Monday, November 28, 2016

Hanging Out with Some Cool Dudes

Hey ya'll,

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving. To carry on tradition, I made a pecan pie - it actually tasted good. We had a Turkey Bowl in Gilroy which was fun, then ate and then walked the streets contacting people. We met two Hell's Angels and they are super cool. They tuned my bike-up and let us chill in their garage for a little....we may or may not have also tried on their vests. It was a good day.

We continue to be blessed with finding great people. Remember that mom I told you about last time, the one with the sick kid, well, we're stoked as she has already set a baptism date. We also have one set with a great guy named Roberto - again, stoked!

Hope you all have a good week.
Love y'all,
Elder Barker





Turkey Bowl with the District in Gilroy

Monday, November 21, 2016

Power of Priesthood Blessings

Hey ya'll,
This week was good, the area is starting to look  up.  Probably the neatest thing that happened this week involved a 5 year old boy who had the nastiest pink eye I'd ever seen. He probably had something more than pink eye because he hadn't eaten any solid food in 3 days either. We were asked to give him a blessing.  I must admit, I was almost afraid to touch him because I thought I'd get super sick, but I quickly got over that. So we gave him a blessing and immediately after the blessing he asked for food and started eating cheese and crackers. When the kid woke up the next day, he was completely healed. No physical signs of the pink eye and he said that he felt like he had never been sick.  That was cool, but that wasn't all. Three days later I got a text from the kid's dad (the dad has been inactive since he got off his mission) and he said "my wife wants to take the discussions and get baptized. Can you guys come over tomorrow night to start it?" So we are super stoked. The power of priesthood blessings is awesome!

We're very blessed to have a good teaching pool right now. We have a family of investigators who have committed to be baptized and we're working on scheduling that date. We also have like 7 investigators who are consistently keeping commitments and progressing. Other than that it was a chill week. 

 Hope you all have a great Thanksgiving!

Love,
Elder Barker
ps - Hack got called out from the podium for falling asleep during sacrament meeting by the speaker! (see picture)
Elder Hack caught sleeping in Church

Monday, November 7, 2016

Hey y'all

This week has been wild with my new comp that I'm training plus I got the mini missionary. 

My new comp is Elder Hack and he's really cool. Football and power lifter from Texas so we get along well. The Mini missionary's name is Jared and he's from Salinas. He will be with us until next Tuesday. It's weird to already be training, plus the mentoring thing with the mini, but things are going well so far, just stressful. 

We met a lot of new people this week because my goal for the first week or two after Methvin left is to replenish the teaching pool. We have a ton of appointments this week so we'll stay busy - it will be a good week!

Not much else to talk about. 
See ya.
Love, Elder Barker
Elder Barker and his new companion - Elder Hack from Lytle, Texas

Elder Reid, Elder Jones, Elder Barker and Elder Hack

Elder Jones, Elder Methvin and Elder Barker - Halloween night

The Elders with Juliette Johnson's family on Halloween

Trick or Treating with the Johnson kids - people thought the Elder's were wearing costumes! :-)

Enjoying lunch after helping an investigator move furniture - Elder Barker, Elder Hack and Jared the mini-missionary