Josh's Email from 5/26/14

Hey Dad

First off Happy Birthday!! You're still a young grandpa just know that! I'm glad the wedding was good. The cruise sounds like it will be fun. Thank you so much for sending me an email even though it cost you $5. It means a lot that I was worth the $5 to use the internet haha. 

So I'm getting transferred... Not too happy about that but I was able to see a lot of success here and I'm happy for things that I've been out to see. I am looking forward to see where else I will be going where I'm needed. Also I need an insurance card from our insurance for this year to be on me and I don't have one so if you could send that to me that'd be great!

So this week was good on Wednesday we went to our recent convert, Sandra's home. She was having a hard day she takes care of her mom who has Alzheimer's and couldnt concentrate while reading the Book of Mormon so we dropped our plans for the lesson and taught the Plan of Salvation again. She didn't remember any of it which makes me believe that she might be starting to have it as well because she has forgotten things in the past that we've taught just the lesson before. There was a lot that she didn't know especially things about Adam and Eve. But going over life after death really helped her feel comforted because her mom is like 88 and just really in bad shape. But after our meeting she was smiling and said she felt a lot better:) later we ran into a man named Herod (aka buttons) on his porch. He was blasting some Juicy J and other rap. He had the oversized J's and the gold chain. He is a white guy in his late 60s. It was definitely interesting. We talked about the Restoration and we invited him to pray and he was uncomfortable at first so Elder Spackman prayed first to set an example and then we asked if Herod would pray as well for us. We bowed our heads and just stood there in silence for 5 minutes, and I know that because I checked the time before we did. After 5 minutes he said next time and went to walk inside. Later we went to do family history with another recent convert and Michael came with us. Michael was able to find a line to Adam and Eve actually.

On Thursday after district meeting we went up to Broomall, PA to Pep Boys to get our car checked out. Then afterwards we went back for our lesson and it went well. His name is Jeff and is very smart and knows the Bible pretty well but just refuses to pray about the Book of Mormon. I don't know why people don't want to. If they know God is God then they also know that He won't tell them something wrong. I just don't understand why people can't ask if the Book of Mormon is true or not. Jeff asked for evidence that it's true outside of praying. The member we had with us told him some things but tied it back to the fact that the only way we truly will know is through prayer. I simply told him that there is evidence out there that it's true and some that it is not true, but the power in the Book of Mormon is undeniable and we want him to experience it. Hopefully he does. 

My suit pants are taking a beating though, and they're they only ones that are comfortable because the other ones (croft&barrow cough cough) aren't comfortable haha especially for walking. I could really use a lava-lava for the summer haha.

Friday we had a full night planned for less active members from like 5:30-9 but then one appointments got cancelled and we went to one appointment with the Fletchers and we find out that the "less active" is fully active just is in the nursery and therefore has no contact with the outside world. It was good though haha. After we went to an inactive family, the Vitulis, and we were there for awhile they caught up a lot. We had a good lesson but sister Vituli was quite defensive about going to church though. I was able to tell her of personal experiences and it seemed to have softened her heart a bit. The Fletcher's said in the 20 years missionaries have been meeting with them that may have been one of the most spiritual meetings with them. That night we had transfer calls and I thought the DL was joking when he said I was leaving because I thought I was really going to stay, but I'm leaving.

Saturday we spent a lot of time helping a member with his garden and finished what he wanted to do in a quarter of the time he thought it was going to take. So he proceeded to tell of his conversion story, he was Catholic before. He talked about how the elders, though young, were able to answer questions that his old religion wasn't able to, such as where we came from and other stuff. We went out teaching with him and he just is quite condemning of people. We did a pretty good job of letting him not speak haha so it was good haha. 

Sunday morning we dropped by Jackie on our way out to tell her we will come by soon and she just started crying so we told her we will be back very soon. We brought sister Fletcher with us and she did so great with her and comforting her. Jackie is bipolar and was just very depressed. We shared a Mormon message that we planned to share before, "our true identity," and it was so great it was so powerful for her. She was beaming when we left, when we got there she wasn't going to come to church, but she came and fulfilled her new calling, Gospel Principles President. I'm going to miss teaching her, she has taught me a lot and seeing the change that she has had has been great! I have to say good bye to her today:/ 

I'm sad to go it has been a great area but I hope you are doing great:) 

Love, 

Elder Barker

Ps I hope you know i was joking about the $5 thing haha