#Btown2016

Things are going great here in good ol' Barstow! There's lots of different kind of people here, but there really are a lot that are really friendly and willing to talk to us. Last night we had some open time and decided to go tract an apartment complex and had so many people tell us to come back and share our message. It really is neat to see such humility! 

There was a lady a couple weeks ago that stopped me in the parking lot a couple weeks ago and asked if we could help her with her electric bill. When she realized we were missionaries she got excited and said that she's been to our church before! She had some concerns that we helped her out with and we asked if we could visit her home to teach her more, and she happily agreed! We ended up having a really awesome lesson on the restoration with her and her husband and they really opened up to us and told us about a lot of things that they've been through. They came to church yesterday, participated a lot in the Gospel Principles class, and made some good friends. Things are looking really good for them! 

So fun fact, Elder Coomb's brother served in this same mission a few years ago and spend 8 months in Barstow! We found one teaching record in our area book of a former investigator named Steve who was taught by his brother, so we decided to visit him! The teaching record said they dropped him because he was drunk every time they went over. We went to the house and it looked pretty vacant. We knocked and nobody answered. We asked a man who lived across the street if Steve still lived there. He said that Steve and his family were evicted from the house. He pointed to a house up the street and said that he thinks some of his kids are living there, but he wasn't sure about Steve. He said sometimes he sees Steve walking down the road. We went to the house he pointed to and talked to Steve's daughter. She said her dad was not doing well. He's living homeless now and he stays in the shed of their evicted house. She said if he's not there he's at the liquor store. We went down to knock on the shed (which was tiny). Sure enough Steve opened the door. He was holding big can of beer did not look like he was doing too good. He really is going through a hard time. He's been struggling over 30 years with alcoholism, has lost everything he owned, has other health problems, and on top of that was recently bitten by a poisonous spider. We felt really bad for him. There wasn't a lot we could do for him, but we did let him know that God loves him and said a prayer with him. He is very humble and believes that he is going to be okay. Even in his such harsh circumstances he knows that there are other people that have it worse than him, and that he needs to keep on moving! We are going to try to work with him some more.

Well folks, stay positive and love your life! Don't forget to love one another, just as Jesus loves you <3

-Elder Johnson