TAX FREE

Dear Family!

Happy Post Busy Season Life! Elder Brimley's dad is also an accountant, so we celebrated tax day as well. We got up, I said "hey happy tax day", he said "thanks" and then the rest of the day we were happy.

Teaching the gospel is just fun. I counted the jokes from General Conference and there were two a day between President Monson and Elder Packer with four a piece (which is saying something for Elder Packer because he only spoke once.) But I like the perfect balance they find between praising, teaching, smiling and calling us to repentance. Yeah, missionary work is a challenge and should be done diligently, but if you're not smiling something's wrong. Just yesterday we'd kind of had a long day of lessons falling through, and we were knocking and just pushing through. Than Elder Brimley poked me in the side, which is our "Be of Good Cheer" method we developed after conference, and we started smiling again. Three doors later a nice older couple and their two grandkids opened up, and after a minute or two let us in. I like trying to have a good attitude because it shows Heavenly Father we love him and his work.

We taught Shasha (the chinese man) the word of wisdom last week. His lesssons are my favorite. We speak russian, slowly and simply, and then the words he can't express he types into chinese on his phone which translates to english. He speaks decent russian with a sharp and clangy accent, but the best part is that he conjugates all past tense verbs in the feminine. Now Elder Brimley and I have picked up that habit as we SYL. But we've seen Shasha progress as he's finding time to read the book of mormon and increase faith in Christ. It's a blessing to grow up in a home where the life and importance of Jesus Christ was always taught. We watched Finding Faith in Christ with him and I think that was the first time he really got an idea of who Christ really was. If any of you have ideas of how to help him, please share! I'm guessing that Christopher ran into this a lot.

Other exciting news with the work involves a new lesson with two new guys named
Sasha(28) and Jenya(25). They're way cool and clean cut and looking for truth. We hadn't gotten through the whole lesson when he asked, "can we come to church on Sunday?" Haha I love that question. He then said, "we're following all that you say, but this is just a lot of new information and we need some time to take it all in." Really good lessons or general conference just make my body tired because I feel the spirit strong, but at the same time your insides are going a million miles an hour! I love that feeling.

Well I gotta go but I'm very excited for all of you, especially Chisos and Betty! Mom you're just amazing; hosting the frisbee team and wedding planning and never quitting, Good luck to Elyse on upcoming IB tests, and I hope Dad beats his carefully recorded PRs for his swim meet. And Tiges: just keep growing and maybe one day you'll beat me at basketball. Although I'm thinking to go Dad style and just never agree to play one on one ever again.

I'm happy and loving serving in Vilnius with Elder Brimley. Our whole district
stayed the same so we're looking forward to this transfer and hopefully helping this amazing branch grow!

I love you!
Love, Elder Barnes #12