organized on Sunday) here has so many people, and I had to talk into a microphone and everything. I had the mission presidency, bishop, and stake presidency sitting right behind me too, but it all turned out okay.

The other girl is the step-daughter of a Palauan recent convert. She would run away from us for a while because she used to be taught by the sister missionaries, and she only wanted to be taught by them. After we just kept going over there, she finally started sitting in and asked us to be baptized.

A lot of the zone leaders are probably upset with us, but Elder Matthews and I decided to organize a mission-wide 'finding day.' As a mission we've been putting a lot of emphasis on improving our teaching - which has been great, but as a result, people have left finding on the side. This coming Saturday, each companionship is not to set any appointments, and not talk to any members, but to spend the entire day finding new people to teach, and talking to everyone. We're pretty excited about it, and I think it will have some great results.

Speaking of new people, one of our Chuukese members brought her niece with her to church, and we were finally able to go over and visit them last night. This girl doesn't speak any English, but claims to understand some. My knowledge of the Chuukese language is about what you would expect out of someone who's been studying for 2 weeks, so I told her that we will teach in English and that if she has any questions, or doesn't understand, to just tell her aunt or her cousins, and they will translate. The lesson went okay, and she was able to answer our English questions in Chuukese. She seemed to be having a great time, and we're going back again tonight. We're going to ask her to be baptized next Saturday. The only problem that we'll have I think is getting permission from her parents back in Chuuk (we don't even know how old she is actually, so that may not be a problem at all).

In other news, this week Elder Matthews and I are going to Saipan to go on exchanges with the missionaries there. I'm pretty excited since I'll get to work with new missionaries and see a place I haven't seen before. When we get back, President Dowdle wanted to talk to us about going over and doing the same thing in Pohnpei and Kosrae. I'm pretty excited, but I just hope traveling doesn't get in the way of teaching our investigators.

P-day next week should be back to normal, so I'll talk to you then.

Love,

Elder Barlow