August 8, 2016

Dear Family and Friends!

Wow, its been a really great week! We had MLC and zone meeting this week and those were both super great! Elder Christensen and I have some really great stories to tell this week! :) So I've mentioned before that we are teaching a Georgian Orthodox Bishop and that is just crazy in itself but this week it got even crazier!! He's already been to church once but this week one of his kids got sick Sunday morning, yet he still came to church! It was a perfect and even valid excuse for him to not come to church, but he left his wife with him and came to church anyways! It was pretty amazing to see and he even committed to come next week and bring his whole family! I think he really enjoys church and its pretty interesting to see how his views and beliefs have been changing since he's been coming to church! 

Then we had another pretty neat experience following church! So Elder Christensen and I had been struggling to find new people to teach and we really wanted to teach more people! So all day Sunday we were doing our best to talk to as many people as we could, but no one seemed to want to listen to us... It was a little rough until the perfect idea came into my head! We needed to take a second and say a special prayer to be led to someone new that we could teach! So we parked our car and I offered a prayer and immediately felt and knew what we needed to do! We started walking down a street we had already been many times and saw someone outside and went to talk to them! It was an older lady and a high school student who knew members and loved the church! We were able to teach them just before the day ended and they seem pretty promising! It was an amazing miracle and another experience to treasure from my mission! I have lots of those and I expect to have a lot more! It's honestly really amazing because as a missionary you can literally call down the powers of heaven to assist you in this work for the salvation of souls! I have learned that Heavenly Father will grant us according to our pure desires and true faith! It is such a blessing to be serving the Lord, and its humbling that he would allow me to wear and represent His name and church every single day! I love you all and appreciate all your love and support! I hope you have a great week!

Elder Barazoto

Here is the Orthodox Bishop! We call him Bishop Joe!