back to normal

well family and friends i am writing a little early today because president is coming to tbo and i dont know if i will have time later to write so here it goes. this week was really really really nice and good it was a normal week, and from what i have seen as a zone leader you hardly ever get a normal week. haha so it was nice to feel like a normal missionary again. we had 2 baptisms this week fabricio who is 30 is the brother of a member and bruno who is the brother of a recent convert. they were super good baptisms and the ward was super pumped to see them. we also made the bishop a really happy man haha we brought his aunt and 7 of his cousins to church and he was super pumped to see his family members in church they will all be getting baptized here in the next monrth....awesome. there wasnt really any cool stories to be honest this week just a lot of working hard and i am starting to love the bike more and more i am thinking about buying one when i get home and going from salt lake to st george on it, it would be a blast i am cranking out about 25 kilometros a day on the thing so its helping me get back into shape haha and i am super pumped to get back home and start training me for my tour to st george haha. so yeah president heaton is coming tonight he has to do interviews tomorrow so he is probably gonna take us out to dinner tonight with his wife and we will talk abot the zone there and how things are going and what not. i always learn a lot from president heaton when i talk to him so i am pretty excited. so yeah all in all the work here is going good and i am definately excited to be here. i cant believe june is already over before we know it its gonna be my birthday again haha. the big 21 crazy. so yeah i hope all is well with you guys hopefully you are planning a trip to bear lake or something for the 4th that would be super fun but i dont know do what you guys want with your summer haha. so yeah i really dont have to much more to tell. i love you all and miss you guys and hope you guys are enjoying the summer sun. thank you for everything, i have the best brother, sisters, mom and dad i could ask for you. keep it gangsta. elder barton

loooonnnngggg weeeeekkkkk

hey family, so this week not gonna lie was probably the longest week of the mission haha. i will tell you what happened now. so on monday we met with the stocker of the sister missionary here that is a member and we had a little intercourse with him and in the mean time while i was playing soccer outside someone seem to have stolen some of my things from my backpack that was inside of the church, bad day number onehaha, tuesday we had to get up at 1 in the morning cause the sisters called us scared and crying cause they thought the stocker was outside of there house and so the following day we had to see the sister missionary off to her new area cause she was just to freaked out by this guy and didnt feel comfortable here anymore, it sucked losing her in our zone, bad day number 2. wednesday we had to get up at 2 am to go to montevideo and have our meeting with our the zoneleaders that was a good day other than we got home at 12 pm dead and had to get up at 630 the next morning haha thursday, we did divisions i had to go to an area where they had absolutely no investigators and not very good plans to find investigators, that was a long day haha. friday was normal and saturday was just stressfull cause no one could listen to us. yesterday was sunday i gave a talk in sacrament meeting about how all are called and few are chosen, it went rather well, than we had a meeting with all the bishops in the whole stake and we gave a 20 minute presentacion to them, talk about feeling pretty insignificant haha i never thought i would find myself standing in front of 7 bishops and the stake president, telling them what to do so that was pretty stressfull haha and than last night it POURED ran and we couldnt get into a single house haha so we rode around on our bikes from 6 to 9 in the pouring and freezing rain. great way to end a terrible week. haha so yeah me and elder nygard are both feeling it today and just got done taking a loonnngg deserved nap and we are hoping that this week will go alot better as of right now it should be a pretty normal week. but it never is as a zone leader haha. so yeah thats whats up with me i cant believe we are already halfway through june it has flown by and i hope you guys areo ut and about enjoying the summer sun, i gotta run but i love you all so much and thank you for all the support. all the love in the world. elder barton

changes.

hey family barton, so this email is gonna be quite short i am running really really short on time haha but yeah this week was good we had changes and on tuesday night i had to live at the terminal i was there from 11 at night till 5 in the morning making sure missionaries left here and arrived safe here so yeah haha it was quite the long night than we had to go out and work a full day so yeah it was pretty rough on the eyes. haha really i cant remember a whole lot of what happened this week it was a tougher week full of trials and working hard and not having a whole lot of success, there was a cold wave that came through here in uruguay and it was freezing all week i pulled out the sleeping bag haha, but they say that its gonna get a little warmer and today was quite warm so thats always good. you guys know me i dont like the freezing cold at all hahaha. so yeah just worked really really really hard trying to be the example for the zone and all that jazz, we had kind of a sad experience we are teaching the mom of a recent convert and she loves us she takes the book of mormon to her work and everything, but she told us that some of her work buddys and her boyfriend of 11 years they have been making fun of her quite a bit for talking with "the mormons" but we had a great talk about how there is an opposition in all things and that after trials comes blessings so she was really grateful for the chat and just loved us more for it haha she is for sure gonna get baptized. so yeah more than that i cant really remember about the week. mark and sue congrats on the big 25 that is awesome, hope you did something special. rest of the fam i hope you enjoy the warm weather, go to the beach or beating or something fun for me. love you all thank you for everything. elder barton

Change Night.Stake Conference. Wedding Bells

Tuesday, June 5, 2012 hello barton family and friends it sounds like the weather is getting warm out there and ya´ll pulled out the boat for the first time to do the infamous osbourne barton day of boating, and my last one that i will miss haha so yeah change number 13 has come and gone and now i enter into number 14....3 more to go. mychange is...im staying haha me and elder nygard are staying as zone leaders here in tacuarembo. so yeah not to exciting there haha. so the big 2 headlines of this week were one we had stake conference this last weekend, president heaton went and spoke along with the temple president and his wife, the tempe president is a stud 100% i have heard about 4 of his talks now and they are unbelievable haha so stake conference was awesome after the conference me and elder nygard organized a stake baptism, 7 people were baptized and there was a baptism from every ward except for one in the whole stake so wholefully that pumped up the members to help us a little more with missionar work here in tacuarembo. we had a baptism her name is marta she is the neighborhood ofthe elders quorum president, she has been an investigator for about 4 months now and hasnt missed a single sunday, she had to wait 4 months cause she wasnt married....so we helped them get married they both got married on friday and she was baptized on sunday, the husband, lazaro, has to stop drinking grandpas old cough medicine (alchol) and he is gonna get baptized on the 23rd and they already have the goal to get to the temple so its pretty freakin awesome.than the other story happened last night.......so it was about 845 at night and we were heading to the house about to call people with there changes when we get a phone call from a sister missionary crying....some guy ( a member) followed them all night and claimed his love for the sister and wanted her nametag or something like that, the sister got prettyfreaked out, so she called us and we were about 25 minutes away from where she was and we just got hallin, we started bookin it to downtown and we got there in about 10 minutes but the hermana gave us the wrong direction she we went about 1 mile to far from where they were we finally found them on the street with the hermana with tears in her eyes, so we walked them back to their apartment and made sure they got home safe, than took them some hot chocolate cause it was freakin freezing outside it was a pretty good experience, i love serving others and helping people feel better and letting them know that its all gonna be alright. so yeah it was a pretty special, fun, full of hard work week for elder nygard and I but i am super grateful for every experience i learn a ton from them. so yeah i hope you enjoy this email i feel like it was one of my funner ones haha but yeah thank you for everything you do. i love you guys so much, thanks for the support, see ya later fools. elder barton

families and boating

Monday, May 28, 2012 well this week went by ridiculously fast haha me and elder nygard were super busy with all sorts of things, first we had to give a presentation to the zone and teach them some things to make their missionary work more affective so we held a zone meeting on wednesday morning and did that than the next morning we went to seminary at 6 in the morning and taught the youth here how to share the gospel with their friends and invited them to come to church on sunday, i am really glad i never had seminary at that time haha. than on we also had a baptism this week. so super cool story we found this kid through some recent converts he is about 14 and his name is cristian, he is friends with a group of recent converts and they are all pretty strong in the church, so we find cristian and we get teaching him and than we thought to ourselves we need to try and find his parents, so we went over to cristians house and talked to his mom and 4 brothers and grandma and we left them with the book of mormon challenge to read and find out if it was true. so that went well than the next time we went back to their house the mom had read the part in the book of mormon and absolutely loved it haha later on we asked her to give the closing prayer to end the lesson, she did so and while doing so she began to just burst into tears...wow. she said she couldnt make it to church cause of work but she was going to get out of work to come see the baptism of her son...she came to church just intime to catch the last bit of relief society and saw her son get baptized. she cried during the baptism and said it was so special to see her son getting baptized and later cristian said in his testimony that he wanted to see his mom and brothers get baptized and he wanted to be a missionary one day. fahh it was pretty awesome haha now the mom and the family is pretty dedicated to being baptized and going to church. so yeah that was a super cool experience that i highly highly enjoyed and am really excited to see what happens here on this next coming week with that family. this week should be filled with stuff like that as well as its the last week of the change and we have stake conference this weekend, we are going to do a baptism as a zone cause we have 10 people getting baptized all from different wards here in tacuarembo so it should be pretty awesome and an awesome way to get the zone pumped and a great way to end the change. this change went by crazy fast. well memorial day is coming up i hope you guys have warm weather to go boating with the osbournes and you guys enjoy yourselves. you guys just gotta suffer through one more summer of boating with out me and before you know it i am back in action haha so yeah thats all here from the guay have a good one, love you all so much. elder barton

workin hard with a change of heart

Monday, May 21, 2012 family and friends so another week has come and gone out here in the guay. this week went really well, president came for zone conference man being a zone leader and having zone conference in your zone is stressfull we spent all monday organizing the food getting tables set up cleaning and all that jazz but i highly highly enjoyed zone conference both the sister and president heaton spoke of conversion and the importance that it is to be converted and how if we are converted we will reach our full potencial and a change of heart. it was really awesome something that i have been actually for the past 4 months just about having a pure heart and reaching my full potencial as a disciple of christ. me and elder nygard also had time to talk to our zone about what we wanted we chose to talk about walking with christ, we used the example of enoc in moses 6:31 to 34. it went quite well along with some other scriptures that we shared just about knowing what the lord wants us to do in our missions with our companions as long as us as people. after zone conference it was just a normal week of working crazy hard just to catch up on 2 lost days of work in our area we activated 2 families this week and one family brought some friends to church and now they are getting baptized, missionary work is just so easy when the members are involved haha so yeah i hope you all had a good mothers day and a good week with school finishing up and everything i cant believe we are already going into june and boating season is right around the corner, the last one im gonna miss haha ummm sue you asked me if i had any sisters in the zone we do we have 4 sisters in the zone 2 work crazy hard and are really good missionarys the other 2 just bug and annoy me haha i dont have the biggest testimony of sister missionaries yes i am racist haha but yeah so thats really all i can think of this next coming week is completely normal and a week just full of hard work hard work and a little more hard work, i have never beeen so tired in my wholelife haha i am exhausted i get home every night and just die haha i dont know how i am getting up and working everyday well i do its the spirit and the power of my calling and man i am gonna really miss that when i get home i am really excited to get home and just work crazy hard if thats anything i have learned on my mission its just that just when you think your done, beat, to the ground you can always get that little bit out of you and go that much farther and be that much better. its so awesome to see people grow and see the lord just build his kiindgom down here i love you all so much thank you for everything you have done. i love you all so much have a great week. elder michael barton

the phone call

Monday, May 14, 2012 hey family it was super super super awesome to talk to you guys yesterday even though we didnt have the best internet connection it was super awesome seeing you guys and it kinda sorda made me super trunky haha but thats all good it just reminded me of us always sitting in that stinkin living laughin our faces off. heather i am digging the hair cut and the new job way to go what a blessing. megan looks like a mom and just has life undercontrol just the way she wants it, even though trent didnt really talk to me i can tell that he makes her really happy, rybart, same haircut, same schooling, not much change there haha but that is actually super awesome i am excited to go hangout with thesame brother i left behind haha sarah, you look like a superstar pretty much thesame but a tad bit older and more mature which is awesome that probably naturally happens when you pack up and move to hawaii haha carly...WOW holy bonkers she is a little woman taking high school by the horns i am sorry you didnt enjoy prom thatm uch but you still got next year so dont even worry about it!!! and mary......the most changed with her huuuuggggeee looonnnngggg blonde hair haha she looks like a mini megan and is just shredding things up on the lacrosse field. mark, lost some weight??? get on that bike a little more. and the quueeeennn of them all sue...i was so excited to see you, your still my best friend and you are still the same gangsta as when i left. all in all it was a great phone call and i really enjoyed it. even though sue killed me with the question about going to school. i dont feel like i am old enough to go to college yet i am still growing up i have so much more to learn haha. so this week is basically a normal week tomorrow we have zone conference with the zone of rivera they are coming down here so me and elder nygard have to get the chapel set up tonight for that tomorrow as well as president heaton is coming up here and he is gonna take us out to dinner and talk about the zone a little bit with one of the assistants elder glenn. so tonight should be prettty fun president heaton is just the coolest man on planet earth and i love spending whatever time i can with him i learn so much about him everytime i talk to him or hear him speak he is just the man. and than after that tomorrow its just back to work. so just nothing new going on here just work work work work being a zone leader you always got a bunch of little things to do and it keeps you super super busy and you can never rest so the next 5 months here are gonna be really tiring ones and probably really really fast ones haha so yeah thats basically the update down here in the guay. i love you all sooo much thanks for everything you do. i love you keep it gangsta elder barton