Better late than never

Dear Family!!

It's been another wonderful week. I'm happy for you and jealous at the same time that you've enjoyed conference! We'll be watching one recorded session a day in English starting today, and then they will be rebroadcast in the languages this week-end for the members. I've said it before but conference gets more exciting the more I realize how awesome it is. Mom shared a really neat experience about coming with a question that got answered and that's really what
conference is: straight up revelation. Even though I want be watching it “live time” I'm still going to pretend it is. Plus there's no such thing as time to God, so I guess it doesn't really matter.

Hey maybe that's why we Mormon standard time... Speaking of which

Roman got the the gift of the Holy Ghost on sunday! His baptismal service and confirmation went very well, despite the 15 minute delays to both of them. On Saturday it was the branch president who performed the baptism and ward mission leader who was conducting, and sunday Roman himself was running behind, pretty important people to the ordinances. It was a more stressful experience than I anticipated but it all went over well in the end and Roman and the branch were very excited. We kept in close contact with Roman the previous week, and despite
how prepared and ready he was, he was definitely tempted. We were never worried that he wouldn't go through, but by the end of the week, you could tell he was tired, but still happy for the decision he made and grateful for the support from the members. Along with him, the 17 year old daughter of the family who got baptized two saturdays ago was baptized, which makes 5 new solid members of the Russian branch! It's so exciting to see the church grow. Baptism is just the beginning, which is good because as you keep living the gospel, life just gets better and better!

Transfers are all done, thank goodness, and today there's a leaders council so my time to write is pretty limited, unfortunately. Next week will be zone conferences on monday, wednesday and friday in Tallin, Kaunus and then Riga so we probably won't write till Thursday. But know that I'll be thinking of you the other days. Why? Because I love you! That's another Russian grammar thing, they often will make a statement, ask why, and then give the answer. At first I
thought it was odd, but it's pretty catchy. Why? Because I said so.

Oh I forgot to tell you the miracle of yesterday! We were coming in for lunch and there was a guy who was SO russian (black jacket, black shoes, and russian hairdo) so I just had to talk to him. He was eager to talk because the first thing he said was “Hey are you the Mormons” “Yup” “I've been waiting for a long time to speak to you. Where can I hear about your teachings?” Yeah I was kind of in shock and so happy. He didn't have time right then but he gave me his number and said we could meet up this week-end. There are definitely prepared people out there. His name is Ozi. Even better.

I'm loving life and being a missionary and my companion and our investigators and the church and you and just everything. Life is so good.

Love, Elder Barnes #12

Oh and the Russian Zone leaders found a wooden hanger in their apartment and made a wand for me. It's 12 1/2 inches, has a couple phoenix feathers and comes in handy from time to time.