Hello to the Family!

McKay and Stan Hawkes in the MTC

I'm so happy that I received so many letters! And thank you for all of the happy birthdays that I received!:) I am so blessed to have such an awesome family.

I enjoyed reading about all of the blessings that have been given to you all since I have been gone. It just proves that the Lord really does bless the family of the missionary. I just want to let you all know that I have been doing a lot better. This week was probably the most difficult week of my life when it comes to casting the doubts away that come to my mind. My companion, Elder Booth gave me a priesthood blessing this morning and it was amazing! I feel so much better already. The stories you shared with me about your missionary experiences really helped me realize that I'm not the only one who was going through this. I know that the Lord has his plan for me and even though it is difficult to go through the process, it will benefit me for the better. It got so hard for me this week that it came to the point where I was questioning if God is really there. When it got to that point I felt like giving up until I realized that It was fast sunday. I knew exactly what to fast for, to provide me with the faith to continue pressing forward and put my full trust in God. And by the way, I know now that there is no possible way that you can do this by yourself. I hope we all remember that including myself. I also fasted for 3 of my investigators, Lisa, for her to open her heart to our message. And for Rigo to have an interest again and call us back. And by the way guess what?.... One of our investigators named Jordan, (she is 17) she accepted to be baptized on March 30th!! I'm so proud of her decision and I am so excited. During my fast around 4:30 on Sunday, Rigo called us and apologized for being rude and he wanted to have an appointment with us as soon has possible! And the following morning, Elder Booth gave me that priesthood blessing and I am feeling so much better and I feel my relationship with Jesus christ and Heavenly Father has increased a lot. I definitely have a testimony of Fasting. We are meeting with Rigo tonight and I am fully confident that we will also accept a date to be baptized. Because he already wants to be baptized. I am so grateful and excited for all these things that are coming up.

I have been learning a little bit of Samoan!!! its pretty fun. I would love to get reassigned to speak Samoan! Its freezing in San Francisco/ Daly city area. And the fog gets soo thick here. you can literally see a wall of fog like 15 feet in front of you and once you drive through it, you can't see a thing!! Oh and by the way i'm super angry because we got a parking ticket! Parking in San Francisco is ridiculous. they ticketed us 98 BUCKS!!!! for a PARKING TICKET!! how stupid is that!? Oh well.

 I want to challenge all of you to try to have a missionary experience at least once a week. We are challenging our ward here to really get involved with the missionary service and the ward is very supportive about it. I love our Ward! Oh and my pictures should be arriving soon so take a gander. I will be taking more pictures of the area where I am more. So i'll get better at that. There are captions on the back of the pictures so read those as well. Well this is about all of the time that I have to write.I love you all so much and I miss you. Keep writing I love reading your emails! And I also received the Kyani package and I'm loving it! Faafetai Lava! (thank you in Samoan!)

Love Elder Barkdull