Email - 11/17/09

From: Bryan Barney
Sent: Tuesday, November 17, 2009 5:50 AM
Subject: Re: Mid November

Well . . .

Congratulations to Mom, for having the best show-stopping announcement of the week. Katie´s getting married, huh? To Jim, who I don´t think I have ever met, nor, can I honestly recall a single photo of the guy? Isn´t this the same dude who dumped her via e-mail?

Not sure I know how to feel. But I´m happy for Katie that she´s finally getting married, and that she´ll be a mom. I´ll keep on praying here that everything goes well for her in her marriage. Please send photos and the what-not to me when it all goes down.

It´s kind of impossible to think of having a brother-in-law or a niece/nephew. Are well all really this old already? Whatever happened to my childhood, haha. It´s so weird, how things kind of happen without your being able to see it, or even actually hear it, out here on the mission. But I guess it could be far worse. I´ve known missionaries who´ve had parents die, so I guess I´m way lucky.

But it´s still pretty weird.

All continues to go well here in Anápolis. Our city had 5 baptisms this weekend, one of which was a mother and daughter pair which I interviewed. The mom, Carla, is a fashion reporter/model/single mom who, frankly, I was impressed to meet. She lives in a fancy little apartment and has had a serious change of heart since Elder Williams and Elder Mendes started teaching her. She was a bit tired, but since she´d been off coffee only a day or so, I suppose it´s natural. I hope to see how she is a few weeks from now, to see how the Spirit has improved her life. Because well, in honesty there was a lot we had to talk about in her interview, but the Missionaries did their job well, she was taught the right path, and walked down it.

And her daughter, Barbara, was in fact more impressive still. She´s a 12 year old kid who has sickle-cell anemia, who has a friend who´s a member of the church. Barbara went to church one Sunday, decided she liked it, and wanted to be baptized, went home, and told her mom the two of them would go into the waters together. Because of the faith and determination of this little girl, she and her mother arrived at this point.

We had a missionary get sick this week, so I was covering his area for him, from there we had to do baptismal interviews in every area in our district, plus the Zone Leaders, so this weekend, I walked the whole city of Anapolis just about. President Tobias is visiting the city almost weekly, too, haha.

We´re all doing fine down here. Send my love to everyone up there. To my siblings who never write, and to my friends, too. Say hi to Grampa Barney for me, and for Grama and Grampa Haney, all my aunts and uncles and the whole rest of the rogue´s gallery.

Love,

Bryan