Email - November 25, 2017

Hello hello! Wait. Is Elder Barton breaking mission rules? Nope. I'm not, trust me. So, I fly out Monday but who knows if I will have the chance to email next week so I'm allowed to today. So, the first and most important thing is I have 3 calls that I can make on Monday to family and friends. So, friends listen up, if you want a call from me, just email me your phone number and I'll try my best to hold up a conversation. And be on the lookout for a random phone call number between 11 am and 3 pm

Now on to the second half of my week. Thanksgiving in the MTC was actually really cool. I thought it would be hard with it being the first holiday away from home, but it wasn't that bad actually. So first in the morning we got to hear from Elder Bednar and his wife. The did a Q&A session and an important thing I learned is to get out of the way of the spirit and serve not only the people but your companion. Then afterwards we had our Thanksgiving meal and it was pretty decent. The stuffing was good and that's what matters. Then we had a service project where we prepared 350,000 meals for starving children in Utah and we did that in I believe 2 hours.

After that we had dinner in our classrooms and our district just went around and said what we were grateful for.  Everyone said they were grateful for our district and the opportunity to be there. After dinner we watched a movie. It's a new movie called “Love, Kennedy”. It's pretty new and actually kind of funny. The part that stood out to me was when they started playing Imagine Dragons “Radioactive”. Instantly I was feeling the beat and man I miss music so much. We just listen to the same hymns over and over and it gets really old after a while. Afterwards my district went to choir practice (most of us at least are in it, I just have a horrible singing voice but nobody can tell when there are 800 other missionaries singing as well) We practiced a few songs we would sing that night.

Right after the Nashville Tribute Band performed for us. Now most people know that I hate country music, but I was digging this music. Unfortunately, the band got in trouble because their song was "inappropriate" because the beat was distracting from the spirit even though they were singing about the restoration.

After the concert, we got to walk around outside past our bedtime so we could check out the Christmas lights that were set up around the MTC and they are pretty cool.

Friday was a bit of a blur but one thing that stuck out was a lesson we had from our sub, Brother Holmes and these are some of the notes I jotted down:

Satan wants us to ultimately feel alone.
We are never alone because we have Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost on our side. This should give us the ultimate joy and happiness

We give in to temptation because we forget who we are. Sons and daughters of God

"Perfect love casteth out all fear" Moroni 8:16

We can remember who we are every day by kneeling down to pray and walk out with confidence every day

There is a powerful lesson in those few lines so don't forget it.

That's all from me for a while. I will call and email as soon as I can

Alma 56:47

I love you all, 

Elder Kyle Barton