Hello! Happy Easter! from Elder Peter Barnes

Whew! It's been a great week. And to top it off, I opened my e-mail box today to find 12 un-read e-mails! Sorry for the super short e-mail last week and I don't have too much more time today but I'll try to fill you in. First, please pass very big thank yous to Grandma and Grandpa Barnes and Sager for the birthday gifts, Tyler, and the Hubler Family for the E-mails, and to Sister Jenae Brett and the Brett family for the packages-- I got them last week and they were awesome! I've already worn my new favorite "Ammon" tie and Spokane shirt (not at the same time), and all of my companions are very jealous. The birthday cake has yet to arrive, but I've got faith that it'll come soon. And I'm so excited! Also, I forgot to thank the 1st/3rd ward primaries for the valentines letters, and cookie mix. Super delicious. I say it a lot but probably not enough, thank you all for your thoughts, prayers, e-mails. I really do feel the love and it makes serving far away seem not so bad at all! I really love serving a mission and I'm a lucky guy to have the world's greatest family and friends. Thank you!

I'm jealous that you were able to watch all of conference! In Latvia and Lithuania, we watched it the following week-end, but in Estonia (the more high tech of the countries) they watch it live and do a direct translation into Estonian! So we were able to watch the Saturday morning session at 7:00 PM saturday evening and the Priesthood session on Sunday. We didn't watch all of them because we were just supposed to watch them in our mission languages with investigators and then next week we'll get to watch recorded English sessions. It was fun to watch it in Russian, and I can understand pretty much everything they say, it's just not quite the same as watching it in English. Especially when President Monson started to "ad-lib" and the translator got lost... But it was a nice teaser to see a little bit and I'm really really excited to be able to watch them all. Conference week-end is one of my favorite times of the year and it just reminds me more and more how true the church is, no matter where you are. We actually had four investigators come on Saturday evening, which was awesome! Two were young guys from our English class, who are pretty interested in the church and really enjoyed it although they said their bottoms hurt for sitting down for so long. Ha, and the other two are a miraculous couple we just started teaching-- their names are Robert and Fiona and they are from China! So I guess their real names are Kong Shw Wu and Wang Pintint (no joke) but they chose English names because they are (a lot) easier to say. They are both 23, will be here for 3 years for studies, met each other here, and they already look and act like members of the church! When they watched the restoration video, in Mandarin, they were so so excited. Fiona pointed at the picture of Christ being baptized by John the Baptist and asked if they could do that too!! Ha I'm not sure how much they understood at conference, but they said they still liked it and that the music was really peaceful. I told them all about Christopher speaking Mandarin and serving in Paris and living in Nan-Jing and they were really interested in that too. I thought about trying to arrange a lesson with him over skype, but then realized that that's probably not allowed and I probably like the idea so much because then i would be able to see Christopher over skype... But there's an awesome member here from China so we'll hopefully teach them together this week. I love sharing the gospel with humble people from all over the world-- it's the best!

I had a very solid birthday. A member who we've been working with for the last few weeks invited us over for lunch and it was really good. (That's probably the 3rd or 4th dinner appointment of my mission. haha!) I didn't tell many other people about it, because it's kind of odd to walk up to someone and say, hey did you know today is my birthday? Especially on April 1st because no one believes you anyway... But my companions treated me very well and we made a birthday pizza and mayonnaise cake(surprisingly really good-- although no comparison to pink elephants.) The assistants told me that last week at church Igor was walking around and telling anyone that would listen that "April 1st is Elder Barnes's Birhtday." And then he'd say-- "oh and it's mine too!" And Karl texted me from Finland too, which was really nice-- i felt the love from all around the world, so thank you! Speaking of Karl, I called him last night just to see how he's doing and he was really happy. He lives 25 KM outside of Porvo (not sure if there are missionaries there...) and he's working 10 hours a day building a yacht and doesn't know how long he'll be there. He misses us and was bummed to miss Conference and his potential baptism, but he started over in the Book of Mormon and is loving it. I asked him where he's reading and he said where Nephi is building the ship. And I said, Karl you're Nephi! And he thought it was a good joke. He's such a good guy and I really believe he'll find his way into the church sooner or later. Welp I gotta run but again, thank you, I love you, keep praying for me and I will for you!

love, Elder Barnes #12