Hey mom and dad!! What crazy news! Everything is changing! I have changes this week and you guys had changes last week! I will probably have a new comp! We had a really hectic week with all the teaching and lessons, which was awesome! 

I am tired, I'm tired all the time. These last couple days I have felt a little better but physically I am pretty gassed.  I feel like I'm getting to the metaphorical wall that you guys hit when you run marathons. I keep getting skinnier but I think I have a tape worm.......... jk  Spiritually I am good and with all the crazy stuff going on here in the mission and at home I am pretty excited but Waking up early is getting harder and harder. Waking up on time has even become something that I have to force me self to do. I have been praying a lot to have self control.

This week we taught 17 lessons which was awesome and we found some really interested people. It's really a miracle that the church exists in the way that it does. In 3 weeks we have found  people who have been catholic or other religions and  just decided that what they had learned their entire life was completed by the doctrine of Jesus Christ. The power of faith and the power of the truth. It divides all barriers and cuts through all darkness like the sun piercing a cloudy day. Isn´t the gospel great! I think of all the things I have learned from my mission and the greatest thing I have been able to learn is about the nature of the trinity. Something you guys did, which I love was that you taught me the principles of the gospel and made sure that the puzzle of my life and identity had at least the boarders put together. The mission has helped me put all the other pieces that form the picture into place. I know I learned all the things that I have been teaching here at one point  or another but it was just kind of a mixed up wad of truth and information but I didn`t really know how to apply it in my life. Being here and teaching it has brought me the clarity of who I am and how the gospel works and flows and where its going to carry me. I would invite you and the family to study preach my gospel. Read chapter 3 which talks about the principles of the gospel at night with the girls and I promise that they will be able to see a little more clearly of how everything has a connection.  

I had a thought the other day about the priesthood ordination. When we are ordained to the priesthood, they don´t give us the priesthood but they confer it upon us. I was thinking about that and the association this has with keys. I don´t know if this is doctrine but I had a thought that every man in the world already has the priesthood but it can only be unlocked by those with keys or by those who have been authorized by key holders. Its really interesting because it relates in that many are called but few are chosen. Why are they not chosen because they have decided that they don`t wish to have their inheritance. They trade it for a metaphorical bowl of gruel. I was studying in the book of Alma and was reading about the war chapters. Its interesting that the Book of Mormon has so many chapters about war and almost always it talks about the consequences that it has upon men. We have so much responsibility and god has trusted us with so much power. Just like the men of the Book of Mormon, we see that in the wards and stakes of the worlds when they decided to be righteous and follow good everything works out and they are blessed, but when one leader decides to be prideful and usurp the authority which god has granted him, all suffer and there are consequences for generations. They Book of Mormon is the saints guide to being a righteous priesthood holder.  

Elder Barlow!!