New Companion, Technology & General Authorities

Hey Everyone!!!!

This week has been both fabulous and sad. Fabulous because I have an awesome new companion, Sister Morgan. She's from Arizona, and we are very similar! :P But sad because I had to say goodbye to Sister Blair :( And I send her my weekly email now so she's going to be super embarrassed by this. But I love Sister Blair and it was hard to say goodbye to my mission momma.

Sister Barrett with Kassy, her friend Courtney, Oreo the cat and her new companion, Sister Morgan

I was super nervous taking over the area but it's actually going really well. We're working hard and Norwich continues to progress. We went to see Peggy this week to plan her baptismal service and she's feeling really good about it. She told her whole family about her baptism so that is good news!

So we found out this week that we'll be getting iPads in either January or February. That's going to be SO different. But everyone is excited. It'll be a big change, but a much needed change!

We have a big meeting this Friday (yes, Halloween) with Elder Larry R. Lawrence of the Seventy. The whole mission is prepping for his arrival. It's going to be GOOOOOOD!

Oh! Also! In the book I'm ALWAYS talking about, The Power of Everyday Missionaries, it mentions the Terenure Ward. You have all GOT to read it!! The Dublin, Ireland Stake is famous! More specifically, the Terenure ward, more specifically Gerry Doran!

The pink sky this week!

I love you all!!

Sister Barrett

Norwich = Home

Sister Barrett will be staying in Norwich so you can continue to send letters to her flat address. Just message me or her mom on facebook if you need it! Here is her email for this week.

"So here's the big news...I'm not leaving Norwich, but Sister Blair is :( She's getting transferred to the Longfellow Park 1st and 2nd Wards in Boston for her last transfer. She goes home in 6 weeks so it was quite a shocker when we found out she was getting transferred. I'm going to miss her SO much, but I'll always keep with me the things I learned from her. She'll always be my mission Momma :) And for the next 6 weeks I can call her whenever I like! We have Transfer meeting on Wednesday so I'll meet my new companion, Sister Morgan, there! She's serving in Greenfield Massachusetts at the moment :) I'm really excited to work with her.

Our district with our zone leaders

I have SO much exciting news this week! So I don't know if any of you remember me telling you about our investigator in the MTC, John? Well I was talking to Sister Jessop recently and she said that he got baptised!! He sent a picture of him on his baptism day and  he looks SO happy!

Next piece of exciting news..we had a training in District meeting a few weeks ago about extending baptism dates because we've been really bad at that lately as a Zone. We set monthly goals to extend baptism dates, but then don't do it, and it makes absolutely no sense. So we talked about what's holding us back, and really it all came down to fear. Fear of rejection, and lack of faith. BUT the training got us all really pumped about extending dates and it gave us the push that we all needed. So we looked at our monthly goals to see the people we had set goals for to have a baptismal date and we said "Okay..let's do this!" This week we extended a date to our investigator, Peggy. We felt like she was the least likely to accept, but we still took the leap of faith and she accepted! She's getting baptised on November 22nd. She still has a long way to go but we're here to help her get there :) 

ANOTHER amazing thing that happened this week...so this movie, "Meet the Mormons' is changing people's lives! A couple of youth in the ward brought their friend to see it and after the movie she walked out and said "I want to be baptised and convert my family." WHAAATT?! The youth texted us STRAIGHT away! So we'll be meeting with her parents soon to get their permission. We are SO excited about this!! 

We drove into the church car park one evening and we saw a possum running through the bushes! So we got out of the car and we searched for it, and then we saw him running, and he ran behind this fence and just looked at us. He was like this for about 10 minutes, just completely standing still. I think we scared him to death. But we named him Gavin!

Sister Blair teaching Gavin the possum the gospel!

The work continues to progress here in Norwich! This is a blessed land!! This place is ON FIRE! Now that Sister Blair is leaving, that means I'm taking over the area, so the pressure is on. But I'm determined to keep the work progressing here in Norwich. I love this place. It's home now. I've been here for 3 months! And I'll be here for another month and a half AT LEAST!

Being a missionary is THE BEST!! I love you all and I hope you all have an amazing week :)"

A Busy Week!

This week Sister Barrett had a really busy p-day as she got to visit the Boston Temple! Here are some snippets from her emails.

"I had a really good week! Zone Conference was AMAZING and "Meet The Mormons" was the most incredible movie EVER!! Transfer texts are this Friday so let's hope I stay in Norwich..and let's hope Sister Blair stays here too for her last transfer! She goes home in 7 weeks :'(  But we went to the temple today and it was amazing :) 

The work is progressing here in Norwich and the ward members are still as amazing as ever!

I LOVE YOU ALL! Have an amazing week!"

I asked Sister Barrett if she had any hilarious or exciting stories for me, and this was her response:

"Hmm....hilarious or exciting...well yes..ALWAYS!! Oh I have something good!! So last P-day Elder Ching bought wool!!! WOOL!! So in Weekly planning on Tuesday he brought the wool and we knitted for hours!! we made freakishly long skinny scarves so Elder Sutherland was like "We're making scarves for the homeless midgets!!" I CRIED laughing!!!"

As we are nearing the end of Sister Barrett's SECOND TRANSFER in the mission field!! You can send letters to the mission home address which you can find on the side of the page. For anyone who wants to send Sister Barrett a package for Christmas, please be aware the final posting date for the US is December 6th for standard packet/parcels, or December 16th for Courier Post.

Thank you once again for your love, support, prayers, emails and letters!

ALL the Conferences!

So did you all LOVE General Conference as much as I did?! My personal favourites were...nope I loved too many of them. Okay so myself and Sister Blair LOVED David A. Bednar's talk because he directed it to people who are not members of the church and it was a fantastic talk. I also loved the talk by the guy with the very German sounding name that I can't remember (not Dieter F. Uchtorf) who talked about spiritual confidence and talked about his counsel that he gave to a Sister Missionary..I LOVED that talk! 

So my first General conference on a mission was amazing. I'm really looking forward to April now!

So this Thursday I'll be going to my first Zone Conference of my mission! I'm really excited about it. We're going to be watching a movie that's out in the cinemas here called "Meet the Mormons". I don't know if they're showing it in Ireland or the UK. It's basically like a longer version of the "I'm a Mormon" videos, it follows the lives of 6 different people. We're all really excited to see it. We've been told to invite all of our investigators to watch it in the cinema. So it MUST be good!

So we had a traumatizing (but kinda funny-ish experience last Monday! We were in the car with the Elders, and Elder Sutherland was driving and everything was calm.I had to get something from my bag so I reached down to get it and then all I hear is everyone scream and Elder Sutherland jammed on the breaks and I heard a big bang! I looked up and everyone was in shock but I didn't have a clue what just happened. So I asked what happened and everyone was silent but then Elder Sutherland just said "I hit a deer". Apparently the deer just walked away, and when we checked the car there was no damage so we were definitely blessed!

The work is hastening on in Norwich! This is a blessed land and the people here are amazing. This ward is so excited about missionary work. The members are so fantastic. They're like family :) This is myself and Sister Blair with an AMAZING family, the Mecham's. They're moving out of the ward and we're SO sad to see them leave :(

I love you all :) Have a fantastic week!