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