Hey family,
I don't have that much to tell you this week but I will give you a run through with what happened.
On Monday we had dinner with the Willis family and we talked to them about Mormon.org and Elder Hill got a haircut there. After that, we went and picked up our bikes since we got a new bike rack, and that night I went to Copperfield's area to be on exchanges with Elder Bergener.
On Tuesday we rode our bikes and it was freezing this day - it was super cold and windy, and I was on the bike with no gloves or a beanie, so I basically died that day. We did a lot of tracting, and later that night we visited with a inactive in their ward and turns out they own the biggest paintball park in Houston, so that is pretty sick. (I had a flashback moment when Dad and I went paint balling - that was fun.) That night I went back to my area and Elder Hill and I were in our apartment and out of no where our power went out! Then we went out and looked around - our whole block was out of power! The Walmart across the street didn't have any lights, the stop lights were out (Texans can't drive in normal conditions, but then you turn off the lights, Texans have no idea what to do. You are supposed to treat an intersection as a 4-way stop, but Texans make up their own rules - talk about scary). The power kept turning on and off that whole night.
On Wednesday the city of Houston was doing forced rolling blackout's to save energy, or something crazy like that, so random parts of the city would be out of power and then it would change to a different area and this happened the whole day. We did service for a family in the Copperfield ward -we sanded this family's table and chairs but we didn't finish, so we will do that again in the up coming weeks. Then we did tracting (I feel bad that I keep saying that - I bet it gets very repetitive, but it's what we do). Then that night, we had dinner with the Johansen's, who are a really cool family. They are so funny and oh, we had chicken 'n dumplings, talk about soul food! After that, we went on splits and I went with our ward mission leader, Bro. Stoddard. We went and visited the Ochoa's, who are inactive, then we visited with the Jenning's and Sheldon's and had fun there. Bro. Stoddard has a pretty sick car!
On Thursday Elder Hill and I had weekly planning and he makes his granola when we have weekly planning and it's so good! We went tracting and Elder Hill and I took a lot of fun pictures that day. In fact, we took a picture of this guy's door who left a post-it note saying "Don't bother me I am not changing my religion" so Elder Hill put a pass-along card on it and took a picture. I'll send those pictures when the card gets full. But we got 27 ITL's that day, which was awesome and it was funny because supposedly, it was suppose to snow this day like 1-3 inches, but we never saw any snow so the weather people messed up on that one. But it was cold though. Then we had dinner with the Padilla's who are totally awesome.
On Friday we were supposed to have Zone meeting at 9:30 a.m. but they pushed it back to like 12:30 since Houston closed down some of the roads due to the "snow". School even got cancelled here the day before because they were expecting snow. But it didn't show. We then went tracting and then went to the Herrera's and had dinner with them. Sister Herrera is awesome, she just is so kind and loving toward the missionaries.
On Saturday we visited with Jay and his son, Mason. Jay is an inactive member, who thinks members of the church are perfect, and feels like he would be out of place since he has tattoos and he likes to smoke and drink occasionally. But we gave him the church's addiction recovery program, so hopefully he will use it to help him out. His son Mason is getting baptized this coming Saturday and it's not a convert baptism since he is 8. We then had lunch with Sister LeBlanc and Brad Marshall (Amber's Dad) and we had fun. We then went out tracting and then had dinner with the Ramos family.
On Sunday we had a Regional Conference - this included the whole state of Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. It was a televised broadcast from Salt Lake and Elder Jepson, Sister Dibb (President Monson's Daughter), M. Russel Ballard, and President Monson all spoke to us! It was super neat to listen to the Prophet speak before General Conference. Everyone that spoke gave awesome talks, it felt like they were all talking to me, and I also think that this stake needed to hear the words spoken because they all tied in missionary work. After that awesome experience, Elder Hill and I got a new car! That's right, Claire had over 48,000 miles on it and the church takes out mission cars when they get to that point, so the church provided us with a 2011 Silver Toyota Corolla. It is really nice, but Elder Hill and I are still working on a name for it. We then went to the Chavez house for lunch and we gave Sister Chavez a blessing of comfort because she is stressed, but the Chavez are so awesome, they are always willing to feed us awesome Mexican food. We then had dinner at Sister Hillier's house and she is the Relief Society president.
Well that's all for now hope to hear from y'all soon -Elder Barton
