The Adventures of Elder Barlow: July 2014

So, I have to apologize to anyone that is trying to follow this blog. I am sorry for the HUGE gap in posts. I kind of thought that Elder Barlow was sending a Mass email to most of his friends/family, and I didn't want to repeat everything, but I realized that there are probably others that do not receive emails, and I don't know how often he sends the group one. So I will just try and be better about posting things and if you follow along and have already heard everything, you can choose to stop reading! :)
So those of you that don't know, Austin has stayed in Santa Barbara through 3 transfers now. He said he is loving it there. He sounds like he is working hard! He is now assigned to be on his bike only, and they are without a car. It is getting hotter in Santa Barbara so I think that has been a little bit of a challenge. But all in all, he is happy and doing well. I got a letter in the mail from him a few weeks ago from him, in it he said a sentence that I will never forget, and makes my heart happy. He said: "I love my life right now, and I wouldn't trade what I am doing for Anything!"
As a mother that was awesome to hear, It makes the heartache of missing him a little easier to handle! :)

So here is today's email:

I am so glad it is p-day again! here is how my week went!!

Monday was great! I found out where my grandparents are going on their mission.. they are going to San Diego!! that was a really cool Surprise for me!! haha, i know that they will do such great things there!!

Tuesday was another good day, we stopped by this guys house, his name is Ramon and he was not to interested in the message we had to share, he says he is catholic, but he says he does not go... so yeah.

Wednesday we took all the Pamphlets that we use to teach, to our investigator Vanessa! she wants to read them all and we are super excited about it!! She wants to learn so much more about the Gospel!! it is so Awesome!!

Thursday was our Zone meeting! it was great as usual! i really liked how we talked about how our end goal is not just to have our investigators be baptized, but to help them get sealed in the temple for time and all eternity! it was such a good Zone Meeting! We also saw a less active family at a park, the Alarcon Family. It was great to see them and we talked to them for a little bit and we invited them to church, so we hope they have the time to come!

Friday we saw another less active named Javier, and we also invited him and his family to church! we invited him to read in the Book of Mormon, and he said that he would, Then we had another great lesson with Juan G. we also met some other guys that where there and they asked a lot of questions about us as missionaries, and they could not belive that me and Elder Passey are from Utah. it was funny!

Saturday was Amazing we had our lesson with Vanessa and we showed her the Restoration Movie and She loved it, and her two kids did too! She invited us to have dinner with her family that night because they were having a big family dinner so of course we said Yes!! Free Food!! :)

Sunday Vanessa and Juan G. both came to church, we had another amazing lesson with Vanessa and Her Husband Bryan, and Bryan is a member and he helped out a lot with having us teach her! We read 3 Nephi 11 and it went so good! We set her with a Baptismal date for the 2nd of August, and she told us that she is going to pray about it! she is progressing so well!

Miracle of the Week :

So before church we had our ward council and we needed a ride back home really fast cause we needed to grab a few things so a member comes and picks us up , but on the way home the members car dies and we are stuck on the side of the street! we check everything under the hood but nothing seems to be wrong, so we get back inside the car and say a quick pray and after the pray we try to start the car again and..... Nothing it is not working.. so we decide to walk down the street a little and we run into this guy and he says hey i have a quart of oil i can give you guys.. so we walk back up to the car, put the oil in, and the car starts right up!!

It was such a great miracle to see our savior work in so many different ways!!

I just want you all to know how much i love you!!! thank you again for all of your love and support!!

Keep on Keepin on!!

Work Hard and Play Hard!!

Hasta Luego!

ELDER BARLOW