Changing day by day

Alright let's take care of Birthdays first! CLAIRE, NICOLE, TRENT, AND DADDIO I hope y'all had/will have the best birthdays ever! I love birthdays! I can't wait to hear about the party plans! Someone go eat sushi or something for me. :) Okay so this week was really really hard. Monday was awesome! We went up Mt. Graham for labor day. Why do we have labor day? Nobody knows. Anyway! It was great to be up in actual trees again! Us missionaries were to impatient to wait for the coals to heat up so we used the neighboring fire pit people's bbq and did a little missionary work. It was neat! One of them ended up being a less active in our ward that our Bishop had wanted us to go see. I don't believe in coincidence. Tuesday was probably to longest/hardest day of my mission so far. We biked all day trying to find people to teach. Everyone that we had appointments with canceled and nobody that we tried to drop in on was home. After biking all day long and getting 2 flat tires, I was really losing motivation. Around 7 at night we decided to try one of our investigators again. He doesn't have a cell phone so going up the hill to his house is the only options. He was home and completely high. Are you kidding me! Is was awful. We tried talking to him about being worthy to be baptized like he was working towards and he started screaming at us then ran off. After a little while of just sitting there not knowing what to do we biked to Brother Beals' house for correlation. All throughout the day I remember thinking "Oh no, this is going to be a bad week." or "Okay Sister Barton just make it to Sunday." After repeating that to myself all day long I woke up the next morning and decided that my attitude was ugly. After a lot of time on my knees I decided to make this week the best week of my mission. The week escalated from there! The rest of the week was full of speeding from one appointment to the other and trying our best to talk to everyone along the way. We had a lesson with 2 little girls the other day. We found them the first week of the transfer when Sister Rhodes got a flat tire. The mother had told us that she doesn't believe in organized religion but she wants her girls to know about God. She asked us to have scripture study with her girls. WE WERE STOKED! It was interesting how she didn't care who taught her daughters about God just as long as someone did. The girls had been going to the catholic church with an aunt. We taught them on Saturday about Having a Heavenly Father that loves them and wants to be part of his children's lives. I looked over half way through the lesson and saw Talia (the mother) crying! She was sitting in the doorway just weeping. The spirit spoke to her even when she was determined to not learn from us. I was so grateful! Then she told us about how her cousin has just passed away and they don't know how they are going to pay for the funeral. They are having a car wash to raise money and we volunteered to help out there! Since then we have had so many sister-in-laws, cousins, and other random relatives texting us. AHHHHH The church is true! This next paragraph is going to be a cheesy one so put on your seat belts! We were riding home the other night after a long day of biking and teaching. It was so night to actually be going down hill and to not be baking in the sun. While we were biking I started thinking about why I love being a missionary. I love teaching people and see the spirit change people. I love being able to see Heavenly Father help us every second of the day. I love learning about the gospel for myself. I love meeting new people. I love seeing myself change. But I also really really really love getting to do what my big brothers got to do. I really look up to my brothers and my dad so much. They are fantastic examples to me of the kind of missionary I want to be. We walked into a newly reactivated woman's house the other day and I saw a pack of cigarettes on her counter. I was scared of being bold because I really don't like nagging people. I want to be a bold missionary like by brothers were! One day I'm going to figure out how to be bold! Becoming is a slow process that I'm trying to get better at. This week we get to go to the temple! We are all super stoked for our temple trip on Thursday so that's a great thing to look forward to...Sister Rhodes and I promised each other to help each other stay awake. We'll see how that goes...Oh by the way- when i get home I'm going to be a nurse. Just so y'all know. :) Everything in the 801 sounds like a party! Thank you so much for your thoughts and prayers! I can feel every single one of them all throughout the day. They are much needed and much appreciated. Have a good week! -Sister Barton Follow up- Sounds like so many people have good service findings! Keep up the good work! Service is important to our Heavenly Father so we better make it important to us. Assignments- The big Thatcher vs Safford game is this week! The whole valley treats this High School football game like the super bowl. For your assignment you can watch a mormon message about it :) It's called " Same Jersey" ENJOY! Favorite chapter of the week: Romans 12. Oh and there is a really good one in D&C 88...i can't remember what verse so just enjoy the whole thing :)