Mike's Letter 6/10/08

I must have written poorly to create misunderstanding, I will not know if i am getting transferred until this saturday june 14th and I wont be able to tell you until monday june 16th. I'm still in canton right now. But don't send me anything after about thursday, cause i may not get it if i do get transfered. Anyways canton is getting kind of rough for me, the branch just flat out doesn't function. The big goal of having a lot of non-member friends out by june 8th didn't go as planned. We were supposed to have a christ centered,friendly for all, christian service. That was the game plan for this day for about 3 months now. It was well shared with the branch president and his first counselor. So to extra entice investigators into coming to church we said "hey! we're gonna have a extra special christ centered service this sunday and we'd really be glad to see you out to it." We even were assured we could pick out the hymns (our chorister picks out oddball hymns) and we did. Then guess what? None of our hymns were chosen and all the talks were on the 'blessings of BELONGING to the true and living church' where christ was hardly mentioned once. It was unreal! I felt so stupid and so angry at the same time. All of the investigators that we enticed by promising a christ centered service were somewhat deceived too! It's like 15 total hours of coordination meetings and talking about the june 8th goal went down the drain all at once! Anyway, I don't know if that makes sense but bottom line----> a plan that has been in the making for 3 months and agreed to by the canton branch just plain didn't happen! Anyway, that's over now. The reason I couldn't write yesterday is cause it was ZoNE P-DAY yeah yeah! It was just what I needed. We played basketball,dodgeball,softball,tennis,Ultimate frisbee,and frisbee golf. Frisbee golf is so cool. Those discs amaze me. You don't throw them the traditional way (from your chest out) You throw them the opposite way (pinching the edge with your thumb on top and two fingers on the bottom rim) and by just a flick of your wrist they go up to 200 yards! (the drivers at least) It's amazing! The course we played had tons of trees so you had to aim tricky and put curves on the frisbees and such. I was pretty alright for a first timer. It was way fun! Tennis would have been amazing fun of course but there was like an 1/8 inch of water on the court cause it was raining. But it was so good to play hard and compete and forget about canton for a day. I got real upset sunday and the old branch president came over and told me that elders that want to make a positive change to the branch just set themselves up for failure and that we should just do our job the best we know how. He's mostly right but our job is made much more successful and easy as the branch functions. It's sad when you have to be nervous every week for your investigators to come to church. Anyway Sunday was HORRIBLE and Monday was GREAT! Well, Our investigators go as follows. Stephanie will be baptized june 24th (I'll probably be gone). Janine and son are "too tired/sick/busy" right now for church and she is having a hard time quitting coffee. We got Lana a large print triple so she can study better but she "can't" come to church cause she doesn't have a dress. :( we've told her she doesn't NEED one for church but she says she'd be too uncomfortable without one. She's not poor, I don't know why she's putting it off, She j ust wants one excuse It seems like. She reads good though and is loving the BoM so far.
robert doesn't come to church cause he "can't find a babysitter" :(
The rest are our less actives and they're going alright. Just a game of eliminating excuses I can tell you the key excuses around here

1. I'm not worthy to take the sacrament and that's why you go to church.
2. I can't afford gas to go to church (but I drive somewhere else unneccesary multiple times a week)
3. Sister so-and-so hurt my feelings 30(slightly exagurated) years ago and I'm still offended.
4. Sleeping in feels better than church.
5.I'm too fat for my old dresses and you HAVE to dress up.
So maybe you guys can pre-determine some doctrinal answers for those Less-active concerns for when you run into them! :D
Man! That's a bad deal about your cancer Dad, I'll be praying for you. I hope the new treatment works. That'd be good!

well, I got to go TKO the little town st. david.

Have a good week,
-Elder Barlow-