E-Mail #32

E-Mail #32

January 17th, 2012



Hello everyone.


I hope you have had a good week! I know i have had one of the best weeks so far on my mission. It has been so great to be able to be in Junction City as long as i have. This week is another transfer week. So i find out tonight if i am going to be staying in junction city for the first half of my mission or not....CRAZY! Sister Fie'eiki is going home on Thursday morning. Its been so sad to see her prepare to go home. But i am so thankful for all she has done and for the time we have been companions. She most def. helped me through the hardest part of my mission, and i owe her so much for that! But the best part of Sister Fie'eiki last week is we got to see the FLIPPO's BAPTIZED!!!!! It was such an amazing week. We saw them 5 days out of 7 leading up to the baptism, we helped the boys prepare for the baptism interviews, taught chars hubby bill some more stuff. It was such a good week. It was fun though, in the middle of the week we got a surprise phone call from our mission president, and he was driving through Junction City and wanted to take us to lunch, so that was a fun surprise. We got to sit down and spend time with President and Sister Keyes, which is always great! So now back to the baptism, because that's pretty much all i want to talk about. Saturday morning the family came to the church to have their baptism interviews. It was so great to see Sean go into his interview. He is autistic, and was nervous about having to answer questions, so we got permission for his mom to go in with him, but when they got there he went in all by himself! We were all so proud of him, he is such a great kid. Then Nathan was up, he did so well, i know that kid knows the stuff we have taught him back and forth, he has an amazing memory. Then of course it was chars turn. It was fun while they were doing interviews we were playing basketball with the boys, and having fun. After all of that we went to do some work and came back to the church for a girl in our Spanish branch who was getting baptized. It was a fun service, the Spanish branch is so loving and were all there to support samaria. So we spent some time there, then we went to dinner, and came back for the Flippo baptism. The worst part of the baptism, is the plug in the font was not down all the way, so when we filled the water, it had slowly drained while we were at dinner, and the font was super empty, i felt so bad, it worked fine for the boys, but char had to go WAY down to make sure she went under the water. We also surprised char and she hadn't planned a musical number, so me and sister fie'eiki and the Manhattan sisters decided to sing, so we put it on the program and we sang the song 'when i am baptized' it was so great. The whole service was tear filled, from chars mother in law, to us, to char, to the members of the ward, basically everyone was crying. It was so great through. After there were lots of snacks so we all hung out and ate and had fun, and laughed. After everyone cleared out from that we all went to cracker barrel for another snack. haha. We had to make curfew, so we were only there for a half hour, but it was fun. When we went to leave we decided to sticky note the families cars that were there, so we put stickie notes all over their cars, and went on our merry little way. Then comes Sunday. First off, me and sister fie'eiki had to share our testimony in church, so that was a tear filled event, but it was good, and also Sunday the family got CONFIRMED MEMBERS and RECEIVED THE HOLY GHOST!!! The best best best part of the confirmations was when Sean got confirmed and then it was Nathans turn, as they passed each other they gave each other this BIG HIGH FIVE!!! i wanted to just melt when i saw that, they were so cute, and it was a moment that will be in my memory the rest of my life! They are so great! They also had hunter, chars 3 year old get blessed on Sunday so he wouldn't feel left out from the family, that was so cute, he was so excited when he ran up to the front and sat int he chair. He was missing in action during most of the pictures, but we got 1 of him. haha. After church on Sunday we went to leave and our car was COVERED in stickie notes....yes COVERED!!! the members that we had done that too the night before got us back. It was so cute, i felt so loved! Anyways, so it has been a great week. This week is going to be crazy, i will be getting my 3rd companion since being in the mission, next transfer i will hit my half way mark....CRAZY!!! i just cant believe how fast things are going. I hope you all have a great week. Thanks for being so great!


Love
Sister Barnum