Thank you so much for all of your support to me and not even just me! Now that I'm a missionary I can see how thankful each missionary is for the members in their area that really support them. With the help of the members, the work hastens much faster. So....THANK YOU.
I am enjoying it so much out here. Honestly, I was riding my bike to the church today where we send emails and I was just overwhelmed with this really great feeling that I'm doing the right thing. I truly never have never have had that feeling of happiness before. It's so much fun to be serving a mission and I'm enjoying every moment of it.
So this past week we've realized as a companionship and as a district that there's a lot of musical talent as missionaries in our district. Elder Arp and I started on Thursday with bringing the spirit to lessons through music. We sang Lead Kindly Light to an investigator named Edwina, who, by the way, is so awesome(more on her in the future). On Saturday we had a few really cool lessons when we were on exchanges. Elder Saunders, our district leader came to my area and we decided that in all our lessons we would sing songs to the people we taught. We ended up singing 4 songs that day. It was really powerful. Music truly does bring the spirit into lessons. Because of those songs, we had some really powerful thoughts. I really really enjoyed it. So basically, exchanges were really awesome!
This week we taught the Plan of Salvation very frequently and so we got to learn that lesson really well. The point that really stuck out to me this week was agency. I am so grateful that I have agency. The analogy we came up with is this: Imagine our life on earth as college. If our parents called us every day, or even better, lived in the apartment next door and told you, "You are required to go to this class, go to this job interview, and hang out with these friends" we wouldn't learn a single thing. That is precisely why we have agency. We need to experience for ourselves how it feels to make a mistake and how it feels to make a good choice so we know good from bad. This concept is essential to God's plan. The hard thing about it is that on a mission we can only do so much. We can't force anyone to come to church. That wouldn't even do any good for them. Sadly, though we invited everyone we talked to and a lot of people committed to come, not a single person came who we invited. But I always have to remind myself that they have their agency. We can only do so much and we felt like we did all that we could to get them to come. So, my invitation this week is simple. Every day, consciously think about what you're doing and use your agency to make a good choice. At the end of the day, go back through your schedule and evaluate. Write down what choices were good and what choices could have been better. rinse and repeat. Become better the next day.
I love you all so much! Keep up the good work!!
With Love,
Elder Barnett
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