Temple Trip and Transfers

Last time with Lenny, Franco and Alep

My week has been good! I was unaware that Houston is actually more like a tropical rain forest than anything else. It rained like every day last week, but still no flooding in our area. Scuba gear might be needed in August, when I hear it rains super hard for weeks on end.

The temple is a wonderful place. I was able to go last Thursday, and do some work for one of our ancestors, and I felt strongly that he accepted the work, and was so grateful to finally get out of spirit prison and start his eternal progression. Missionaries cannot do sealings though, so if you want to do the sealing for William Breton, born in 1646 in Lancashire, England...

Temple trip 

I think I'm going to reserve this space for an in-depth description of the miracles that I see throughout the course of my weeks here, because the hand of the Lord is definitely apparent, if you look for it. 

First and foremost, this week was pretty busy with tons of meetings, seeing as Elder Gibbs had 2 zone leader meetings, so I went on a couple exchanges with Elder Pigott, the District Leader 30 minutes up north and we visited a few people, We didn't have a whole lot of time to do much work in our own area, but we were able to have at least one lesson with Miguel, and he's doing so well. He accepted a baptismal date for July 2nd, and we can already see that he is repenting and following the path God would have him take.

Another miracle happened yesterday. The Piñeda family, a family who has been inactive for about three years but has been returning these past few months, came to us and told us that their nine year old son wants to be baptized. Now, this is a neat thing, seeing as how a few weeks ago, we had a lesson with them about raising up a righteous posterity by relating it to the story in the Book of Mormon about the Sons of Helaman, and how it was the mothers who taught their sons how to have faith and keep God's commandments. We were worried that they took it the wrong way and that we were criticizing their parenting, but we did it out of love, so hopefully they just felt more inclined to teach their children the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Well, now the parents have a goal to go to the temple to be sealed as a family for time and all eternity and Elder Gibbs and I are so excited for them.

My companion and I talked about your very thoughts you shared about commandments last week. Like you said, we don't keep commandments to avoid the punishment of God, but rather we keep the commandments so that we can feel comfortable being in the presence of God. No unclean
thing can dwell with God, and if we did not repent and give our best effort, we would not be able to handle even being in the presence of God. And, the more we repent and change, the happier we will be. Men are that they might have joy, and keeping the commandments with exactness and faith will make us happy both temporally and eternally.

So I am actually getting transferred tomorrow, but I won't know where until tonight. I'm a little sad to leave this ward, cause I've grown to love them so much. If I don't return to this area later on in my mission, I'll definitely come back and visit after my mission.

Have a great week!

Elder Josh Barrus

The District as of May 2016

Sneak peak of Josh's new companion (on the left)