Dad to the Bone

 สวัสดีครับ Hello!

Welcome back to your weekly subscription of my life. Oddly, I haven't been getting any subscription checks in the mail. But besides that, I've had an awesome week! Lots of exciting news, interesting experiences, and strange interactions. What more could a missionary hope for?

GOOD NEWS! FINALLY SOME GOOD NEWS!

I became a trainer this week!! On Tuesday, Elder Stucki came into the mission, so I get to train him. He's a legend, we're having a great time in our new Orting trio😂 Being a trainer is an awesome experience. It's weird, because suddenly I realized that I do, in fact have a lot of missionary skills. I didn't think I was a bad missionary or anything, but I have a calmness and confidence about myself talking to total strangers and it took me until now to really notice it. Pretty cool to be able to step back and see the things a mission can teach you without even noticing it. Maybe it's just God giving me a hand now that I have to train or something.

SOME PEOPLE

Let me share with you some of the interactions I had this last week, because there were some very memorable ones:

- Mandy is a neighbor of one of our members. She was pretty drunk and outside of the bar but she was way excited to talk to us. While we were talking, the Tacoma Spanish Elders are coming down the street, so there were suddenly just 5 missionaries talking to this one drunk lady. We took a picture, got her number, and she said she'd feed us whenever!

- While we were out tracting, we met a psychic/medium who was very adamant about not being a witch and not a devil worshiper because there is no devil. Riiiiight. She talked for like 30 minutes straight about how she was "called" by the spirit to be a medium and one she was finished, she said, "I guess I'm converting you today!" That's the kind of thing that keeps tracting interesting.

- We said hi to someone across the street and he immediately invited us over for some water. He talked to us about how he has all of the standard works in his dresser and how his son is a member in Arkansas. He was elect... but lived in Graham which is definitely outside of our mission boundaries. Very cool guy, though.

BY THE SWEAT OF OUR BROW

We had a LOT of service this week. We helped out in that same backyard. Cutting ivy, clearing out the ground, ripping out tree stumps, and doing just anything we could. We also stopped by a member's house to find them with a dump truck of manure in the front yard. Naturally, we helped them spread it, even in our white shirts and dress shoes, sorry mom.

LAST THINGS LAST

- Kubb is the greatest yard game.

- I got to put up some shots with Elder Saunders, the BYU commit Thursday morning. I may or may not have outshot him, I'll leave that up to your imagination.

- Happy birthday and Father's Day to the greatest Dad ever, Jeff Barrett.

- I love free stuff on the side of the road, but it's nothing compared to how much I love you!

เอ็ลเดอร์ เป็นบิดาแล้ว (Elder is now a father.)

Elder Barrett