Picture of large Book Of Mormon

This was a lone picture he sent. This was made of wood in one of their chapels.

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Mom Dad Chad Cobb Matthew VanGorkum Sierra Noelani Sage and 6 more...

12/18/17 at 12:02 PM

So I just wanted to share a quick spiritual thought this week while we are all getting ready for Christmas.

In Matthew 5:16 it says ``Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.``

I love this scripture becuase we learn how important it is to glorify our Heavenly Father. By the service we give to others we can represent our Savior Jesus Christ and we can focus on the love he has for each and every one of us. Also in Mosiah 2:17 we learn that ``when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God``. This Christmas we have the chance to remember the birth of our Savior. Christ was born in a manger and grew up living a humble life. He served, taught, and sacrificed everything just to help us return to live with him and our Heavenly Father. I know that Christ lives and that he loves us. This Christmas season we have to chance to remember him. He is The gift. He is The light of the world. Let him be the focus of our Christmas this year and help a friend or a family member remember this too. 

-- 😁🎄

___________________

Elder Benjamin Barton

1 Week until christmas

This week was great, we had divisions, the christmas conference, and finally some success in our area. I guess in the US they are called "splits" but I like the word divisions better because its the word we use in portuguese. I got to be with Elder B Costa (my trainer who is now my Zone Leader) and we got to work really hard that day and after we pooled our money together and went for sushi and it was really good. Actually in Petrolina there are many sushi places compared to the other cities here. Sushi is the perfect way to end the day but its a little expensive for the average missionary so it probably won't happen again for a while.

As I said before, we had our christmas conference on thursday and it was awesome, the Lazenby's tried really hard to make christmas special for all 150ish missionaries that are a part of their family this christmas. We had a normal conference the part in the morning, lunch was amazing with cheesy alfredo, goat/chicken meat, and some other foods I can't remember with a selection of juices. We then sang songs, president wrote a parody with the 12 days of christmas in portuguese and with missionary things, it was great, I took photos and videos of most of it. I will attach a bunch because the internet is fast here in this lan house I'm using :)   We did "secret friend" which is like "secret santa", I bought/gave a dashing blue tie and I got a chocolate bar with an R2-D2 plush toy with a music button that played the theme of star wars. Its pretty sick, my companions are sick of me listening to the music all the time 😅 We also got stockings from the Lazenby's with candy/snickers, popcorn, a dvd (with what I don't know), and a photo album with the christmas card form the Lazenby's and some photos of Christ, and the christmas card from the 1st presidency of the church in portuguese and my companion randomly got one in spanish and english. We then watched the Grinch as a special present from president, and had some special musical presentations (also included). During the movie, President brought our pizza for everyone. The only draw back to the conference was that it was in Feira de Santana which is about 7hrs by bus and the secretaries always put us on the 11:30pm bus which is terrible for sleep. took a few days to recover from that.

Us missionaries are going to be singing christmas songs in the church square tomorrow night (in front of where are new apartment will be) and the next day we will do the same thing but in Juazeiro the neighboring city. we haven't had the chance to practice at all but we will see how it goes.

 We get to call home next monday seeing that it is christmas and its going to be great, christmas in the feild. Its cool that I got to have christmas in the MTC and in the feild and weird to think that I won't have another on the mission, the next one will be at home.

But anyway Love you all, gotta go now, but Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas!  ​

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First year down

Wednesday makes one year that I left for the mission, so cool! Its exactly how my dad was telling me how now I know how to work well and speak well I can just work the hardest I can until the end because the end is nigh. And as I will probably be the senior companion in this next transfer I can take more decision in what we do, so hopefully we will have more success. This week was alright, we had a confirmation on sunday, and interviews with President in Petrolina last Tuesday. After the interviews we went for coconut water, as shown in the attached photos. Sunday morning I woke up really early and really sick. I had the worst headache that I've ever had in my life, a fever of 102, pain/aches in my back/spine, stomache pains, and vomiting; yeah, it sucked. My companion made me go to sacrament meeting because he wanted to partake of the sacrament, I suffered😩. I just stayed in bed all sunday; but today I woke up and I'm fine, just hungry because I didn't eat anything yesterday. I downloaded a bunch of christmas music so you already know what I'm going to be doing for the next month (singing very loudly😋) 🎄 Other than this not much else happened this week. I had some dreams about walmart and buying bluewood tickets, but the reality of them will not happen until next year...

Love you people!

-- 

___________________

Elder Benjamin Barton

Petrolina

This week was the first week working in Petrolina, I'm still getting to know the place, people, companion, and everything. It is confirmed, its VERY HOT here with a low during the night of 77F and a high of 95-100F this week. My new companion, Elder Amorim, is great. He is brazillian, more specifically from "Minas" and he is awesome, he is a little quirky like me which is great. We are serving in the Petrolina 1 ward which was like the first ward here so its the closest to the center of the city, which also takes part of our proselyting area. So this area is more city life with catching buses, dealing with crazy people in the street, and muggings/robberies. We are current living in the house/area of the zone leaders because the house was recently robbed (before I got here) and president didn't authorize that we return, but today they said we can go back to living there after we change the locks; however, we have to start looking for a new house at the same time thats a little more secure because apparently this house has already been robbed several times. But its all good. I had my first district meeting this week too, it was good, I gave a training about how we should use the book of mormon, nothing special. I also got to do my first baptism interview as district leader. I took some pictures of the big catholic church with a big christmas tree of lights that was cool. The members in this ward like to give money for some of our lunches so the pictures of us eating yakisoba was because of them. And the last photo is of my companion :)

I ran out of time to say much more but this is basically how things are going here.

Love you people! 😎🌞

--

___________________

Elder Benjamin Barton

Petrolina week 3

This week was very normal 😁 Nothing special really happened just life as its going. There was a ward lunch after church yesterday and we ate very well and got left with about 10 mangos that were leftover so you know we are excited to make juice this week. Actually I took some really cool pictures this week but I forgot to bring my adaptor to upload them, just next week...😑 This week was extremely hot (it got up to 102F one day) staying in the sun all day, and the blessing was on sunday when it rained and finally gave the relief I/we needed. We visited the stake patriarch who takes part of the ward we are serving and we visited a recent convert together and he showed us his "Kefir" which is a really funky drink thats super easy to make and this member was explaining all about it and gave us the ..."ahem"... bacteria to make it 😅 We made it at home and it wasn't as good as the kind he offered and made but we are making it again so we will see how it goes. We are trying to make lots of new investigators in our area so we are having to talk to lots of people with ideas that are all over the board and so it has been interesting trying to understand every perspective and bringing them to try to understand how we think. This week we have the Christmas mission conference so I hope it may be a little bit more different than just another zones conference. And I also will have 13 months on the mission this week. Its weird, I've had a few dreams about coming back home, and I've decided stayed on the mission is a better option but now its just a race against the time. So I'll work hard, as usual and I will make it all worth it. About the new house, the contracts aren't finished yet but they said this week for sure they will be done and we will move in probably this weekend and this will help with the work because we are currently living 45min walking distance away from our area boundry.

But all is well, talk more later, Bye!

--

___________________

Elder Benjamin Barton

Goat meat

This week was pretty good. It was mostly normal, really hot but its getting easier. We went searching for a new house/appartment to live and we weren't able to find a house with the same price for rent in the center of the city so we had to settle with a place a little more expensive and just a little bit smaller because its an appartment. Its a little bit more expensive but its really secure and perfect for missionaries, and it looks brand new (unlike every missionary house that ever existed in this mission) So I'm really excited to be moving there this week once the church approves it, mission president already approved it so they are just finishing the contracts. So we are going to be living in the chic-est appartment in the mission 😎 and its in a great location...in front of the great and spacious catholic church LOL! But its going to be great just not walking 45min to just get to our area from where we are living now. 

We had interviews with President and they went well and after he bought lunch for everyone (his family and all the missionaries in the zone) at a place thats known for their goat meat. Everyone tried it and it is good, very meaty. Sister Lazenby wanted everyone to sit in sifferent places at the table to talk to new people so, as she doesn't know how to speak well, I played translator between the brzillian elders and sister lazenby; I liked it , it was fun. They also bought the cashew soda to drink with lunch! Its a soda that is only made in Petrolina and its made with the fruit of the cashew nut which is very interesting, it has a flavor all its own, not everyone likes it but I do.

 P-day we haven't had the time to go and do something fun in the center because we arent living there yet but we played monopoly and a game called "dobble" thats super fun.

President says he's planning something fun for the christmas conference that we will be having next week, so we have that to look forward to. We are also propoganding the "be the light of the world" as found on "www.mormon.org" I encourage everyone to take a look and participate, there are some really good ideas on there.

But all is well in the land were one can buy a coconut for less than US$0.50

Thats thats basically it.. Tchau! 🐏