Monday, December 28, 2009

Merry Christmas!


Hey Family,

It was so good to hear from you on Christmas. It sounds like things are going well at home. It was so fun to talk to all of you and just hear how things are going. I can’t believe how fast the time went there is still so much I want to tell you. Sounds like things are going pretty good at home. Sounds like I have it pretty easy compared to most of the missionaries in our ward. Some of things you told me are pretty crazy. I hope they're doing okay. Don’t worry about me I eat things that are pretty normal, and I feel pretty safe. Life is good! This week was pretty unproductive to be honest. Not many people wanted to let us in to teach because it was christmas and they were all super busy and almost every appointment we had, not all but most of our appointments, cancelled on us. So it was frustrating but it was a really good week because I got to talk to all of you and because we had a pretty good christmas conference. We met up on Thursday at the office and we had a conference with speakers from who were both former area 70. They were both really good. There was a bell choir made up of youth from the stake that was really good. President Martineau also talked. Then we went to the mission home, all hundred something, of us and ate lunch and then there was a talent show. People did different skits, sang christmas songs etc. Our district sang a version of Carol of the Bells with the words changed. It was fun to meet more of the missionaries and be in the Martineau’s home. It made it seem more like Christmas.

We went to a member’s house for dinner and then we had to be home at 6:00 on Christmas Eve. So we read the Book of Mormon so we could finish it by the end of the year, the mission started at the end of the November and the goal is to finish by the end of the year. Then we opened up our packages, decorated the gingerbread cookies you sent and just sort of hung out. The next day we taught a lesson to Feni, who sadly still isn’t married, and wasn’t able to be baptized on the 26th. Then we had lunch with our DueƱos. It was fun to talk to them and to explain to them what we do exactly I think they think we are so crazy two young girls living here by themselves, not really knowing what it is we do all day so it was a really good experience. We knocked for a few hours and surprisingly were able to teach a few lessons which were really cool. It is amazing how you can teach standing up on someone’s porch and yet the spirit can be so strong and you can see that they don’t exactly understand but they want to know more.Then we came home and talked to you guys on the phone.






Things here are going pretty well. We are still teaching Ana, one of our investigators that the Elders passed on to us when we got here. She didn’t have all the lessons so she missed her first baptism date. We tried to set a second with her and she didn’t want to set one she still didn’t know if she wanted to. We have realized since then that she has a ways to go. So we’ve started back at the basics with talking about Joseph Smith, The Book of Mormon, Plan of Salvation, she doesn’t remember a lot and I think she likes listening to the lessons, she likes going to church but she doesn’t really have a testimony of these things. So it might be awhile before she is baptized but that’s okay.

We are still teaching Emma, she is so amazing! Our doctrines are so different from her Jehovist Witness background but she is open to letting us come and she is reading the Book of Mormon. Not just reading it she studies it she looks up cross references, she thinks about it and has really in depth questions and she is praying and knows that it is a true book. She is gaining a testimony of Joseph Smith as well. We watched the Restoration movie with her and the spirit was so strong. We were a little nervous because we had this feeling that she was sort of hesistant to let us keep teaching her the last time we were there but once we watched that movie it was amazing. She was emotional and said, “I imagine you get emotional everytime that you watch that. That was so beautiful.” We taught her the first half of the plan of salvation, we weren’t able to finish because she had tons of questions and it took quite awhile and then her daughter and grandchildren came over. Everything is so different and I don’t know how she likes it but we are excited to go back and explain the rest. I just know that she is so special and even though it might take awhile she will be baptized.


Other than that there aren’t too many other things as far as our investigators go. We have visited lots of members and eaten at a lot of their homes since it is Christmas time. If you ever come to Puerto Rico stay away from Pastel. No it is not a desert is like a tamale but it is made up from mashed up plantains and it is a green/grey slimy thing. Not my favorite. Other than that we eat mostly rice, rice and more rice. I don’t think I have eaten as much rice in my entire life as I have in the last month. That is a lie, but you get what I mean.


I am sending you some photos of the apartment, Christmas Eve, and some of Naranjito, the pueblo that we also have in our area. This is not where we live, we live in the city with like no trees and its flat. But I just wanted you to see what the non-city part of Puerto Rico looks like. Well I am hoping that I will get to stay in Bayamon. Transfers are coming up and there is a chance in a week and a half I might go somewhere else. So I’ll let you know. I secretly hope though that I’ll be able to stay since I feel like I am just getting to know the members and the area and I love working with Hermana Venegas.


Well I have to go. Love you all tons. Hope everything is good. Oh, mom will you send me the TollHouse Chocolate Chip cookie recipe. I have had several members say that they want to invite us over and have me teach them how to make cookies. They don’t have them here and they are like a novelty. Everyone keeps asking if I can make them and I told them yes but I can’t just do it I need an exact recipe so I told them I would try and get one. That would be great if you could! Love you all a ton!
Brooke


Monday, December 14, 2009

Tough Week

Hey Family,

Thanks for all the emails! I opened up my email and had so many its great to have two weeks of things to read through. Sorry if you were worried last week when you didn't get an email on time. Hopefully by now you have gotten my letter that I wrote from the hospital. Everything is back to normal now, Hermana Venegas is feeling great and she gets to stay so that is great. These last few weeks have been sort of hard, not going to lie. The main thing was that my companion was sick and I had to sleep several nights in the hospital with her. But that aside, we still had sort of a rough week. We had a lot of investigators not show up for appointments, we had every appointment cancel one day and we've had several of our investigators out of town and a few days where we were knocking/yelling, haha, and we just weren't finding anyone that was interested. It is the hardest thing to teach someone the first lesson and feel the spirit so strongly and then have them not show interest anymore. You can see it in their eyes, you know they feel the spirit and they like the sound of the message, especially when we talk about the first vision but then I think they stop to think for about it and logic sets in and they realize that this is so new and so different than anything they have ever heard and they get scared or something I don't know what it is. I know they must think we are crazy, when we talk to them and tell them that there is a living prophet on the earth today or that the true church has been restored. When we are contacting people and they look at you like you are crazy sometimes I just want to say, "I know we sound crazy, I know this is so different than anything you have ever heard but we're not crazy! Just give it a chance". The other problem here is that people many people say that they are catholic even if they don't actually go to church. Lots of people do go to church, there are so many churches here, most of them I have never heard of. So people probably think we are just one of the many churches that someone just started.

We have found some really awesome people to teach. One woman we are teaching is named Emma. She is from Dominican Republic. We knocked her door about a week and a half ago. All we said was good morning and we are missionaries and she let us right in, went and got the keys to her gate and told us to sit down. This never happens! She said some Elders came by two years ago and they gave her a Book of Mormon and set up an appointment to come back and teach her but her husband was dying of Leukemia and she was at the hospital a lot and so when they came by she was probably never home. She was pretty busy and so were we so it was about a week before we could go back and see her. We taught her the first lesson and the spirit was so strong, stronger than I have felt it yet when we've been teaching. She is Jehovist Witness and this is all very new to her but I can tell she likes it and she feels the spirit she very happily accepted a Book of Mormon. She told us before we left that she had always heard a lot of stuff about our church but now she understood a lot more and one thing she said was that she had always heard that our church looked down upon women a lot but she was so excited to see that here were two sister missionaries teaching the doctrines of the church and that really impressed her. We asked her if we could do anything else for her and she said we had already done so much and she said she would be thinking about this (meaning the lesson) all day! We are going back to teach her tonight and I just pray so hard that she reads the Book of Mormon and loves it. She's so great.

We are still teaching Feni, but we are done with all the lessons so we are going to watch a movie with her about eternal families but after that we will have to start thinking of other things to teach her. We are pray so hard everyday that her husband will soften his heart and marry her. She wants it more than anything.

We are teaching a woman named Ana and we are going to set a new baptismal date for her. She had one for the 12th of December but she had a lot of things left to be taught and she works out of town for this older woman and she goes and she cleans her house and takes care of her and she randomly gets called so sometimes we have appointments and she had to go to work so she is really hard to get a hold of. She is going to Florida for a month in January so we are hoping to have a baptism date for the 26th or the 2nd.

Everything else is good. Knocking is slow, we have had a lot of investigators that aren't home for their appointments but thats okay hopefully when we talk to people of give them a pass along card one day they'll be interested.

Thanks for all the emails. It was so good to hear from you all. I will try and write you all an email or a letter. It's weird to think that it's Christmas time back home, it doesn't feel like it barely at all here. I'll try and send you all something for christmas, to be honest there isn't really anything here that is different from the states except that its way more expensive. Everything by us is like walmart, K-Mart etc. So I don't really know what to send you all. But I'll try and think of something and it will get there late. Sounds like you've been super busy with things, like choir concerts I can't believe how many Abby has. I always thought that was crazy for Ensemble and its nothing compared to what Abby does. I can't believe it was so cold there! It's usually in the eighties here. The highest it has been is about 95 but its been rainy the last few days I actually wore a sweater to church yesterday and it was only 76. But I was freezing with all the fans on full blast in the chapel. I was going to send you pictures of my apartment and of my companion but I forgot my camera cord so I'll send them next week. The apartment is pretty nice we are upstairs and we go out on the roof to wash our clothes and hang them up to dry and our Duenos told us we are welcome to have fruit from their trees. We have star fruit (like in Hawaii) and Avocado trees and Guava trees but those aren't ripe yet. Food here is pretty heavy. Lots of meat and beans and rice. The rice is not just rice though, they feed you like a whole plate full and it is rice with all sorts of stuff in it like beans, and chunks of bacon or other type of meat, sometimes there is just chunks of fat, which I pick out. I had a pastel at the ward christmas party the other day. Not my favorite, it is not a pastry as you would think, it's like a tamale but the masa is mixed with mashed up unripe plantanes. It is sort of a slimy mushy texture and it is grey/green. Hopefully I'll get used to it but I just couldn't finish it. We mostly eat at home anyway so I just eat like I would at school. We are super careful to because Hermana Venegas has to be careful with food. Well I should go, love you all tons!
Good luck with everything. Love you!

Monday, December 7, 2009

Letter from the Airport

Dear Mom and Dad,

I am sitting here in ther airport in Salt Lake. I'm going to call you from Atlanta which I am really excited about. It's crazy that I am here, actually wearing this tag. It's the real thing and I'm so excited but nervous too. I look around me and see all these people and don't even know how to start talking to people. I was talking to a couple from Moroni for a long time. They were excited when I told them we had a house in Spring City. They were very nice. While I was talking to them these two women came and sat by me. They started staring at my name tag, and looked like they wanted to talk to me. She asked if I spoke Spanish. I told her I did then she told me that she waas with her aunt, they were both Peruvian and her aunt was flying back to Peru via Atlanta. She needed help with getting to her next gate with a wheelchair so she asked if I could help her get a wheelchair and have someone help her get to her gate. I said of course, I talked to them for awhile in Spanish, then the niece had to leave. She had gotten a special security pass to get through the gate to help her but she had to go back. Anyway, the aunt had come to Salt Lake to visit her neice and to go to the temple here. This little old Peruvian lady was so cut. She had never been to the U.S. before and spoke no English. When her neice left she started to cry. I told her it would be O.K. and I ashe the woman working there how to arrange fora wheelchair. Another woman who spoke Spanish came up and offered to help. She reassured the Peruvian woman and offerred to stay with her the whole way and take her to her next gate to translate for her. I was thankful for her because Atlanta is so huge and I knew it wouldn't be easy to help the Peruvian lady find her gate plus I am supposed to go straight to my gate. Anyway, I started talking to the second woman who was from Mexico, had been living in Sun Valley and was going b ack for her Nephew-in-law's funeral. I was scared of how to approach her. I wanted to share something about the gospel but didn't know how to start. She looked deep in thought and seemed upset. When it was time to board I just knew I had to say something. I had already told her why I was going to Puerto Rico. But before I boarded I gave her a pass along card and told her to call and get the free Lamb of God dvd. I told her it was about Christ. She looked extremely tehankful and asked me to pray for her nephew-in-law. I told her of course. I with I were better at this but I'm trying. It's so strange to be without a companion, the whole way to San Juan but it's O.K. I can't believe that I'm already on my way after only 2 weeks and 6 days. It was so weird to say goodbye to Hermana Rocha and Hermana Ruiz. Hermana Ricks left last wednesday and we've been back in a threesome for about a week. They are both going to be amazing missionaries, the other Elders in our district will be too. I'll send pictures when I have a chance to print them off. I'll talk to you later today.

Love you,

Sister Barker

Monday, November 30, 2009

First Week in Puerto Rico








Hey everyone,

Well I am officially a missionary now. Well I was before in the MTC but it didn't really feel like it. Now it's the real thing. I got into to San Juan about 11:45 after a really long day of traveling. President and Sister Martineau picked me up from the airport and I spent the night in the mission home. There were 3 other sisters, a senior couple and one elder also there. So we had breakfast, I met with President Martineau for a little interview and then we did practice lessons and recording us teaching. My trainer is named Hermana Venegas. She is from Toronto, Canada but her parents are both from Chile so she is bilingual. She's been out 15 months. She is awesome! We were assigned to open up a new area in Bayamon which is a suburb of San Juan. Bayamon had two elders there before but the area is huge and there was just too much to do. So we now have the bottom half of Bayamon and a town called Naranjito which has tons of hills and trees and winding roads, it is so beautiful. We live in a little apartment in Rexville. All the towns are divided into neighborhoods ours is called Rexville. We live in an apartment upstairs from our landlords and it has its own entrance with steps on the side. Its actually pretty cool, our landlord is named Jesus and he had a dream a little while back. They had this empty apartment upstairs that his father used to live in and he was about to put it up for rent. He had a dream that there would be religious teaching going on in that apartment. So he woke up the next morning and went to the Mission Office and asked if they needed an apartment to rent. So that's where we are living. We are hoping to be able to teach him and his wife. We mentioned it to his wife the other day and she said she wasn't interested but we're going to keep trying to get to know them and maybe they'll let us one day.

The apartment is actually quite large. It has a pretty decent kitchen and a big area with a kitchen table and a table where we study. There are two rooms and a bathroom. One of the rooms has air conditioning so that is where we sleep and the other is where we have our chest of drawers, ironing board and a bookshelf. There is only electricity on the one side of the house but it's not too bad. I fall asleep to the cherping of Frogs everynight. Yes, Frogs. I thought they were crickets or birds at first but then Hermana Venegas told me they are frogs native to Puerto Rico. If its not Frogs it's dogs barking or Regatone (a type of music) blarring from cars or neighbors houses.

We were told that this area is doing really well, that's why they brought in us sisters. The ward is great, one of the largest on the island. The elders had 3 investigators with a baptism date that are now in our area. One of them is named Feni and we went to see her the other day. She loves the Book of Mormon and loves coming to church. She is so excited to get baptized. There are just two problems: 1. She's not married. She lives with a man and they have two kids but he is very proud and doesn't want to get married and doesn't like her taking the discussions. 2. Some Jehovist Witness missionaries came over the other day and told her all things about Joseph Smith and our Church that are making her really confused. She is just confused by what all these people are telling her and doesn't know what to think. We just told her to keep reading and praying like she has been and she can find out for herself and tonight we are going to go visit her and talk to her about eternal families and watch a movie with her and hopefully her boyfriend will be there to watch it too.

The other two women have been really hard to track down. We are going to have to move their baptism dates back because we haven't even talked to them in person yet. One of them was out of town for thanksgiving and she is still missing quite a few important lessons. The other one works on the other side of the island and is never home. So hopefully we'll be able to track them down and continue teaching them.

Other than those three we have no investigators so we have had to start from scratch. We spend a least two or three hours knocking doors each day or doing what we call unplanned contacts which is talking to people on the street, outside grocery stores etc. Well when I say knocking doors that isn't exactly true. In Puerto Rico not many people have doors that are accesible. Most people have windows that are like slats that open up (like Grandma and Grandpa's house in Hawaii) they have porches that are surrounded by gates or bars and they usually keep those locked and then go in through the garage. So we usually stand in their driveway or by the porch and yell "Buenas Tardes" or "Buenas Noches" until they peer out their window and ask what we want. This makes it sort of hard because people aren't really close. You have to talk to them through the bars while they stand in the back of their garage or inside through the window. The whole time you are yelling because there are so many dogs in Puerto Rico. Everyone has a dog some people have like two or three! They are all little tiny dogs like Chihuahuas but they bark so loud. I have never heard dogs bark so loud. So the whole time you are yelling and they can't really hear you. But we have had a few people let us teach them the first lesson on their porch but this weekend was hard because it was Thanksgiving and everyone had family there. We have a lot of appointments to teach for this week though.

It is so ridiculously hot and humid here! Most days it is in the high 80s or low 90s. Bayamon is particularly hot apparently. So we walk around I know people are like what is this tall, blonde haired girl doing walking around in the heat wearing a dress, sweating to death and smelling very strongly of bugspray and sunscreen. Sometimes people say things to me in English, just a few words like I can't understand spanish. Which of course I can't. Everyone here talks so fast and they cut off all their Ss and say the Rs and Ls super weird. About 90% of the time anyone talks I have to ask Hermana Venegas what they are saying. I really love it here though. And people are generally nice enough to let you finish telling them a little about the gospel before they tell you they aren't interested.

On Thanksgiving we went to a Recent Converts house for Thanksgiving. There were 5 other elders there and some ward members. It was definately different than our normal thanksgiving it was fun though. We had turkey, rice, macaroni salad, rolls. It wasn't too bad.

Thanks for the emails. I still don't have Rachel's real email. At least I don't think I do. Will you forward this to her and then send me hers. I'm glad that Thanksgiving was fun for you all and that Spring City was good. I want to hear about what Abby did on her birthday. I'm sorry Erin that school's been so busy but you're almost done right? Rach how's school going? Anyway you can mail stuff at the 500 Marginal Norte Address. That is the mission office and I will get mail from the district leaders every week at district meeting. Love you all so much. Keep sending me emails or letters. By the way you can take off the DR off my blog if you haven't already. I'll write next week.

Love you all tons,
Sister Barker

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

I'm here!

Hey family, I am just writing you a quick email even though my P-day isn't until monday to tell you I am here. I got in about 11:45 last night and President and Sister Martineau were there to pick me up. I came back to the mission home and went straight to bed. There are three other sisters that are new and one elder. We met our companions today, recording us teaching a lesson and watched it and I met with President Martineau. My companion is named Hermana Venegas she is from Canada but her family is originally from Chile. We are opening a new area in Bayamon, which is a suburb of San Juan. So we are really close. It was so good to talk to you yesterday. Love you all. Happy Thanksgiving! Say hi to everyone for me. Happy Birthday Ab! You're 18 I can't believe it. Anyway, I'll write on Monday. Love you all Brooke

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

I leave one week from today!‏

It's official I leave one week from today! So crazy! Mom and Dad I am flying out on tuesday on a Delta flight to Atlanta around 9:30. I have a 4 hour layover and then get into San Juan at 11:30 where my mission president will pick me up. I will get to call you from the airport but I don't know when yet. I think I can call you whenever so the best time will probably be during my layover. Sorry I don't have the flight details with me right now but I will try to write them down because I know you will want to know when my layover is so when I will be calling.

Anyway, thanks for the packages! They were great. Hermana Rocha loved the cheese. We put it on top of our salads that night at dinner. Sorry my email was so scattered last time there is just so much to say and not enough time to say it. Thanks for the dear elders Mom, Erin and Dad. I loved them so much. Especially for your advise Erin and the scripture you shared Dad, they really helped me a lot. Even though I love it here I'm not going to lie I'm a little overwhelmed. Not necessarily with the language but with the fact that I am leaving one week from today and we have only been here a week and a half. There is so much still to learn and practice. It's been neat though to see how Hermana Rocha and I are improving in teaching the lessons, we are getting better each time and I am getting more confident with giving them in Spanish. We have also been going to the Referral Center where you can talk to people that have requested Book of Mormons or DVDs or you can chat with people who get onto Mormon.org and use the chat feature to ask questions. The first time we went I was really scared because we were talking to real people. But I have gotten better and I was able to send the missionaries to a lady the other, and had a long chat with a man about the plan of salvation and the atonement (with my companion and roommates around helping me on what to say) and he said he didn't want the missionaries but would try to go to church the next sunday. I am getting better at not being so nervous and worried about saying the wrong thing. I just can't believe that we only have a few days left.

My district is awesome! I love everyone in it and we are all becoming great friends. We are all going to different places, all nine of us, Vegas, South Carolina, Chicago, San Diego, Colorado, Paraguay, Dominican Republic, and Kentucky. I am going to be with Hermana Rocha the whole time here and as of tomorrow Hermana Ruiz will be back with us because Hermana Ricks is leaving. So threesome again. There are never enough hours in the day here to do anything, we are going from class to large group meetings, gym eating and then suddenly it is ten o'clock. I wish I had a few more weeks here to get to the scriptures more and practice the 3, 4, and 5 lessons but oh well I'm still excited. One of my teachers, Hermana Walters, served in my mission so we hear about it quite a bit and I am getting excited.

Sunday was pretty neat because Kristen Oaks came for relief society and Sheri Dew came for the weekly sunday fireside. Sheri Dew gave one of the best talks I have ever heard. She based it off of Abraham 1 i think verse 3 and which says that we should work towards being a greater follower of righteousness and seak out greater knowledge. She said that no matter where we are in our lives we should try to do this. Read the scripture it does it more justice than I can. Also she talked about how satan tries to attack us in three ways, trying to get us forget who we are, not understand how to use the atonement in our lives, and not understanding the gift of personal revelation. She told us that if we 1. Know that we are children of our Heavenly Father 2. Know how to use the atonement in every aspect of our lives, both with repentance and also when we have trials and 3. We understand how to receive personal revelation then we can do anything. I love that! After her fireside we watched the Joseph Smith movie that they show at temple square which was really neat because Hermana Rocha had never seen it before.

Sorry the clock is running down! This is so stressful. But I just want to tell you all I love you and thanks for the letters and packages. Rachel and Abby I want to hear from you too. I don't have your email Rach so someone forward this and then send it to me.

Also I don't have my Puerto Rico Address. Haha, I left it for you and didn't bring it here. Can you send it to me in a DearElder? I would like to give it to some people here. Tell everyone hi. Sorry I can't write more. No email next week because I will be traveling but I will call hopefully.

Love you all so much!

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Brooke's First Letter!!!

Wow! I can't believe it's been only a week since I've been here. I feel like it's been forever. So... where do I start? There is so much to tell. So I am in the advanced spanish class, which means that I am one of the few people in my group that are not native speakers and we only have 2 more weeks in the Provo MTC! So I came and they assigned me to a threesome with two other sisters. One, Hermana Ruiz is from Mexico City but she has lived the last 8 years in Houston, TX. She is awesome! She is fun and knows so much about the gospel, and speaks perfect spanish which helps of course. My other companion is named Hermana Rocha (pronounced Roja but the j is pronounced like a spanish j) She is from Greece! Her father is from Bolivia so she is fluent in spanish, greek and speaks pretty good english. She is really quiet and really shy but so nice. She apologizes about everything and asks permission for everything and she has only been to the US once before so a lot of things are unfamiliar for her. But she has such a strong testimony. Well on friday another sister joined our district, Sister Meagan Ricks (Liz Calder, she says hi and we talk about you all the time). She had surgery on her gall bladder and her district left while she was in the hospital so she joined ours and will be here for another two weeks. Well she became companions with Hermana Ruiz and so now its just me and Hermana Rocha. I'm not going to lie, that was hard for me because I love Hermana Ruiz a lot and she was the powerhouse of our companionship. She knew everything. Then here's me who can't speak the language and Hermana Rocha who is so timid. Saturday was especially hard because we practiced Lesson one for the first time, teaching this threesome of elders in another district. One of the elders kept asking all these really ridiculously hard questions to try and trip us up, so much that our teacher made us stop and called him out on it. I was so overwhelmed, forgetting everything I wanted to say and not being able to speak very well but there was Hermana Rocha, who just explained everything so simply and perfect. She was just amazing! I was so grateful for her. I am learning so much from her. She is from Greece, where the church is really small. I mean tiny. There are only 4 branches there and her's is the largest on a good day about 10-15 people will come. The other branches get about 3-5 people. Can you imagine? I am so grateful to have grown up in a place where the church is strong. I am learning so much from her example and I am excited as we get better at teaching.

Our district is so great. We have three other native elders who are in a threesome and then two elders who just learned spanish on their own like me.

I love the MTC! The spirit is so strong here. I've been here less than a week and I have already heard some of the most amazing firesides, church meetings and talks that I have heard. We study all day and there is not enough time for anything. I barely have time to write in my journal at night. I am learning so much about my purpose as a missionary that we are responsible to bringing people to Christ, and helping them establish a personal relationship with him. Its especially hard for us that are leaving in two weeks because we have to learn and practice teaching the first three discussions in the next two weeks and we don't even get to study or practice the fourth and fifth! I am really nervous to go out into the field so if you guys wouldn't mind keeping me in your prayers I would really appreciate it. I need all the help I can get in learning these lessons and then actually being able to say what I want to say in spanish.

Sorry, have to go running out of time.
Love you,
Sister Barker

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Monday, November 2, 2009

Hey everyone,

I enter the MTC Wednesday November 4th. My family will be posting my emails on this blog. Please send me letters, I would love to hear from everyone and I'll try to write back as quickly as possible. I'm so excited to serve a mission in Puerto Rico. We'll see you all in 18 months!

Sister Barker