First off fourth of July was way fun! We spent most the day with one of the members in our area. We went to an airshow and fair from around 10:30-3:00 Then went back to his house in Smithton, It's a town in our area. We had a way good barbecue at his house then lit off a bunch of fireworks he had some sweet mortar fireworks and had a pretty cool firework show in his backyard ha. It was a lot of fun and its real funny how crazy people are out here about fireworks. Oh ya our mission president allowed the whole mission to stay out until 10:30 so we could watch fireworks and stuff. So fireworks are illegal in Illinois but not Missouri still all night people were shootin off the huge illegal fireworks EVERYWHERE! ha. It was crazy to because when we where headin home there was smoke everywhere because of all the fireworks. Overall the whole day was way fun, and everyone at the members house weren't members so it was really good visiting with people there to.
The most significant thing that happened last week and this week was teaching Rich, Tiffany, Connie(Tif's mom), Sherry(Connie's Friend). It was kind of interesting and hard to focus on teaching one person at a time because all 4 of them are really on 4 totally different levels and we had to teach them all at once. Sunday was a way good day for Rich, He came to church with Tiffany again and had a good time at church then found out he know one of the members there from high school so they talked for about an hour or so... they both missed sunday school but it was really good because now were going to teach Rich and Tiffany at that members house sometime this week! Then Rich talked to our branch president for about an hour after church and then came over to Connie's house (his ex-wife) for the appointment we had set up with them. We went over really to talk to Connie and answer question she had so that she would ok Tiffany getting baptized because that's pretty much all were waiting for. We found out though that her friend Sherry was staying with her because she has been having a lot of problems with things and wanted to get away from the environment she was in (sherry normaly lives in Kansas City). So we taught pretty much the whole restoration and answered questions then found out that Sherry wanted a blessing because she's trying to get off drugs and start living right again. I guess Rich or somebody had told her about priesthood blessing a little. So we talked about that for a little and gave her a blessing. It was very spiritual and a way good blessing! Every single person in the room was crying when it was over. The spirit was way strong probably one of the strongest times that I've felt it on my mission.
We had a second lesson with all of them again last night and it was pretty good to. We talked more about baptism and committed Rich, Connie and Sherry to prepare for baptism. Then set a date for Tiffany to be baptized on July 23rd! I'm way excited for all of them ha I want to say the family... and I guess it is, just not a normal family haha. Tiffany is still a little scared and is not sure she's ready yet, she definitely wants to be baptized and we told her that she's more then ready. She really is ready though and is doing really well, She's about as ready as it gets for baptism : ).
We had a good lesson with Rich Junior today, his dad was busy working. It was pretty good hopefully we can keep teaching him. Other then that it's we havn't really been able to sit down and teach much. It's been really hard to catch people when their not busy doing something and a lot of investigators went out of town early last week for the 4th of July weekend. So I'm really excited for this I really feel like great things are going to happen here in Waterloo!
We did have a really good week though I'd say we had a seed planting week ha. We tracted a lot and placed a lot of Book of Mormon's. The cool thing is we found a lot of people who wanted us to come back so hopefully you here more about them in the coming weeks : ). Hope everyone is doing good, Thanks dad for the pictures! Love seein you guys ; ).
Elder Barta
P.S. Here's a picture from the airshow, and one of our finding ideas that we decided not to do ha.
Scripture for the week, Moses 6:63 All things testify of Christ!
