January 27, 2016

Dear Family and Friends!

This week has been a pretty eventful one! We had a world-wide missionary broadcast on Wednesday, and it was so awesome! I learned so much from it and I am grateful for the wonderful truths of the gospel!

There were general authorities that spoke and it was just an all around really awesome experience!

Friday and Saturday we got a bunch of snow! We were told by President Salisbury to stay inside both days, so we studied literally all day! It was a ton of fun and I learned so much! I mostly studied out of the Bible Dictionary and I learned so much from it! The Bible Dictionary is FULL of really cool definitions and it has benefited my personal studies so much! I would highly suggest using it! It is becoming one of my favorite things to study from! Ha!

Saturday night was transfer calls, and we were told that we are both staying! I was so happy to hear that because we are teaching some pretty wonderful people here and seeing them get baptized is something that I didn't want to miss!

Sunday, church was cancelled and I was super bummed about that... I don't know how I ever missed church in the past because I feel very incomplete without it! We were able to go and visit with a family that we have been teaching though, and they are doing so well! The mom is doing really awesome and she basically knows it all is true! She just needs to come to church more! The dad is a little bit of a different story, but as we work with him I know it will all work out! Their biggest motivation is getting sealed in the temple so these steps that they are taking towards baptism are really cool to see! They are so awesome!

Well thats all for this week! I love you all and I hope that you have a fantastic week! Be good and choose the right! :)

Elder Barazoto

​I made some pretty delicious rolls a few weeks ago!

​This is what I have been eating pretty consistently for lunch everyday! Haha I love it!

​Elder Larson's family sent this to me! Ha!

​Snow!

January 19, 2016

Dear Family and Friends,

Sorry for the absence of a letter last week! The library that we email at was having internet problems and yesterday was MLK jr day so the library was closed! But I'm alive and there is nothing to worry about Mom! Haha :) Love you!

So these past 2 weeks have been really great! We had interviews on Tuesday and those are always really awesome! President Salisbury is just so cool and knowledgeable! He always knows what to say and how we can improve our area! We also had a pretty cool and funny experience after the interview. We decided to go and contact one of our media referrals and she answered the door she was talking to us like we were best friends! We later found out that she recently moved to the area from.... Utah! Haha yeah she is already LDS and couldn't find the church so she requested a Book of Mormon be brought to her so she could ask us where the church was! Haha it was a pretty clever and awesome experience! As we were leaving, we decided that we needed to contact the rest of our referrals because we knew something good would become of it and we were right!! We drove out to Ivanhoe, Virginia and were able to contact our other referral and teach them! They are so ready for the gospel its awesome! It was really cool because there would have been no other time to reach them because he was going into surgery the next day! I am so grateful for the promptings of the Holy Ghost know that it was inspired!

I am out of time, but know that I love all of you and I love my mission! This is the Lords work!

Elder Barazoto 

PS: It's transfer week, so P-day isn't till next Wednesday! Please don't be alarmed! Haha :)

January 4, 2016

Dear Family And Friends,

Happy New Year everyone! I hope everyone has been enjoying it so far! I know I am!

So this week we had some pretty awesome experiences! A few weeks ago, we tracted into a younger man named Austin. He is a super awesome guy and was interested in hearing what he have to share! We taught him the Restoration and he seemed to really enjoy it! Then this past week we were able visit with him again because with the holidays, people have been busy and everything. When we asked him how his reading from the Book of Mormon was going, he told us that he read the ENTIRE book and he knows that it's all true! He even liked it so much that he gave it to his dad to read! I was shocked but so excited at the same time! It is truly amazing to see how the Lord prepares people to hear and receive the Gospel of Jesus Christ! It strengthens my testimony of the truthfulness of the gospel!

So a pretty funny thing happened this week as well. Elder Larson and I had an appointment fall through so we decided to go tracting. The first house we knocked on a man answered and before we could say anything, he told us that there was someone inside that wanted to talk to us. We waited and a sister from our ward come to the door and invited us in! Her name is Sister Rakes and she has been friends with this man for a long time! She has done pretty well to introduce the gospel to him and he agrees with and accepts a lot of the doctrine! He is actually pretty well-known in the community and in the political world. Apparently he knows and has worked with Donald Trump! Haha! Anyways, we taught him about the Book of Mormon and he committed to read it! The only problem is he will be out of town managing congressional campaigns for the next 3 months! It was a pretty interesting experience to tract into a friend of a member's home while she was there and teach the gospel! Haha! Nothing happens by chance though! :)

Another pretty cool experience happened on Saturday when we met a family over by some of our investigators and they told us to come back to teach them. They are a Hispanic family and don't speak very much English at all so we had to do our best with teaching in Spanish! It was definitely difficult, but I know that the Spirit was there in the lesson! It testifies to me that the words you say don't matter, because the Spirit will always testify of truth! I was so grateful for that because my high school Spanish doesn't cut it out here! Haha

Well this week has been such a great one, and I want everyone to know that I know that my Savior lives! Our Heavenly Father loves us all very much and desires for us to be happy in this life! He loves us enough to call prophets that teach the gospel so we can have it! I know Joseph Smith was a prophet of God! How grateful I am for a loving Heavenly Father that called a prophet to restore the gospel in these latter-days! It's sad to see people out here reject these plain and precious truths because this gospel is just so sweet! I love my mission and I love serving the Lord! I love you all and hope y'all have a fantastic week! :)

Elder Barazoto