Frosty Tights (Nov 16)

Hello Everyone!

Sorry I said pday would be Monday, there were some scheduling conflicts and it's actually today! We will be meeting Elder Dyches at a zone conference tomorrow.

We had a great week. We were on bikes and it was quite the fun! It was kind of a hassle getting rides for lots of things, but thankfully it all worked out! While on bikes, we just kinda freeze and travel time takes forever, but it's fun! One night it was raining and it wasn't super cold at first. We just took our light rain jackets. It ended up getting super cold super fast and I had a layer of frost on my tights. The rain had splashed so much that they were wet, then it froze! Haha I definitely have a cold now. 

We had a cool lesson with a guy. He was a referral from some members who are in dental school with him. We gave him a chapel tour and he was asking questions as if he was planning on getting baptized soon. We have another lesson with him on Saturday!

We had a cool contact a few days ago. We knocked on this door and a lady opened up right away. She looked at us and asked, "Mormons?" And we happily said, "yeah!" Then surprisingly, she said, "then come on in!" She's a new investigator now. She's struggling with some recent life things but said "I am very open to Mormon beliefs now." God has a hand in His work! We're excited to see where she goes.

Who remembers my bus driver friend? Well we've still been teaching him over Facebook messenger and he has been making a ton of progress! He's also the most kind and generous guy ever and bought us some goodies from Costco and a turkey for thanksgiving! Haha we are super excited to cook it next week.

Things have been fun. We've been using our biking travel time to memorize D&C 4, the mission song, and other fun things. My favorite night was when it was really cold and really rainy and we were biking down this huge busy road. We were singing the mission song at the top of our lungs and were filled with joy! It was a blast. I never thought I'd be so happy in such a situation haha.

Love you all,

Sister Barnes

Pictures
Pedicures for Sister Hall's bday last week
What we look like... haha and we wonder why people don't like talking to us
Upper Arlington!
Rollin through the hoods
When it's cold but you have to wear a helmet
  😍

Last stop: Riverside (Nov 8)

Hello Everyone!!

My last transfer will be in Riverside! It covers part of the town called Upper Arlington. It's super close to campus and the temple and stuff, it's awesome!! After 9 months I have been released as a sister training leader and I'm follow up training Sister Herrera! She's from Caldwell, Idaho. She is AWESOME! She has such a positive attitude and is so willing to do whatever God asks. So. Sister Herrera was first trained by Sister Mayhew. Sister Mayhew was trained by Sister Flora. Sister Flora was trained by..ME! So, with the "family trees" with training/mom's/grandmas/etc. Sister Herrera was my great granddaughter and now she's my daughter! So our family line is a little messed up but hey, they kept us in the family.

I am very excited and know that it's very inspired for me to be in Riverside with Sister Herrera in the district we're in. I'll explain a few reasons why.

SISTER GARLICK! She's the girl I knew from her mission in Nauvoo and at BYU. Guess what Ward she's in? Riverside! She lives in the apartments right next to ours. We decided God knows we need each other on our missions!

One of my sister training leaders is one of my favorite companion/missionary/friend/person of all time. Sister Hall! We were blessed to go on an exchange on Monday and it was so good. She is such an amazing missionary and we worked super hard together and it brought back so many of our good memories from Marysville. Wow, it was just great. I literally cried tears of joy when we started the exchange!

I always begged President Daines to put me in a biking area. Well, he never did, but he must've told God or something.. cause I'm here now! I'm seriously so excited to be biking half the time!! It makes everything more fun. We have what's called a car share. We have a car one week and the Elders have it the other. I'm so excited haha

We're starting to pick up the work a lot! It's been pretty slow the last few months. We've already found several new investigators and helped get a part member family to church that Sisters have been trying to get for a while!

That's about all for this week! I miss campus and it's been a weird adjustment going back to a real area haha. It's been fun though. Next week we have a general authority coming to do a mission tour so our pday will be on Monday next week. All the other weeks it will be on Wednesday!

Love you all!

Sister Barnes

Pics

Bye trio :(
Giant leaves and my third baby/great grandbaby
Exchanges!!

Keepin it real (Nov 1)

Hello Everyone!!!!

Tomorrow marks the first day of my last transfer. It will also be my first day in a new area. I'm being six week shafted for the final weeks of my mission! I can't believe it, I'm going to miss campus so much.

The past week and a half have been incredible. There were like 100000000 highlights so I'll share short bits of just a few of them.

We had MLC and learned more about the sacrament. We also all got President Stratford tshirts. It was fun to see lots of my good pals :)

I took Sister Skeen on an exchange. This is her first transfer and she is amazing. We gave a guy a card and were explaining what was on it. He was looking at the card, not where he was going, and got like 4 inches away from ramming his face into a giant screw on a pole. Haha it was funny.

We met lots of athletes this week. A football player is a new investigator. A soccer player stayed close while a creepy man was talking to us. The soccer player is a freshman and is going to come to church whenever he doesn't have an away game.

OSU played Penn state and had a major comeback and won by one. We didn't watch of course but just imagine how crazy the whole campus was. Before he game started we helped this guy carry a bunch of stuff. We got to walk right by the stadium through all the tailgating. It was incredible.

It snowed. I almost cried.

We met a crazy man named ice cream on the bus. He said his name was ice cream, different flavors for different neighbors. All eyes on cream! He gave us folded up papers and said he wanted us to have them. They're pictures of himself haha.

J. agreed to read the Book of Mormon every day for a month. As incentive, a recent convert promised to ask a girl out from the ward if she does it. I love YSA wards.
 

Our friendly bus driver took us to dinner again. He was asking about his cousin who is now a member. He asked if we have the wear the "keep it real" rings. We were like huh?? He meant CTR rings. I like the idea of a  KIR ring lol.

L. has been progressing amazingly well. I am going to miss her so much! She has quickly become one of my best friends. She came to church and loved it. We've been teaching her at least twice a week since we met.

K. is great. She has had questions her whole life about random stuff. She never has had them answered. She brought them to us and we've been able to answer some! I just love her! She's planning a trip for Summer 2019 when Sister Edmunds and I will be in Utah.

P. kinda tried to drop us. We invited him to dinners and church and everything and he still came. He loves the church. He can't get away!

Short and sweet but it's all I have time for. I'll know where I'm going tomorrow and I'll email next week! Remember, pday is always on Wednesday now! Cheers to my last transfer!

Remember God loves you!

Love, Sister Barnes

Pics
MLC
The final district pic
It's cold out. We use foot warmers for our hands
Brutus
When we got to go by the stadium on game day
ROTC Brutus

Hello everyone! (Oct 23)

We put L. on date! We extended baptism and she said yes so we extended a date for Nov 18th and she said yes! Yay! She always texts her member friend after lessons and tells him how it went. He always tells us what she says and she LOVES THE GOSPEL! This week she was asking why other religions don't use the Book of Mormon. Good question!!!

Our bus driver is doing awesome. He talked to his aunt and uncle to comfort them with their son converting to be a member. He has been talking to us a lot and has been finding lots of cool answers to questions he has. He's still Jewish but loves hearing more about the church. We go so in depth in our Facebook messenger lessons that we're still not done with the restoration. But he's already through Jacob in the Book of Mormon and stopped drinking coffee. I've been praying a lot about knowing when he'll be ready for missionaries in his area to reach out to him, but I feel like he's not quite ready yet. Still working on getting him there though! He took all the OSU Sisters to 5 guys and says he's working on getting me a Torah, cool! 

K. is no longer on date for the 28th of this month. She's working towards Nov 18th instead! She just hasn't felt like she got her strong answer yet. She said that the things we teach her make more sense than the things she was raised with and she's trying to grasp that. We shared Alma 32:28 and explained that "enlightening her understanding" is a way God reveals truth. She really liked that. 

M. is so great. We finished the plan of salvation with him and he absolutely loved it. He made some cool connections on his own. He asks many questions and will be ready before he knows it! His friend just left on a mission and he was so excited to tell us about his first weekly email from the MTC. He is definitely prepared for this time!

I took Sister Ballard on an exchange! She's on week 11 in the field and is training a missionary who's on week 5. She's a super star. We had a ton of fun and laughed all day. It started with the first contact of the day. We were waiting at a cross walk to cross the street. This guy starts walking close by and I go up and introduce myself. I say my name and hold my hand out to shake his. He looks at me, looks at my hand, crosses his arms across his chest, and bows. He straight up bowed to me and didn't even say anything. Then the rest was just a train wreck but it was hilarious. The guy was from Pakistan so I think it was a cultural thing?

Our trio is still a trio! Longest sister one in mission history I think. We'll probably make it all transfer, since transfers are next week! We're not sure what's going to happen. I'm praying I stay on campus for my last transfer! Today is our last Monday pday. Next week starts Wednesday pdays! Some people have asked why we're changing them to Wednesdays, here's what President Stratford said:

As your Mission President I am constantly praying & pondering with the Lord to enlighten me with ideas that will give our missionaries the best opportunity to succeed. Since arriving, I have felt that with P-day on Monday we are not properly leveraging the benefit gained by worshipping on the sabbath. Sunday is the most important day to a missionary. It is the day we renew our covenants made at baptism, along with those made when we accepted a call to serve. We get spiritual & physical energy from this experience and then seem to toss it all away on Monday. After much consideration, I have decided to change P-day in our mission to Wednesday effective November 1st.  Hopefully, this change will allow us to take the Spirit we feel on Sunday and apply it in the work on Monday & Tuesday. Wednesday will be P-day ,then Thursday will be District meetings where we can re-energize for Friday & Saturday

I'm excited, it's going to be awesome! I love being a missionary!!! 

Sister Barnes

Pics

The van

Awful pic but awesome Krystalyn! See, told ya she was tall. 

Mason and Bianca got us Mochi ice cream

Barnes and Noble! Maureen got this tag because she's funny :) I love her!

The trio

We went to the zoo today! Thanks to Sister Moran, Sister Cottle, Sister Rutter, and Krystle Proper from Powell, Marysville, and home for getting us all in!

OSU is the best district (Oct 16)

Hello everyone!!

A few things first:
Starting November 1st, our mission will be having pdays on Wednesday! This will be a cool way to use the sacrament and the Sabbath to propel us in the work. Our email time has been cut from unlimited to 1.5 hours. That's all the time I have to send a group email and email people back. Even though only like 2 people email me, I may not have a ton of time to email everyone lol. We also were instructed to be careful about emailing back and forth with people. This will help us stay focused on our missions!

Big changes, but change is good!

Speaking of change, there was a lot that happened in our district. A few hurt ankles later, we lost 2 Sisters. One had to go home for surgery and the other got transferred to an area with a car. So, Sister Zaugg is home, Sister Empey is in Fairborn, Sister Ballard is now training Sister Skeen (even though Sister Ballard's not even done with her training!) So OSU is down to 11 missionaries, no clue how but our trio stayed put!

Most of this email is going to be videos and pictures of our fun district. I love them all!

This week was fall break for OSU so it was a little slower than normal. We still found some cool new people and were able to meet with a bunch of old ones. Basically everyone is doing great!

So Brinlee, my high school friend, moved to Columbus! We went to the Franklin Conservatory today with her and her new husband. It was so fun :)

Billions of pictures.
Our district last pday. Pumpkin carving!
Knickknack Patty wack! Our whole district calls him that now haha
The trio on the roof of the architecture building
Miles is our bff at Buckeye Donut
Last sisters pic
Saying bye to sister Empey and the elders had to photo bomb haha
Shimon drove the remaining 5 sisters home!
Our dead neighbor saw us on the bus with a pumpkin and told us to
carve something scary. We just got the pumpkin for the seeds so we
decided to carve it and give it to him.
Downtown view from the library
The conservatory.. where real life meets mission life.