WHAT DO I NEED TO GIVE UP IN MY LIFE TO BE BAPTIZED?

So yeah this week accelerated. We have like 3 super progressing investigators that came out of the blue. I might be able to be at the baptism for one of them for sure. Francisco he is awesome! He asked us in our first lesson... what do i need to give up in my life to be baptized? I think he would have given up his home and everything like Lamoni's father. He is 20. His friend Jerry is also taking the discussions and they are awesome coming to church. Jerry's parents are LA (less active) mormons. He is 19, so we are allowed to baptize him but we will let the spirit choose. It will kill me to know years from now they joined up with "iglesia ni cristo" or denied the faith (who are much much worse than the mga catoliko) Look up "iglesia" they are a awesome bunch to deal with :) Take The gadiantion robbers mix them with jehovah witnesses and you get them. We watched the testaments with them last night it was awesome i might have seen that movie 15 times but i love it. Kohor cracks me up in that movie. Jacob! you are a spectre from the gods. There are some good pick up lines in there. Pinoys love pick up lines alot. Well anyways we are planning to have brother francisco baptized June 23. Man i pray that it goes smoothly. He lives in the mountains very far away from town. Not by the NewPeoplesArmy rebels so dont worry. Well that is the mission work... working with people who dont want to come back to church mostly, but the convert work is fun. The RCLA (recent convert/less actives) work is good. It shows me not what to do when im a parent, and not what to do so i wont fall away. One day i will take these principles and be a ward missionary. I hope to help the LA of the ward. The language is still difficult hahaha. They say im doing great, but i know i could do better but everyone tries to speak in igless to me including my comp. I dont blame him english is fun to him! So what are your summer plans? I have Zone conference in June before pres jensen goes home in Urdaneta Philippines. Yeah so i dont use my account money. My goal is to never have to use it. Im transitioning to filipino food next week in my diet other than member meals. A big step for me! Kasi i shouldn't eat top raman for lunch every meal. They call it pancit cancer here because it is basically all preservatives. Yeah i got rachaels email i need to write back through snail mail and it will cost me big. I need to mail 4 letters. I think it's 40 pisos a pop which kills my budget so yeah it might be a while. So i had my first exchange ever! with guess who? because my comp is the district leader which has maraming perks. The zone leader Elder Lauriaga. He is a former baptist preacher who was baptized. I dont know how old he is but, he is going bald so lets just say he found the gospel later on in life but man he is awesome. It is good to do splits with ZLs you learn so much. A trainee with a ZL hah! Well he told me they might transfer me after this transfer. I dont know how he would know but, he said thats what they do to americans two transfers in their start up area. Im not ready to go but ill do whatever. I refuse to ever ask not to transfer or ask to be transfered mission goals. I think its cool to see what god wants to do with me. I learn alot about how god wants to change me through my companions and my area. We had a big service project at our house today made some adobo and had fun. All the youth came it was good. But we no longer have a jungle in our back yard and guess what? there were no snakes found. Only mangoes! and trash in our backyard jungle! Yeah im excited for Pres. Manahon. I havent had much time with Pres jensen, but just like the cross country kids had coach sawyer and coach alexander and those kids complained with a new coach. The missionaries will complain with new management, but i have been here long enough to get too attached but he is awesome. So dad how close did the 4 by 800 get exactly to our record?  you never said who won state in the 4 by 800? Im glad the record stands, (hahaha) so i can show my kids 15 years from now. Everything before my mission has helped me with what im doing now: Scouts. Family Research. BYU. Our family. Track. Football. Working at Tooth Doctor. Construction. It all ties into my mission. And everything in my mission, and then some, will tie into my life pagkatapos ng misyon ko. It definantly takes patience here, but dad i am working with the members like you said and i have seen the great affects it has on the betterment of the ward. Girls you're awesome just have fun. Judas i wish we would have done more as a family, but just like that country song the next 20 twenty years will be the best years of my life...Im gonna drink some more lemonade and not so many.... hahaha I still have a sense of humor. I will never let that change. Well let me know about romney and the kids who make it on to missions and where their going. Oh mom did you and the moms make it into the magazine? Dad, the city sevilla is a sisters area. So nooooo i wont get assigned there. I will try to get a picture there though. There is a san fernando also. Isn't that an area of yours in Espana? The spanish didn't leave too much behind here in pangasinan hahaha. The people are great but its bukid. A dios

~Elder Barney Lumalaban ako ng mabuting laban

I'M ELDER BARNEY...I LIKE PRETZELS

So i beat my first transfer... fiesta is over and i have a new companion and it is cooling down.  Lots of changes. My new companion is Elder Cabauatan from makati city and we're changing this area around. He is very american. It was great to talk to you all and i am grateful for my family (and i hate this keyboard very very much). Elder C (much easier to type) is a pinoy and he plays guitar, likes all the same music as i do, and he is smart. We have one ibd and we might baptize this transfer if the man isn't special case. "Special case" is the worst phrase in the english language. Questions for dad.... hahah I need to know who is Raphael the angel (any information you have on him let me know please please). People bury their dead above the ground here in tomb coffins things.  Looks weird i think it is a spanish thing. Lots of people die here weekly they parade up and down the street after the funeral blaring music so the whole town knows someone died. Well the town fiesta is over so, not as many drunk pinoys are telling me they love me very very much. I actually like them a lot better when they are drunk. Can't teach them though. Well yeah so fiesta is like our fourth of july yeah its crazy. Well i had my first LBM or aka "montezumas revenge issue" kinda.  A member got offended because i tried to put my water in the filter gosh (some of them i want to tell off) so i drank it straight.  I'm fine now.. it wasn't crippling. Good thing doctor barney packed me the white tablets. Yes so well when i come home i dont think i will have a toilet prob. Just letting you know please dont be mad. But its a lot of fun elders are anxious to see how the new mission president will be.  Whatever happens...happens.  I have food money. Yes I eat.. im not eating at the outback steakhouse but i dont go to bed hungry. Well we're having internet problems.  Sorry ill try to send another one adios.

Elder Barney...i like pretzels. 

KAMUUUUUUUUSTA!

Kamuuuuusta!

So yeah the work is going good. We have a boy who will be baptized I feel it. He has to go to church 12 weeks in a row. The baptism rules are strict here but it is for the best. We are having success with bringing people back to the church. I got together with the mission leader and told him I want to help the branch progress to a large branch, but most people weren’t as on board with that as was am. The youth are pretty strong. They will make the difference in the coming generations of what the future of san Quinton is. Mom I fasted for you and let me know how it goes.  I’m glad grandma is coming down to help you out. Girls @ I’m proud of you… be strong and of good courage and enjoy life and school.  Love mom and dad and watch TV shows together and enjoy each others company. Ha-ha sometimes I have to pretend like I don’t have a family back home until Monday emails, but that is for the best. So about Skype yes I can Skype.  It would be difficult, but I want to do it because who knows what rules the new mission president will bring. I am roughly 15 hours ahead of you all. I can talk with you anytime the month of May. I get an hour of total talk time which is generous I am told. I can split that up or whatever. I get up 630 on Monday. So call me any Sunday night when it is around 7 here I guess on my pday, and I will talk with you for an hour. I am totally down to Skype I don’t know how to though. I would have to send you a request from the internet cafe. I’m torn on the matter maybe just a phone call for this one. We can talk for a half of an hour and figure out how to Skype, and for the next 30 minutes Skype who knows?? Yeah so I won’t get to talk to you again until December. So if you want to talk this week that is okay if you want to wait until the last Monday for me in may that would also be good too. You have my number. 20 cents a minute for you to call I believe. For an hour that would cost about 12 bucks. No I haven’t gotten sick.  I have a water filter bottle. One day I had some LBM kind of because a member gave me TANG and I had to drink it that would be rude. We were thatching his roof for a service project. Good ole elder savage I miss him. But me and Elder Tan are doing good work. Teaching lots of lessons and coming together into a unit. Don’t worry about sending me stuff through out my mission. I am ok! I have lost weight but I am healthy. One morning this week, I was thinking to my self staring at a picture of Dan Jones.  I want a soap box moment later on in my mission. Ha-ha like they did in the early days of the church. Later that night elder tan and I and a couple members went out into the bukid or country to teach a lesson to supposedly two investigators. The whole town basically showed up. I learned to be careful what we wish for. There were about 40 people there. Mostly teenagers or standbys as the teenage boys are called.  Boys with no direction in life who, like their slang name indicates, they just "stand by" ha-ha.  They don’t go to school they just smoke and follow the world. Anyways this group was mostly made up of them. My Tagalog is sketchy and so I was like ohh boy. They are gonna laugh us out of town. Elder tan started us off.  I prayed which I’m good at. And then we began to teach the entire first lesson. It came to me and I felt calm and sure.  I talked about the Saviors ministry and pagbabayad-sala or atonement and the great apostacy. No one laughed I was shocked! They just stared at me. Then I gave an account of the first vision (totally skipped one line of it by accident) it still made sense mind you, and no one said a word. My accent even made them lean in closer and crowd around to try to understand. That event testified to me whose work I am doing. By all rights they should have jeered.  We handed out lots of books of Mormon.  I gave one to the meanest looking one standing by that I saw. He had a mean mustache, rat tail, tattoos, earrings, and a gangster Lakers hat. He took the book looked at me said “tank you”.  He kind of laughed, but I was just glad they allowed me to give my message in peace. They can laugh or burn it after I’m through with the message hahaha. So the Rambo pic…so I bought that hat in the palengke my only souvenir…I guess you could say. I use souvenir money on the cherished peanut butter, and the gun is a broken air soft gun the previous missionaries left to scare off anyone who tries to hastle the missionaries. Their “bawal” now so we got rid of it haha literally the day after I took that picture they started the prohibition of air soft guns. One member gave me a cool looking jersey from his barangay team MABINI it is way cool and I will keep it forever. We are trying real hard to get them ready for the temple trip this following week, but I don’t think it will work. It kills me on the inside. The dad is so strong too. The hardest thing people have with here is tithing and Salita ng karunungan or word of wisdom. We would have gotten to go with them to the temple in manila as well to witness. Well God is in control. President Jensen has told me that in my last letter along with other words of advice. He is a very wise man and I will be sad to only have gotten to work under him for so short of a time. But I’m sure President Manahan will be awesome. I want to Skype you all though.  We will figure it out. Just call me. Please research for me, so when it is like 7-8 ish here you call. Man ha-ha these things are difficult. Well I love you all very much and I am doing this work now so that we can rest together for eternity. I will read your scripture Lou.  I’m so sorry, I get only so much time to email 45 minutes to read respond so I breeze through them and sometimes I cannot respond to every single question, but I do read every single one. Dad, I found your letter.  I didn’t want to tell you I lost it until I found it. I was dead inside when I couldn’t find it. I found it though and have taken a lot of the pieces of advice and have put them on my small plates of Nephi in my smaller journal. It helped me a lot this week. I had pizza today and pineapple juice masaya ako na maglinkod dito sa san quinton ADIOS.

Elder Barney