HELLO RIGA!

I left my new home of Vilnius yesterday morning and came back to my real home of RIGA! I'll be serving with Elder Brown and after one day of being with him I know it's just going to be joyful. I've had the best companions. I actually knew Elder Brown pretty well when I served here in Riga. He is a Latvian speaker, a very sharp and great missionary who knows Riga really well-- he spent the first 13 months in the field in the exact same apartment! Elder Freeman will be staying in Vilnius for his last transfer which will be great because hopefully he'll see some of our investigators get baptized. I found out that I'd be transferring tuesday morning so we were able to teach Artiom and Alexander on Tuesday and it made me so happy to see how well they're doing. Alexander said a prayer at the end of the lesson that almost made me and Elder Freeman cry. By almost I mean I might have cried. He talked about how grateful he was that we'd been able to become his great teachers and friends in a such short period of time. It's incredible how quickly the gospel can change someone's life. I'm not trying to jinx it either but I think that Artiom could eventually serve a mission. He asks about it all the time and really is on top of the ball. In Tuesday's lesson we read Alma 26:12 and he talked about how most people don't understand miracles-- they think it's like books flying or crazy things when really “it's a miracle that you don't smoke, and that I don't smoke, and that we met each other.” And then Elder Freeman said-- you're a miracle. And I agreed.

We've spent today helping the 15 departing missionaries take their luggage to and from the bus station. It's crazy to think that someday the mission will end. I'm really glad that day will not come soon. But at the rate time flies these days a month feels like less than a week. Is it the same for you? It feels like I got here the day before yesterday. We took a trip down memory lane yesterday evening when we picked up 6 new excited missionaries that came into the mission, three Estonian elders, two Lativan elder and one Latvian sister. It brought back so many memories. What was crazy is that I knew 4 of the incoming missionaries-- kind of. One of them was Elder Boyce, Sister Richey's friend from the MTC who got the swine flu; he's doing well and is just a ball of fire, another one was a friend from a BYU Book of Mormon class, another was the brother of a girl from a BYU class and the last was Sister Reber, Jenae's friend from Romania! It was so cool meeting them and they will all be excellent missionaries. It's such a big transition from MTC to the Field, for a lot of reasons, being surrounded by non-members being one of the big ones. But that's what makes it exciting! No offense but serving a mission would be SO boring if the whole world was members. Although that would be kind of cool too. Saying good-bye to the members in Vilnius was tough, but almost all of them said they feel like I'll be coming back someday and I have the same feeling too! Like I said, there's plenty of time and no need to worry. Except I do have 3 minutes and 12 seconds left on this computer so I got to fly but I love you! Life is good. So good. And the
church is really true.

Love, Elder Barnes #12