Josh's current address is 51 N 2nd St. Apt 310 Stroudsburg, PA 18360. Packages and letters will be safer going to the mission home. The mission home address is 721 Paxon Hollow Road Ste. B, Broomall, PA 19008. Keep in mind that there will be a delay because it take some time to get packages and letters from the mission home to Josh.

Thursday, August 21, 2014

Email from 8/19/14

Hey Dad, 
Hey Dad so I am sending you an email today because for some reason my email stopped working after I sent one to Nate and so I hope he got that one as well and I hope this goes through because it still won't upload anything. Thanks for the address I will send president it as well as soon as the move is official. If I send a letter today will I still be okay to send it to our old address still?  So BYUI doesn't start til the 15th? I may do that but I still have a year so I don't need to stress about it. I wouldn't mind working for the time before school but it would be hard to find work I'm sure. I definitely would like to have my days planned out haha. Some of us elders have talked about rooming together at school and we joke about having weekly planning with our classes and dates and having "finding activities" haha it would be a lot of fun.  
So my week has been pretty crazy we got transfer calls and Elder Cooley and I will be staying another 6 weeks so I will be "killing" him. This will be my 3rd transfer with him.  An Elder who opened a Spanish area here though, Élder Hardy, got transferred and we were pretty surprised since he just got here.  
This week we were able to meet with the Layton/Brown house hold again and one of the family members there who isn't LDS said she would like to be baptized along with her 8 year old son (her 11 year old son is baptized) on September 29! Unfortunately we found out that their neighbors kids have head lice so we won't go over there until the coast is clear.  
Another thing that was cool was that another person we are teaching, Susan, stuck up for us and the Book of Mormon when her husband and 16 year old daughter started bashing against the Word of Wisdom. Her daughter just wants an excuse to drink. But Susan stuck up and said how we need to have faith and we will come to know that Joseph Smith was and is a prophet and that the Word of Wisdom is of God. It was frustrating because of the contention, but it was great to see that Susan really does have a testimony. We are going to go to the temple site here in Philly for a lesson this weekend.  
Another awesome experience was one day Elder Cooley and I were going to the church to use Facebook and as I'm walking out of the subway I realize my comp isn't with me but I realized that he was talking to someone coming up the steps. He invited him to talk inside our church since it was just across the street. The mans name was Terrence and his initial question was, "Why do people attack us if we are followers of Jesus Christ?" It turned into an hour discussion and he seems to be a very Christ like individual who is always giving and he basically wanted to know how do I not give money to people who beg on the street and still follow Christ? It was a question I had to think about more and more because he wouldn't fully accept us saying to point them to places that can help. But I told him that it is not required of a man to run faster than he has strength and we cannot stretch ourselves too thin. Elder Cooley then gave him a short stack of pass-along cards with the Risen Lord on the front and said he could give these to them because the Gospel will help them so much more than a dollar will. He accepted gladly and seemed excited to do it. He was such a cool guy- he was an African refugee who came to America 16 years ago. Sadly he didn't live in our area so we gave him to the other elders in a different ward.  
A bad thing that happened though was we had a lesson with Chris S and we brought a member of the bishopric with us. We gave him some background and told him that we feel he may have a history with drugs but that he told us he has never done anything and his only problem is smoking. Well the member multiple times throughout the lesson talked about how Chris needed to stay strong off of drugs and get away from those dealers. It was horrible we controlled the best we could and ended the lesson of the Plan of Salvation short. Our next lesson with Chris we read with him in Leviticus where he was reading because that's what he wanted to do which was chapter 20. You should look up  the chapter heading... very "interesting" chapter. Elder Cooley and I tried to tie it back into the Book of Mormon which we used Alma 39. After the lesson though he told us to not be disappointed if he doesn't make it church. I'm afraid he is dropping us and I'm sure it's because of the lesson before and how uncomfortable it made him. I was really excited for the lesson I love teaching the Plan of Salvation it's my favorite but it did not go the way it should. I have hope for him still though.  
Other than that though my week was pretty good I need to look into getting a license though because I have no ID. 

I hope you are all doing well!
Love,
Elder Barker

Sent from my iPad








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