April 28 Staying in Rincon!

Well, prayer works. I'm staying in my beautiful home for another 6 weeks! Oh this is going to be too great! Sooooo because Tyler went to the YSA missionaries, Naomi is strictly texting only, and Ronaldo moved to Florida we don't have very many progressing investigators at the moments! We are working on it though! There are a few others that we are teaching but they are a little slower than we would like. Patients is a virtue! This week we really wanted to focus on finding new investigators, involving members, and serving as many people as we possibly could. Then we had the brilliant idea to combine them all together. We set to work trying to find as many people as we possibly could to serve. The first one we found was the Stake Primary President, she was working in her yard and told us about how all of her neighbors we were worried about her because her yard looked not so great. Without asking we put on some pants and went to work! About half way through finishing weeding her yard, she stopped us and said we needed to go do her neighbors hard as well. She asked if we would rather call or just do it. The quote "first observe, then serve" came into my head. We went straight over there, knocked on her door with all of our gear in hand, and asked her where she wanted us to start. The family was shocked. They put us to work and a few minutes later the whole family was outside helping us pull weeds. It was really fun to get to know this family. They are really strong in their beliefs and are some one the most obedient people I've ever met. They may not be interesting in learning about the church right now but it was very rewarding to see this families reaction to our desire to serve them. This week we also painted a house, pruned a fancy garden, planted trees (5 feet is a lot when the ground is Arizona red rock), decorated for a mother's day party, helped teach young womens, helped a couple move out/clean out their apartment, and a few other good old projects on the side! We hit the pillows pretty hard this week! I've never been so tired! I've learned that you can't ask people for help. That never works. If you want to help people you can't give them a choice! You just have to pick a project, put on some pants, and get to work! I love service projects! One of my favorite families that we get to teach is the Sanchez family. The mother is Catholic and the father is a less-active member. When they got married they decided that they could meet in the middle and go to a very popular Christian church in Tucson. This week we decided to teach them the Plan of Salvation. The mom never joins us but as we were teaching the kids Brother Sanchez really got excited and took over the whole lesson. If was fun to watch this father remember his testimony as he taught his kids about the war in heaven, about how important this life is, about why we need a spirit world, and about how amazing it will be to live with our Heavenly Father again some day. I pretty much sat there is amazement the whole time. His older kids were asking a million amazing questions and you could slowly see light bulbs getting brighter and brighter! Ahhh I love watching testimonies grow right before my eyes! The next miracles of the week was when we were teaching a family. Remember the family with the pet pig? Well we went over and it was obvious they were having a tough time. They told us all about how the weight of the world was on their shoulders and they didn't have much hope left. We sat there not having any idea what to teach. Our plans were thrown out the window as soon as we walked into the house. I was praying and praying that Heavenly Father would help us. A chapter came to my mind. As soon as it did I stopped the conversation and we started reading. The spirit filled the room as we read John 14. We testified of the atonement and how our Savior knows exactly what they are going through. I was so grateful for the convincing power of the scriptures and the spirit. The situation of this family didn't change but everything else did! Being a missionary is the greatest thing ever! Thank you for all your prayers and thoughts. I love you so much -Sister Barton