Challenging week...

This week was super challenging with Juan because he changed the date of his marriage to January and we won´t be able to be here for it. It is really sad because he really wanted his family to be able to come to the date that they had set before but I guess that he is estranged from his family and he has tried to make up with them but they just don´t really like him or something.  Which is hard and I obviously don´t know the entire story but Juan won´t be baptized till after I am in another district! But I am alright with that! It´s not important who does that baptism as long as he is baptized! I love this Gospel and I love serving the Lord!

We planted the seed in his heart, we just need to give it more time to sprout! This is part of the problem that I think I am going to have with teaching. I am only going to be in these people lives for a couple months at best and I am going to change basically everything that they have ever known and then at times I won´t be able to see if it helped them or not.  I understand that its good for me and that helping them is the important thing.

De su HIjo

Elder Christopher Ryan Barlow

I will answer all your questions in more depth next week. But the nastiest thing I have eaten here is like  a corn peach thing that was awful!  I love teaching the first vision too but I like to  have my investigators read the first vision from the pamphlets we have. I love the running in the morning and I do a lot of push ups now!

Love you Dad!

Elder Christopher Ryan Barlow

A marriage and baptism date set for Juan...

Hey momma and dad!!! I am so glad to here about all you guys! Especially the girls and how they are all getting along!  I am glad to hear some new people moving into the ward! Fresh testimonies are great! I am sorry to hear about your leg and will be praying that you and dad can continue to run and exercise and do the things you love! You have to if were going to do mother/son marathons when I get back! My companion and me are doing really good but I really hate being in training.  The language barrier with him was really tough this week because he just basically does whatever he thinks is right. It’s frustrating because at times he treats me like a 4 year old and starts speaking Spanish in this really slow condescending tone and I have to restrain myself from shouting at him in English. He is a good missionary but is terrible at listening. Teaching lessons is really the only thing that helps me cool off after days like this.  We haven’t had many days like this and it has only happened a couple times.  Oh well!  I just accepted the fact that he does have more experience then me and can speak Spanish so I am trying to be humble and roll with the punches. Ha.

This week was so crazy I can’t even describe it! But to put it into short terms we taught 19 lessons this week and have now 5 progressing investigators and 3 people who would like to get baptized but first they need to get married! Juan Aguirre is the first and I have been talking about him for a while now. He is officially engaged starting this morning and will be married November 14^th, baptized 15th and confirmed the 16th! This week with him was pretty wild because on Monday he was totally fine and then they starting talking about wedding plans and everything went to heck in a handcart, when we wanted his family to be their and they don’t really like him that much, from what I understood. So he didn’t want to get married without his family and he was starting to get really emotional and so was Maria José his girlfriend. So we took him to the church and talked with him in one of the classrooms and he kept saying he felt alone and lost. I seriously have never been guided more in my life then in this moment. I started to talk to him about the Savior and His experience in the Garden of Gethsemane. I told him about how He was alone through it all and then went through more afterwards in His trials and then on the cross and then to finish He died for us. I got to watch the Atonement and death of the Savior save this man’s hope for the future. I will treasure this experience for the rest of my life. This morning at 8 am we went down to the civil office and got the date for his marriage. So he is officially ready to be baptized, he just needs his interview! 

Your prayers are helping a lot so please don’t stop!! I also learned the importance of a real fast here in Chile! We have been taught to fast all our life but it wasn’t till here that I learned what it means to really fast for a purpose. So please help Hannah, Britt and dad remember that fasting is for a purpose and if you don’t start with a prayer and skip 2 meals or 24 hours and have a purpose for your fast and then end with a prayer it is just starving ourselves.

I also gave a talk this Sunday about faith and what things will strength our faith or destroy our faith. It was a talk by one of the seventies, not in this conference. It talked about the six steps to losing our faith and how faith requires action everyday! It was really good. We got it during our inter-zone conference with the president! Tomorrow I have my second interview with the president so I am pretty pumped for that and Excited to baptize way more people then any of the missionaries in our ward so don’t worry you’ll destroy that bet with Scott!

De su favorito Hijo Obviamente

Elder Christopher Ryan Barlow

                           Here are some cool photos for the blog of wall art from Chile! 

Look'n Good and feeling the Spirit...

Ovalle Zone Conference

Mission President

Now those are some good looking Elders!

Hey Dad! Juan has a Baptismal Date!!!!!! On October 25, 2014 by the authority of the Holy Melchizedek Priesthood I will baptize Juan Aguirre! He believes it all and wants to live forever with his family! We are working on setting a date for the wedding this week and hoping that this weekend we will be attending our first Chilean wedding or at least next Monday. I will be sending you a picture of a marriage license! The problem right now is the less active girlfriend. which to me is so strange because all the other members who we teach who aren’t married just want to sprint to court to make their marriage official and baptize their spouse! But she is really young.  She is the same age as Jessica and is a little scared but we are praying she will be able to overcome this fear.  Juan even fasted yesterday for it!!! It was awesome! This gospel really will change the lives of people who choose to follow it, because when we sacrifice for Heavenly Father he opens up the windows of heaven and makes it rain blessings! I am really glad to hear that you’re having missionary experiences yourself! I know it is hard to have hope for some of the people you teach because I feel the same way some of the time but we don’t know all that is really going on in their lives. We just need to have faith, we invite them to make promises with the Lord through the power of the spirit and then pray that they will keep their promises. The Lord will bless us with what we want, not always immediately or in the way we think but He will. 

I love you Dad!!

Elder Christopher Ryan Barlow

On Mon, Oct 13, 2014 at 12:08 PM, Wendy Barlow <wendypbarlow@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi honey! You look good. How are you this fine morning? I’m at work but have time to talk because the patient is in surgery for the next hour. 

On Mon, Oct 13, 2014 at 9:17 AM, Christopher Barlow <christopher.barlow@myldsmail.net> wrote:

That’s awesome!! Sort of ha I am good. My companion and me are going to get haircuts today from one of our investigators hopefully we can kill 2 birds with one stone!

On Mon, Oct 13, 2014 at 12:23 PM, Wendy Barlow <wendypbarlow@gmail.com> wrote:

Oh good. Hopefully she will be charmed by you into getting baptized. How was week?

On Mon, Oct 13, 2014 at 9:25 AM, Christopher Barlow <christopher.barlow@myldsmail.net> wrote:

A little slow and we didn’t teach a whole lot of lessons but we did manage to set a baptismal date for Juan so thank you for your Prayers! He has to get married first but I hope this week I will be attending my first Chilean wedding!

On Mon, Oct 13, 2014 at 12:33 PM, Wendy Barlow <wendypbarlow@gmail.com> wrote:

That so exciting to hear about Juan! We will continue to pray that all goes well for him and his girlfriend. Make sure you take pics at the wedding.  I was able to see pics from your zone conference and you look so handsome! I do have to say that you are the best looking missionary in your zone! But I’m also biased. I've been wondering if you are able to go running for your exercise. Also how is a normal day for you go?

On Mon, Oct 13, 2014 at 9:40 AM, Christopher Barlow <christopher.barlow@myldsmail.net> wrote: I love our zone! I run every morning for like 15 minutes and then do some easy things on those outside gyms that are in the parks, pushups, squats and then I curl plastic bags filled with Book of Mormons. 

On Mon, Oct 13, 2014 at 12:44 PM, Wendy Barlow <wendypbarlow@gmail.com> wrote:
That's awesome that you curl BOM!! Can your comp keep up with you? I’m so happy that you love your zone. We can tell in your pics that you are happy and full of the spirit and that makes dad and I so happy for you! Tell me about your days and your routine. Have you been able to keep the weight off with all the bread your probably eating?

Chris:

We have bread like 4 times a day but I only eat a little bit so I am not to worried and everyone says I will get even skinnier when I get transferred to Viña or Valpo because it is just hills and heat so I am pumped for that! The weather her is really weird and the temp will change like 3 times during the day! I usually run a little bit ahead of my companion but I can tell he didn´t really workout a whole lot before now so he is starting to lose a lot of weight as well ha

Christ our perfect example, loved conference and mountain of meetings at multizone conference...

Hey Momma! Como esta? Estoy muy bien!  I have a lot to tell you this week! I had a mountain of meetings and learning this week! It started Wednesday when I had my first multizone conference and the president of the mission and his wife came to talk with me and around 30 other missionaries it was awesome! It really helped me learn the kind of teacher and member I need to be. The theme of the conference was attributes of Christ and how developing them now will help us not only on our missions but also in our lives. Because Christ was the perfect example in all things and the goal of the church is to help us become more like Christ I would suggest one night for family home evening to go through one of the preach my gospels and read through the section about the attributes of Christ with the family and then choose one for the month to try and develop. The goal of the conference was to help us to learn to be assertive like Christ. That means to be courageous and to speak our thoughts, feelings by our actions. It also means to be kind and gentle and calm when talking about them. It’s walking the line of being passive and aggressive and it is very hard. I have been trying to do it during my lessons this week. I tend to lean towards the aggressive side of it but I am working on it and with more practice I can be more suave and tactful when I speak and teach. We got to practice a lot of role-playing with the president watching and I guess I am apparently way ahead in my Spanish then a lot of the other new missionaries that came out with me. The president after the conference said that he was very impressed with how well I speak and how willing I am to take the lead in lessons and answer questions, which not gonna lie made me feel really good because I have been struggling a little because only a few of our investigators are progressing right now. I attended the conferences in the stake center and got to watch them in English, which was really nice! I really liked the talk by the 70 from Europe. I can’t remember what country but he talked about how we need to take responsibility for our lives. That means responsibility for our health, our sins, our work and our families because we all chose to come down and live down here. Here the members have a big problem with blaming people for all the wrongs in their lives.

We are so close to another baptism with this guy we are teaching named Juan. He wants baptism and wants to be married in the temple but the problem right now is that he and his girlfriend live together and have a kid so they have to get married first and then he can be baptized. He wants to get married but she is struggling with the idea of marriage even though they have lived together for 4 years. We will be having family home evening with them tonight and our ward mission leader.   I think he will help them a lot because he just got married in the temple like 4 months ago. The girlfriend is a member but inactive and I think struggles a lot with her testimony but hopefully the lesson tonight will help a lot.

I had to send you the email I sent dad today because I don’t have a lot a time right now! But tell grandma not to worry my bed is fine its really just the tile and the bathroom that suck! I apparently live on the most dangerous street in OValle. Which is exciting because apparently the last Elders house got attacked by fletes in the middle of the night and they had to by a new door and I am assuming new windows because the Fletes were throwing rocks at the house. I guess the last Elder before me offended just about everyone here including the members. 

But they love me and I am bigger then everyone here so I am not to worried.

De tu Hijo

Elder Christopher Ryan Barlow

Elder Barlow

Ovalle

Off to Zone Conference