OSU (Sep 11)

Hi! Not a whole ton has happened since Wednesday. We have a district activity later so I'm just going to send pictures this week.

-I got to go to the temple for a late year mark! It was awesome. I love the spirit I am able to feel in  the house of the Lord. -the leaves are starting to change and I had to get out my warm clothes :(

-I took Sister Edmunds on an exchange. We peaked in the stadium! We had so much fun! She was a blast to be with. When I get home, ask me about a lady we met named Tiphani. It's a story for later 😅
-S. had a tough week. He probably won't be getting baptized anytime super soon. He almost dropped us for a few weeks but we have one more lesson before that. The video calls have really helped him be more comfortable and open up and share some small concerns he has. Everyone pray for him!

-the Stratford's drove us to a baptism in Beavercreek. It was a fun drive to chat with them! They gave some life advise and I was able to give President some transfer ideas ;) 

-Saturday was the first home football game here. If you want to see the aftermath of the partying, this was our walk to the church Sunday morning.

Love you all! Next week are transfers. Sister Johnson will be going home so I'll likely be staying here another one! I'll email next Wednesday.

Sister Barnes

Facebook and Stuff (Sep 6)

Hello everyone!
This week and a half was incredible! So lots of you at home probably figured it out, but our mission is now approved to use Facebook. When I first heard the news I was not excited at all. After trainings at MLC last week and zone conference yesterday I can now say that I am SO excited to be a Facebook mission. We have been using it for about a week and it's been enhancing our efforts like crazy. We still preach the same gospel. Just in more ways! We've already have a lot of experiences that show how great it is:

We had a miracle Saturday. We had a few potential people lined up to be able to go to the Elders investigator's baptism. But the night before or even that morning, they all fell through. We had Facebook messaged an investigator a little bit earlier that morning. We haven't been able to meet with her for a few weeks. She woke up and saw the message 15 minutes before she had to go. She is really bad at texting, but messenger seems to work great! We communicated quickly and she was able to pull herself together and made it to the church right on time! It was a miracle. She loved the baptism and we finally will be teaching her again next week.

Another was on Sunday. We met these friends who are super super busy but wanted to learn more about the Book of Mormon. We were able to get Facebook messenger set up and we'll be having a lesson over that soon.

One of the ones I'm most excited about has been in the works for a while. We have a favorite bus driver named. Last transfer I made the goal to become friends with all our bus drivers. I asked him what his name was and he seemed confused and said, um, Bobby? Then I said nice to meet you Bobby! Then we sat down and contacted until we got to campus. Then when we got off he was like "hey sorry I was confused, nobody has ever asked me what my name is! My given name is Bobby but my friends and family call me Simon. It's my Jewish name. You can call me Simon!" Instant friends. So fast forward a few weeks after just chatting. He asks if he can ask us a question about the Book of Mormon. We say of course! He said his Mormon friend told him it's about people who lived in Ancient America and asked us if that was true. We said yeah and he was surprised because he's very interested in those people and thought his friend was tricking him into reading it. So he got a copy and we followed up on his reading every time. Then last week he told us he had bad news. This was that the bus driver routes were changing and he likely would never see us again. This was right after we got signed in to Facebook and the prompting came to add him! So we asked if we could and he said yes. He started messaging us more questions about the church. His Jewish cousin is dating an LDS girl in Utah and she wants him to convert. Simon asked if conversion was necessary for them to get married. We got permission from President to teach him over messenger because he's not YSA age. So we sent a link about temples and taught him about it. He was asking more about the Book of Mormon so we sent him a pamphlet and set up a time to all be online to teach the first lesson.

SEE WHY BEING A FACEBOOK MISSION IS AWESOME?!

Also. Formers are gold mines. Last transfer I had a weird prompting to clean off some random shelves in the study room. So I did. And I found an incomplete baptismal record for a girl. We didn't have her records so we asked around. We were able to find them and give her a call. She wasn't baptized because she got too busy with school. She said she wanted to meet in a few weeks when she's back in Columbus. Now fast forward a few weeks and we called and have a time set up for this week! I am so excited!!! We also found this guy in our former list. He had also got too busy. We had called him and asked if he wanted to meet again. He said yes after the semester starts. Then the next day a member sent us a text and told us that her member boyfriend is best friends with this guy and wanted us to reach out. We told her we just did and she said that she got some more info on him. Apparently the biggest reason why he didn't get baptized was because he couldn't relate to the sisters because they were raised in the church. The member said she wanted to be there for his lessons. She's a convert of a few years! So we had a super awesome lesson where we just talked about how important the gospel is and how much he needs it. He agreed to make the sacrifice to meet again. Yay!

Friday I got to take Sister Ballard on an exchange! This is her first transfer but you wouldn't be able to tell if you didn't know. She's an incredible missionary. We had a lot of fun and learned a lot. I'll share a few of the coolest experiences. So there was lots of partying going on (typical Friday) and you could smell the alcohol in the air. Sister Ballard didn't know what alcohol smelt like and I had the weirdest prompting to take her by a place with lots of beer so she can know the smell. So we went. We walked past and she now knows what beer smells like. Shortly after, we figured out why I had the prompting. We usually don't go to that area on high street and so we wouldn't have been there for another reason. We walked back out to the Main Street and met a lady. We talked with her for a while and started walking with her. We found out that she's dating a less active member and has recently been searching for a church. She grew up pretty religious but fell away. Recently everything in her life has lined her up to turn to God. She decided to do it right before we met her. We walked with her to Kroger but we didn't want it to end there. We asked if we could walk around inside with her and she said yes! So we grocery shopped with her while we taught more about the gospel. She was out of town for the weekend but she wants to come to church and meet with us soon!

S. is doing great!! We only have one or two more lessons with him before his baptism. Because he's only made it to church once, we had to move is date to September 21st. That's transfer day and it will be at like 8 pm. We talked with President and he said we can do whatever we need to to make it happen before Sister Johnson goes home (this is her last night in the mission). I just love hearing his testimony and seeing him grow and progress in the gospel.

That's enough for this week. I'm going to the temple in a few hours! That's why my pday was today. I probably won't have a ton of time to email people today. Sorry! I'll share about my experience at the temple next week.

I love you all!
Sister Barnes


-I got to hang out with Sister Hall at MLC
-MLC
-So Elder Adsit assigned everyone an apostle who they teach/act like. We tried duplicating the picture. You can call us The Twelve Exchanges!
-Joanne, Sister Johnson, Corrin, me! Corrin is the Elders investigator who got baptized. I love her! She asked me to be up the stairs of the font for when she comes out. It was awesome :)
-We walked 3 miles to find a less active and the address was a giant apartment building with locked doors. We tried dialing in all the people to see if anyone would ring us in. Then someone did. Then wedidn't know which one was hers.. it was a mess

School is Back! (Aug 28)

Hello Everyone!

This was another good week! SCHOOL IS BACK! It is so so so fun to have SO many students around ALL THE TIME!!!

The mission activity was so fun. We played tug-of-war and lots of frisbee and sports and relay races and stuff. The sisters in our zone won the tug of war so I'm super pumped about that. I couldn't lift my arms for like 3 days but it was totally worth it. One of the things that made me happy is that S. is doing great! He had a super crazy first week of classes, but he was about to make to one of the Sisters' investigators baptism! After the baptism everyone was writing notes to the new member to congratulate her and bear their testimonies. The Sisters showed us what he wrote, "Hi M., congratulations on being baptized. I am a convert who is looking to be baptized and if yours is anything like mine, I will be very happy. I am so proud of you and I hope to become your brother in Christ soon enough!" AHH! That says it good enough! Sadly he wasn't able to make it to church because of some family things. The earliest he can be baptized is the 16th. Buuut that's the day of stake conference. So it may have to be the first week of next transfer. Or maybe during the week before transfers so it can happen before Sister Johnson leaves. We will see! He's great and I adore him.

God prompts us in weird ways. One day we were walking down 12th (the street the institute is on) and all the beer cans and red solo cup garbage stood out to me a lot more than normal. I had a small prompting to get some trash bags and pick it up. So we did. About 2 minutes into picking stuff up, a guy walked up and asked if he could help. We said sure! So he grabbed some supplies and we had a good time cleaning up the street and talking about religion. We were able to get his contact info and he wants to get involved with service projects associated with the church. He has a whole fraternity of friends who want to help with service! We're now working with the ward to get a service project set up. So we spent a while picking up trash but it found us someone cool.

Thursday I got to go on my fourth exchange with Sister Hansen. I've been her STL for 4 of her 5 transfers. It's the best. On the exchange, we experienced a lot of miracles. One of the biggest miracles was with a girl named T. She is a student and is so prepared. She said that her front door's open to religion and is just waiting for something to walk in. She doesn't know what it is that she's waiting for, but she knows that she's waiting for something. She has looked around at a lot of different churches and has not found one that she is able to feel is right. We were able to sit down with her on campus for a few minutes and talk with her. She is awesome!

President Stratford and the assistants FaceTimed the MLC to tell some exciting news. We have MLC this week and we're getting more info then so I'll tell you next week. Also we will be going to the temple next week for a (very belated) year mark trip for me. Pday will be on Wednesday.

Until then,
Sister Barnes

Pics
OSU district at the mission activity
The Elders' investigator Corrin came chalking with us
The District
Gretchen bought us ice cream
Exchanges and my fave bus driver Simon (pronounced sha-moan)
Hilary Hodson! Family friend from Nauvoo. I found out she moved here
and was working on campus so we tracked her down 😊
Dada Empanada with Carey

Bananas from Heaven (Aug 23)

Hello everyone!

This week was so crazy and awesome!!

Tender mercies are real. So on Monday right after pday, guess who was on the bus?! It was so fun to see him and his changing heart. He is still struggling with deciding what to do for the transition, but he loves the marble cliff sisters and the ward there too. Then later that night we realized we forgot to eat dinner with the pday craziness. Right as we were talking about it we saw 2 perfect bananas on this ledge by a pretty busy building on campus. We sat down and worked on some stuff and watched to see if anyone was going to take them. We felt like it was manna from heaven so we snagged them and enjoyed a nice little snack.

Wednesday we had interviews with President Stratford. He told me some awesome and encouraging and humbling things. It's so cool to see God work through him.

Thursday I had exchanges with Sister Empey! We had a fun experience that morning. We persistently offered service for a few students who were moving in. Finally they let us help and it was fun.  We carried huge heavy boxes up a few flights of stairs. It was super hot and we were super sweaty but all the students involved said they would come to church sometime. It was great! We also helped a member organize her dorm room. There was no AC or fan and it was at least 100 degrees with 99% humidity in there. Haha we were dying and she almost passed out. But it was fun! That morning we got stuck in a contact on the bus and barely missed our regular stop. We stood up to wait for the next on and the driver kept slamming his brakes and it was a super bumpy ride. I almost fell over like 4 times. Then I was pushing the back door open to get out and I fell out of the bus. Haha pretty embarrassing but oh well 😂

Other random things
So many men are creepy. 
Bring a member and their dog contacting is the secret to getting people to talk to you. 
S. is doing great. We taught him the word of wisdom and the law of chastity in lessons this week. He is getting more and more excited for his baptism in a few weeks. He came to church and loved it! He stayed all 3 hours and soaked it all in.

Last night was way way fun. There was the involvement fair where thousands of new students come to get involved in clubs and other activities. There were booths set up and a billion people walking around everywhere. We got a bunch of members and coordinated with the ward mission leader to go on splits. So, we had 12 sets of missionaries out contacting for 2-3 hours. It was a blast!!! Just in our companionship alone, we got 85 contacts, 7 new investigators, and a ton of potentials. I love new freshmen! I got to be with Bianca, who I met when I was in Powell! She was an awesome companion for a few hours.

One last thing that made me so happy I almost cried (which is kind of a big deal because I don't cry very much). So back when I was in Marysville we got special permission to teach a 9 year old LA's daughter to prep her for baptism in a week's time (who remembers that?). It was crazy but it was awesome. The older sister was recently reactivated and is in the YSA Ward. We got pretty close with her in Marysville and helped her understand basic, basic things about the gospel. Just yesterday she told me that she has decided to serve a mission and has started her papers! She said I was a key influence in helping her decide. I LOVE IT! The church is true.

I love the gospel! I love being a missionary!! Mostly, I love Jesus Christ! I have been memorizing The Living Christ to have it help me get rid of distracting thoughts. One night there was a giant party on campus and they were blasting music. Good music that I liked at home. It was impossible to avoid but it was possible to not listen to. I recited the living Christ out loud several times to make my mind not pay attention to the blasting music. I probably looked like a crazy woman but I kept the spirit with me and didn't listen. It can be hard sometimes being so close to worldly things. But it's a great way to build self control and show my true desire to be obedient and consecrated. Satan is tricky but I'm not letting him win!

There was SO MUCH MORE but I'm short on time and desire to write haha. We have a mission activity today which will be way fun. Then school starts tomorrow for OSU so everyone is here and we are just going crazy talking to everyone. It's terrifying but I love it. I love serving on campus!

Just happened to be a miracle! (Aug 14)

Sister Barnes and Sis Johnson

Sister Barnes' former coworker from Provo City

It was a great few days! Transfers happened. I'm still on campus and President Stratford is setting me up to stay a while (likely the rest of my mission 😁). My new companion is Sister Natalie Johnson from Salem, Oregon. This is her last transfer! She is way cool. She went to cosmetology school before her mission and will be going to BYU for the Winter semester! We already are having a ton of fun. I'm still the STL on campus and now we have another set of sisters here! It will make things busy and exciting.

We met some really cool people with a ton of potential. I'll share one of the coolest stories. J. was walking right outside the church building. He is new to Columbus and "just happens" to live down the street from the church. He "just happened" to grow up around a lot of members in Sacramento. He went to a few years of school in San Diego and "just happened" to work right next to the temple. On his way to school here, he took a stop in SLC and looked at temple square. A few days later, he "just happened" to meet us. We gave him a chapel tour on the spot and he became a new investigator. He came to church 2 days later and is just awesome. He was kind of confusing at the end and said he liked church a lot but wants to go and check out some other ones before he decides to get baptized here. We're going to keep in touch and hopefully see him soon.

There were lots of other random funny things that happened but I can't really remember them.. sorry! On Friday night like an hour before we went home it started to dump rain. We didn't have any rain gear and got completely soaked. It was kind of funny.

This morning we have a rules meeting with President and Sister Stratford and some other people at the institute. Then we are going to be having a district activity! Playing volleyball and frisbee. Yay!

Love you all!

Sister Barnes