January 3, 2017

Hello everyone! Yesterday all the libraries were closed so sorry I am a little late with this email!! Haha well not too much has happened since last Wednesday, but I am really enjoying Marietta! My companions are awesome and we are really excited to see tons of great miracles! :) So what I didn't know before but I know now is they actually closed down the Williamstown area so now we cover both areas! I originally thought some other missionaries were going to be in Williamstown which is my first area, but now we get it! And we are also living in the Williamstown apartment too! This week has basically been just a huge blast from the past experience! Church was really interesting because I really didn't believe anyone would recognize me at all because I didn't serve here very long and it was almost 18 months ago but people actually remembered me so that what pretty sweet :). The only down side is now we have to get the house where the Marietta Elders used to live ready to move out and the house is pretty huge. We have been spending a lot of our week finishing that but we have definitely been having tons of fun along the way! Ha! This week should be full of really awesome missionary experiences though! I'm just so excited!

As far as teaching goes for this week, we were able to have a sweet lesson with one of our investigators named Brother Huling! He came in contact with the church because our ward mission leader and his family met him when they moved to the Marietta area and invited him to learn more about the church and even to attend church too! This member family is the bomb, they are super great people and great fellow-shippers. In our lesson he agreed to pray about a date for baptism so we will see what happens! :)

We have also been able to teach a couple of recent converts and they are really great people as well! I always love seeing new converts and the fire that they have! One of the converts received a calling recently! She'll be teaching primary and she is really excited about it! It is really just amazing to see how the Savior and His gospel can take people where they are at and transform them into someone who they never could have become by themselves. I have definitely experienced this first hand and helping others have a similar experience is just great! I love my mission so much!!

Well thats mostly it for this week, I love you all and I hope everyone has a great week and also a happy new year!

Elder Barazoto