Elder Samuel Barlow - Florida Jacksonille Mission

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...

  This week has been really cool. We started off with getting a negative covid test so we could get out of quarantine on Tuesday (a missionary at zone conference tested positive so we had to quarantine). For Christmas eve we were supposed to set up a service project so some sisters reserved times for us to ring the bell for salvation army at a Walmart and I can say I was not the most thrilled to do it. But it was actually way fun, it was just 4 Elders there and here were some of the funny interactions we had Us "merry Christmas!"  Guy *walks past all angry One of the Elders "he must be Jewish" lol I was dying Lady walking in "what you guys aren't going to sing"  Us *awkwardly sings silent night On her way out she put money in the bucket since we sang for her, your welcome salvation army Another guy walked up, put money in the bucket the said "if you guys stop winking at all the girls I'll give more on the way out" lol We got Starbucks hot...

  What's up everyone! This week has been so good. We got to do service at this food bank place on Thursday and help bag up food for people in need. After that we went to a sushi place, and it was my first time eating sushi (besides the one time I tried it with Brixen at Smith's lol) and it's not that bad.  Friday we went to the celestial Farms place again and we had to catch a small piglet that got out of its pen and it was hilarious. All the big pigs were protecting him and started to get aggressive, all the people there looking at the animals asked us if we worked there as we were in the pig pen, I would've too if I saw 6 teenagers jump into a pig pen haha. We finally got him and then we headed to the pasture? And a horse ran past us and one of the volunteers was trailing it and yelled "stop that pony" haha I was dying. Took me a minute to register and run after the pony. This horse could Bob and weave man, it split our cover 2 defense, although I will say t...

Man this week has been eventful. We had Zone conference on Wednesday and that was good, we talked a lot about the spirit and how to recognize it. Pres Wood said there is an acronym to it so I wanted to share it with you guys, PIE P=persuades I=Invites E=Entices Meaning if the thought does these things to be good or help someone then it comes from God and is the spirit sending the message so don't second guess yourself when those thoughts or ideas come!  After that I got to go on a tradeoff with Elder Kimball, so I was in Arlington, which is the area next to me, for a day. It was hilarious, we did not have one single contact or conversation that was normal, each started off fine and then the weirdest ideas or topics came out of left field. My personal favorite was Garry (yes two r's), he is an old dude chillin with his shirt off smoking a cigarette, and he told us how someone stole his TV and his microwave and 5 lbs of... M&ms, 2.5 regular and 2.5 peanut. We were dying lol, ...

  Hey Everyone! Im doing well so here are some pictures from the week, enjoy Sorry they are blurry my phone camera is trash Love Elder Barlow

  T his week has been a great one. We did service for this lady named Deborah, all she wanted was this little 3 by 6 area of rocks moved so she could plant some plants in her front yard. So we started and there were a tone of rocks, we ended up putting all of them into the garbage can and filled it up 3/4 of the way, then Deborah decided she didn't want them in the can because it took up all the space for her garbage. This was the start of our problems. The alternative dump em in the backyard, it had rained the day before, no concrete pathway, lots of little hills. So decided to just go for it. Elder Rife and I poth got on a handle and went at it. This thing was so heavy and we were just digging into the soft ground. I felt like I was in a James Harrison workout. We got about halfway when we hit a little hill and the can dug in 2 inches and stopped, because of physics and me and Elder rife pulling if all our effort we got jerked back both fell and almost got crushed by the can. Wou...

  Yo! This week was filled with a bunch of stuff so I'll give a few highlights Monday we golfed in the morning, hit up bdubs (their new sauces are trash) and then had a nerf war lol, felt like I was 12 again. It was awesome. Tuesday we did service at some organic farm, pretty cool since the lady requested help on Facebook, and that was something. We picked sweet potatoes for 4 straight hours, I could never be a farmer. I did find the largest potato and it was about the size of my head. Ants, spiders, and ticks were all prevalent but I'm still moving.  That night we went to Rhondas for a little good bye dinner. It was sweet we had lasagna and she also got apple pie and ice cream, because I said pie was my favorite. I felt I had made a mistake after she put two huge pieces on my plate with ice cream, but I was a champ and put it down. It was hard to leave but I challenged her to take the lessons for real and she said yes so that was awesome. Also she said I could come back anyti...

  This week on Elder Barlow is an idiot: we were doing work on Rhondas house and she had these chisels. So I flipped it and caught it, naturally I then tried two flips not knowing that chisels were sharp. I caught the chisel side and sliced my finger open, sweet. Then we did tie dye shirts for a pday activity (thrilling) and all the dye got in my cut so I have this inch long black line across my finger, even better. We moved 5 people into houses, here's the thing I learned about moving. When they say it will take about 1 hr it really means 4 hrs. We had another car wash which is probably the best part of our week because we actually get to talk to nice people. And we get to feel awkward standing on the side of the road. But I figured out if you stare and smile/wave then the person in the car feels awkward haha it's pretty funny because they have no reason to feel awkward but they do.  We pulled a hilarious prank at service, there was a costume eagle head and we put it on peopl...

  Another week down! We have made a big effort this week to meet as many members as possible since we can go into their homes now, so we baked a ton of cookies. We made our way to lots of member houses, and a couple non members on accident lol, Google maps is the worst for addresses. It was so fun to be able to meet the ward and we got a lot of dinner invitations as well.  We got a call from Rhonda this week and she asked us a question about Joseph Smith and where he was born, she has read from the Book of Mormon everyday and wants to come to church with us this next week! She is so enthusiastic about all of it. We moved a ton of new people in this week, and let me tell you, people that don't have everything packed when we get there are the worst. What should be 2 hrs turns into 5, not the funnest thing but it still beats sitting in our apartment.  We did a free car wash, so I sat on the street with a sign that said Free on it and nothing else. Got a lot of weird looks, o...

  What's up everyone! This week has been pretty stressful leading up to transfer calls on Saturday, but it turned out great, Elder Hall and I are staying together and we are now only covering the Gainesville 2nd which will be nice to just focus on them. This week we had a lot of "Jake's" (meaning a canceled lesson, lingo from 90'-92' Moscow mission lol thanks pops). Kind of disappointing but we keep moving on.  On Thursday it was Elder Halls bday so we went to bdubs with the other Elders and it was really fun. I played the card game Magic for the first time while I was on an exchange and let me tell you that will be the last time that I will play Magic lol, good to try new things and learn what other people do for fun though.  Sunday we had church again and it was so good, but also weirdly short. The bishop said there would only be 10 minutes for testimonies so the meeting was 30 min total but all the testimonies were powerful so it was all good. This week sho...

  Hola hola This week has been a quick one. We have really only been filming Facebook videos which has been pretty fun, so check out our upcoming one hopefully on Tuesday. I'm actually on the other side of the camera so yall can actually see me for once lol.  We did some service for Rhonda and the trailer is finally coming together and her dog Patch doesn't bark at me anymore so two very positive things. We then had a sacrament meeting with her under her open bar on Sunday, it was awesome. We talked a lot about the verse "by small and simple things are great thijngs brought to pass" this scripture has been very comforting to me as a missionary knowing that my small effort is being magnified by the Lord into something great. It goes right a long with Pres Nelson's quote from last conference that the lord loves effort, not necessarily meaning something great but that effort that we put in we will be blessed for it more than we can imagine. So our effort to do small ...

The trailer This week has been really great! We have been able to do lots of service with Rhonda and the trailer is actually coming together now! I'll drop pictures at the end. We also got to do a car wash, which was kinda dumb but more successful then I thought. We washed 3 cars in 2 hours lol but those cars were very clean, thanks Pops for making us wash your car every Saturday really prepared me for that. Other than that we have been editing our video a lot and shooting our new video.  We also had zone conference on Friday and it was pretty good. President Wood talked a lot about the parable of the good Samaritan and the character of him and it was really good. Showing how the good Samaritan exemplifies Christ and how he put everything on hold to take care of the one. We got to have it in person but of course had to social distance and wear masks but it was still good. Our car got inspected and they said it was "caked" in dirt and there was literally hardly any dirt on...

  This week has been super busy! Wednesday we had transfers and we picked up Elder Hall, he is reassigned from Argentina. He's from Ogden and he's way dope. We are in a trio until this Thursday when we will drop off Elder Dobbs at the airport so he can go back to Taiwan.  W e have been doing service at this his trailer that burned down a year ago. It has been so fun, I'll attach a ton of pictures. We have literally done every sort of work and probably put in 20 hours into it. The lady who owns it, Rhonda, isn't a member but most of her family is. She is so awesome and nice, and feeds us every time! Her sisters grandkids were there one time and they are so funny and they brought a 6 week old black lab puppy and it was so cute. Let me just say when a southern country lady tells you the 2 by 4 you took of the wall is a good one and to keep it, you do. The trailer is really coming together and we are going to work on it more this week too.  Friday we got the best call ever,...

  Hey ya'll This week has been great! We have had the opportunity to teach a ton of members the restoration! Which is my absolute favorite because reciting the First Vision is the most powerful/spiritual experience ever! We have had so many people message our fb page asking to talk or other things and it has been so good! We have had some great conversations and missionaries are setting up lessons so that is great. It has been awesome to finally see some success from this stupid thing lol.  Other than that I have been pretty much a master chef this week, thanks to all the time I watched food network. I have made chicken parm, peanut butter moo'd smoothies (from Jamba), baconatators and son of a baconatators, bacon wrapped BBQ dogs, turkey bacon ranch paninis, and some other less cool things like mini wheats and of course I've made mini wheats probably 4x the amount of everything else combined.  I have been going on bike rides which has been great except when it's 2 mill...

  This week has actually been really good! We had interviews this week with President Wood and we got to do them in person so that was awesome! We also had a referral this week for a Bible study and this dude is awesome, his name is Sedrick and he loved being able to study with us. Hopefully he will be just as excited to hear about the restoration! We also finally got to have a sit down lesson our Chinese friend and it was awesome! Just kidding I have no idea since I didn't understand anything but I think it went pretty good and she wants to keep doing more so that's something.  It has been raining for like a week straight because of the tropical storm in Louisiana. Which is great but it washes out all the ants from the dirt and so they are all over the parking lot, we've had ants all over and in our car for 3 straight days. Yesterday we got together with a couple other missionaries to break our fast with Chicken pillows! In my family we call em chicken rolls but I've d...

  This week has gone by fast, but slow at the same time? I don't really know it's weird. We had a lesson with our Chinese friend, and Elder Dobbs took the lesson because I don't know Mandarin obviously. But I could follow what was going on by facial expressions and the occasional Google translate sentence. I also heard really funny sentences that I thought was English like "Oreo is gourmet but sounds kinda hood" I was laughing pretty hard. But it was way good because we found she didn't understand any of the lessons the missionaries taught before because it was English. And we are going to help them move into their new house this week.  We also had the awesome opportunity to have Elder Bednar join us for a zoom call on last Friday, it was so cool to get to hear him in person for the THIRD time on my mission! Members have been so nice this week in bringing us dinner and two nights this week they have brought an apple pie for dessert! It has been so good, I don...