Oct. 19 Humble, Happy, and Completely covered in Sugar....

Times to repent. Last week I made this area sound like a breeze. False! We are still working as hard as we can. I was pretty humbled. This week was mid-terms which means every student in Tucson was glued to their laptops and not so much to their Book of Mormons. My first few days with Sister Desautels were super rough just because everyone was canceling on us. As the week went on we were able to actually teach people again! I'm not a fan of mid-terms -___-. We had a surprise MLC on Friday!! Lynn G. Robbins came and gave us a training about responsibility and accountability. It was pretty heavy and intense but I learned a lot. He talked about how every time we make an excuse for something not getting done, we lose control of the situation. There is no such thing as a valid excuse. The next day I read about when Mormon walks away from being the Nephites captain then 3 chapters later he repents and comes back. Same goes for us. There is never a good excuse to walk away from a responsibility god has given us. That includes no excuses to ever turn down a prompting! Like I said- it was pretty heavy!! At the end he read a few verses about how the salvation of souls is on our shoulders. We were all spiritually exhausted by the end of the 5 hour training!!! On a lighter note, the temple groundbreaking was this week!!! Tucson is finally getting a temple!!! I'm so stoked!! Elder Uchtdorf came and gave a talk about breaking ground in our own hearts and preparing ourselves for the temple. He also invited everyone to get baptized today so that they could go inside when the temple is ready. There were a ton of government people and religious leaders! Elder Uchtdorf is my favorite! The temple dedication helped me recharge and get pumped to work even harder than I've been working. I gotta give the next couple of months my all! One of the greatest parts of the week was the stake bbq. The ysa members were in charge of manning all the kids booths. Somehow we got signed up to help with the cotton candy. We were excited to help! A ton of students brought their friends and we were able to get some solid potentials (free food works every time). The only problem of the night was the wind....cotton candy and wind don't mix. Within a half hour we were all COVERED in sugar and loving every second of it. Jicell and Amorah were volunteering at the face painting and laughing at us while we were turning into blue and pink clouds of cotton. It was an amazing week full of miracles. I'm already starting to see how much Heavenly Father is willing to bless me not just during but after my mission. I feel so blessed to be serving at the u of a. These people are teaching me so much. They are some of the sassiest, most hilarious, ambitious, and inspiring friends I've been blessed to meet. There is nowhere else I'd rather be than serving these crazy young single adults!! Thank you for all the prayers and thoughts! I love you all from Tucson to New Mexico, to California, to France, to Toronto, to Japan, to SLC to Logan and back times 100,000,000. Pondering scripture: Mormon 8:12 -Sister Barton Ps. We taught Luke about fasting this week. When he was a Buddhist munk he hand to fast EVERYDAY!! We are talking breakfast only! He took the once a month idea pretty well.