ON THE RUN

FAMILY!

It's been a fun and exciting week preparing for Elder Perry's arrival this week-end. The missionaries and members are really excited and I am three! Elder Brown and I spent a good three hours detailing the van last week, because President Dance drove it up to Tallin for a mission president conference. I guess when Elder Perry got in the car he immediately made a comment about how nice the van was. So Elder Brown and I patted ourselves on the back. Haha no but it's been fun this week teaching members and investigators that an apostle will be here. They have all been really excited, even if they don't exactly understand how special it is. He'll be doing a missionary meeting in the morning, and then a member meeting in the evening, when some members will be traveling in from all three countries. It'll be awesome.

We've also had some exciting new lessons this week- one from a man who was contacted by the Sisters in a stairwell on July 17th. He wrote it is his planner, and then just lost contact and we talked to him on the streets, he came to a lesson a few days later and it was great. In the middle of the lesson he paused and said “wonderful.” I love those kind. We also taught Marek (formally known as Giorgi) last evening with a member his age and he's progressing really well. The deal with him is he still works on sundays but we talked about fasting and prayer last night and so we picked a day next week to fast and pray to help him get sundays off-- because he works for the army I guess it's really tough to get time off when you want. But he's loving the book of mormon and always prays that he can find more time to give to God. That's just a very cool thing for a 19 year old to say. At the end of yesterday's lesson he also gave me a soviet belt, which is 30 years old and I was pretty excited about, haha.

Our time is low today because we're heading up to Tallin in less than an hour to do an exchange and pick up the mission van-- the mission president took a ferry trip to Helsinki with Elders Perry and Rasband. Lucky! I was very excited to hear about Grandma and Grandpa Sager seeing Sarah Z, in the temple in Tennessee. She was my hometeachee! And she'll be such a dominant missionary. If they see her again pass a big hello!

All is well! I feel healthy and happy and love every day. Elder Brown and I have started to run and meet up with Elders Pratt and Mattee in the morning in a neighborhood playground to do pull-up contests and stuff. That's been good to run around a bit. Although it feels like we're always on the run sometimes, but that's the way I like it.

Sorry I didn't respond to all the family e-mails today, but I promise I will sometime. I feel your love, and I'm just a wucky guy.

Love, Elder Barnes #12

P.s. I was so happy to hear everything went well with Megan's wedding. It sounds like she's very happy and picked a good one. Wow does that mean she's changing her last name? So I can no longer call her Barnzey? Well I guess I never did anyone, so it's all good.