Elder Samuel Barlow - Florida Jacksonille Mission

  What is up everybody, this is my second to last email ever. So crazy This past week I was transferred to the Arlington area (which is literally the area above the other one) to be with Elder Shakespeare and Elder Kapele for my last 2 weeks. It has honestly been such a blessing and I couldnt be in a better situation to end my mission. I have served around both of them before and we are all good friends. It has been really great so far and the ward is awesome. We have so many great activities that we can invite people too. Kinda sad I didn't get called here earlier cause I would love to serve here. I just wanted to share a thought from my week. So back in Hendricks we were working with a couple of less active and part member families and we saw lots of success with them. They each have been through a lot recently but have also seen lots of blessings, which should push them towards the gospel and coming back to church but that hasn't happened yet. It has been a little frustratin...

Good morning day or night whenever you're reading Last Tuesday I was on a exchange with Elder Svedin, he is a funny guy so we had a good time. We also have been planning a chicken sandwich taste test and we actually did it.  A couple problems that we ran into, we had to grab 8 sandwiches from 8 different places and that took an hour so by the time we ate them they were cold. Also never go to burger King, this is the second time I've tried it, the first time it was terrible (it is BK so idk what I expected) and this week they gave us a raw sandwich bleh. Again idk what I expected when ordering a made from scratch sandwich at BK.  My ranking for the normal sandwich's is  1. Chick FIL a  2. Popeye's 3. Zaxbys/KFC  All others don't even come close Thursday we had zone conference and it was awesome. We had to do a 30 min training for our zone and we decided to do it on charity and use the tree of life as a object lesson. The tree turned out not bad considering the ti...

  What is up everyone. Here are some cool things -We are teaching a family from the Congo/Uganda and it has been awesome. We found some missionaries that speak Swahili to join over video call to teach cuz my Swahili consists of 2 words so far Asante (thank you) and Kulala (to sleep). Both have been very useful and made them laugh. One of the daughters started going to young women's and she loves it! And the teenage son is super into Fifa so I'm gonna have to humble him one of these times. -On fast Sunday literally almost all of the testimonies were on missionary work which was so cool because that has never happened, you usually get one and it is probably coming from a current missionary.  -We have helped the Kirbys (who are a senior couple in charge of housing) set up a couple new apartments and they took us for dinner and milkshakes.   -We went to Texas roadhouse and ate way too many rolls. -We have had lots of success working with members and non members and had l...

This week has been a pretty crazy one. On Friday I got transferred to the Hendricks ward in Jacksonville. I was pretty sad to leave Elder Molisi and my area but these last couple of days here have been great. My new comp is Elder Barney and he actually came out with me. We also have Elder Card with us until Friday when he gets to go back to Brazil. We have been visiting a bunch of families in the ward, and i have just been trying to get used to the new area.  A couple of cool things... There are a bunch of refugee families from the Congo here and we are kind of teaching them. It is hard with a language barrier but we got them Swahili copies of the Book of Mormon, and are working on finding someone to help us teach them. I also had to give a talk on Sunday, it was over zoom because our building has a bunch of mold in it. It is one of the oldest buildings if not the oldest in the south. I talked about Elder Rasband's talk "Behold! I am of a God of Miracles" its a great talk...

  It has definitely been a while but here we go First off I miss march madness but since BY lost and that would have busted my perfect bracket if I made one, I found it easy to move on because of that lol. This week was good for the most part. On Wednesday to Thursday I got to go on an exchange with Elder Dockstader, which is the guy that trained me. It was way fun but also really weird because its been over a year since we were comps. We got to go serve this older lady, we filled a bunch of gopher holes and also picked up rocks from her yard. We didn't know what to do with the rocks so we just started chucking them into the woods and she walked around to check on us right as I threw like 3 rocks lol, she was like I have a bucket y'all can put them in but that works too. She didn't mind so we kept throwing.  We ate dinner with three old ladys at this restaurant and it was really good except they ordered fried mushrooms. If you can think of a more southern old lady decision ...

  Quick updates from the Florida Georgia Line! Luke sent me a bonsai growing kit for Christmas lol and i have to say it is going immensely. I have two sprouts, only 2 years and 11 months until I can trim them into bonsai tree. I had covid for the first half of January, what a great time. But it got me out of giving a talk for a couole weeks. Still cant taste diet coke so thats a rip,  We had transfers and I stayed and got Elder Molisi. I was so hyped, he served around me in Jacksonville and its been way fun so far.  I got to play golf last week and it was freezing, yes i know probably not like Utah but 48 degrees with wind and humidity is brutal. Especially when you want to enjoy playing but your hands are numb.  Elder Molisi got us the hookup with someone that used to serve here and sent us a package from Hawaii full of li hing candy and the chocolate mountain things. Its pretty fire. Thats pretty much it.  So I am a district leader here which means I'm over th...