Monday, November 16, 2015

The golden question

Hello family! And everyone else!
This has been a great week! We had Elder Bowles last P-day and we went and bought Krispy Kreme which was delicious, and hung out at the church for most of the time. We had a good time with him, and it was sad to see him end his mission! He served his full 2 years, but I wish he could've stayed a little longer! Love that boy. 

We spent a good bit of this week trying to get back in contact with some of our former investigators, and reactivating some people that had been coming back to church. I don't know what happened this week with church though; we only had 20 people, including us, show up. It was kinda sad to see so little people there. That just means we will have to work even harder to get people to come to church! 

So, this is something that we read in Priesthood yesterday. "The Book of Mormon is the great standard we are to use in our missionary work. It shows that Joseph Smith was a prophet. It contains the words of Christ, and its great mission is to bring men to Christ. All other things are secondary. The golden question of the Book of Mormon is “Do you want to learn more of Christ?” The Book of Mormon is the great finder of the golden contact. It does not contain things which are “pleasing unto the world,” and so the worldly are not interested in it. It is a great sieve."
Here is what I started thinking, hah. It says "the golden question..." But what I heard is the gold in question, talking about the people who are ready to actually read the Book of Mormon. They are the gold in the question. The Book of Mormon is the great sieve. Well, what are we separating with this sieve? The faithful and prepared from the hard-hearted and unprepared. Just as a man pans for gold and casts the stones aside, but keeps and polishes the gold flecks and nuggets, we move on from those people that are unprepared to read the Book of Mormon, and look for the people that are ready to "learn more of Christ" and act on it.
I thought it was kind of cool. Hah
Another funny thing that happened was we had someone at church that is on date for the 5th of December, when it came time to separate into our different classes, she was really nervous about going to Relief society. We reassured her, and a member even came and invited her in, so she went. Right before class started, I saw her sneak outside, so I went with her boyfriend to go find her. We saw her sitting on the curb outside and she said she just wasn't ready to go to that class, and her anxiety was just too much in there. I told her that it was totally fine, and she could come sit with us in Priesthood, that is when her boyfriend interrupted and looked at her and said "Do you want to come learn to be a better guy?" Haha it made us all laugh :P Then he talked with her and helped her come back and go to her class. It was awesome and helped me realize that we are adults, and sometimes we just have to do what we know we are supposed to. I love tough things! I do tough things first! All this because I am a finisher.  

We have been working J and H a lot lately, and we have been able to do a lot of service for them this past week. We went over Saturday night to roast hot dogs and Bratwurst over a fire. It was a good time, and I enjoyed being around a campfire again :) It had been far too long. We were sitting and talking, and we started to teach about Family Home Evenings. We made plans for the coming weeks to come over and have a lesson by the fire every Monday night :) Can't get too cold when you're burning Pallets! Well, we were interrupted by some loud noises coming from the woods behind their house, so we went to investigate. Long story short. I caught a possum. Haha 


So, for those of you that haven't heard, we had transfers this last week, and we were put into a three pack. It is now Elder Olmstead, me and Elder Brandon Bassett from Phoenix Arizona. He's a great kid, and though we live in a small house and have very little space for...anything...we are all getting along very well. Being in a three pack is actually more fun in my opinion. We have more ideas for how to do missionary work. 




Oh, and I get to change an alternator on our branch mission-leader's car this week :) 
Well, that's my week! Hope y'all have a wonderful week! Love y'all!
-Elder Joel 'Sunshine' Barker.

Saw this scary rig on the way up this morning, thought of home ;)

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