The Elder Barr Blog

Thanks for the great email.

First, there is a MAJOR concern: Quoting Andy: >>>> So when we all get to the top, A___, T__, and I__ went to do the black diamonds and mogul fields so they gave me a radio and let me go off and do some of the more milder greens.

Could you make sure this doesn’t happen anymore? It is really bad to be alone at Whistler. REALLY BAD. It actually made me really sad to read that. It gets dark early there and I don’t like that. Even if he is on greens only. Please make a phone call and put a stop to that. I am sorry but I really feel strongly about it. There is no reason for someone inexperienced to be alone. Please call and make sure that doesn’t happen anymore.

Okay, things have been going well at the office. Work is great. The Microsoft Access project is pretty much done, but there is one more thing that I need to do, which is write an XSLT. Yeah, it is funny that it all came down to that. To submit baptisms to Salt Lake, they have developed a program called CDE which generates a file, and then sends it to Salt Lake. The file is a zipped XML file. Access will import XML, and will also allow a series of XSLT’s to be applied to the XML before import.

Anyway, of course the XML file that CDE generates is in a different format than the way my tables in access are set up, so I will have to write an XSL to do the transform. I haven’t done one of those yet, and I have very little documentation on how. So, what I am going to do is check out a book from the library (with permission of course) and figure out how to do it. Other than that, I think that we are about done. It is like going back to work, except the days are much longer. (We work from 7:45 AM to 9:15 PM, with a break for study and eating).

I like this work though. Another mission happened to call yesterday and ask what we are doing for baptismal statistics, and I told them, “We happen to have a solution that is almost done. We’ll call you when it is ready.” So, that will be good.

Nothing really exciting happened this week. It was cool to see some money in the savings account. Money here has been tight lately. We have had a lot of extra expenses, but we made some adjustments and it should work out but I had to spend a bit of personal money this week. What was happening was that our roommates wanted us each to put in $20 for food, except we were never coming back to the apartment. So we put in money, and plus we would buy food for the office, and we wouldn’t eat much at home.

Our apartment is looking better, but it still isn’t clean. We are all going to work on that today and hopefully make it better.

Also, I need some advice on hand lotions. My hands have been really dry-and crackly, so much that they bleed sometimes. I was using Eucerin and that wasn’t doing the trick. I got some lavender stuff from Trader Joe’s and that has been better, but if you had any other ideas, let me know. I think I may have irritated my hands washing them too much. I’ll try to cut it down. Sis. Boren is always making sure that we wash and use sanitizer, but the only soap we have in the apartment is dish soap, and I think that has done a little damage to my skin.

All in all, things are going great. Oh, one more experience. We got to spend 6 hours in a hospital for my companion. He has something wrong with his lungs and chest (pains), partly due to the Bronchitis, but the doctors haven’t been able to make it better, and he has already been through a round of anti-biotics. Anyway, at the hostpital they did all kinds of tests on him, including one where he had to breathe in radioactive materials and then use a machine to trace it. It was the “nuclear radiology” department. I got to have a good conversation with the tech, and it was pretty interesting. I asked him what he thought about the medical field, and he asked about the church. It was a good interchange of knowledge. He lives in the Bronx, in a really nice part called Pelham Bay Park. It is in the north east corner of the Bronx, bordering New Rochelle.

Alright, sorry about the short email. Reading that message made me a little frustrated. I’m sure Andy will be fine, but it is really bad practice to be by yourself on the mountain, no matter what the difficulty of trail is. Please let T__ and A___ know that.

Alright, I better go. I love you so much.
Love,
Elder Stephen J. Barr

Thanks for the great email. I really appreciate it. It was a good Valentine’s day. Pretty irrelavant holiday for missionaries I think, but still good. It was funny being in the office and watching the decorated envelopes come in for certain missionaries.

Speaking of the office, things are going well with the MS Access stuff. We have some good reports being generates, and I am trying to make the data-entry side simple and unbreakable. I think I may be able to get Salt Lake to maintain it if the application is good enough. Here is the thing I am stuck on right now, and if you could think of a good solution in the next few days, that would be great. Here is the question.

I have a table, called baptisms. It is essentially as such,

bID, bFirstName, bLastName, bGender, bAge, wardID, baptismDate, howFoundID, and a few other fields.

Now, here is the question. I need to generate an access report in the following format:

Month: mm, yy
Male 8-11: # Female 8-11: #
Male 12-17: # Female 12-17: #
Male 18-65: # Female 65+: #

# Found through method 1: #, 2: #, 3:#, etc.

So, there are probably 5 finding methods, and findMethodID references a findMethod table. there is also a wards table that has this structure:

wardID, wardName, SLCUnit#, ParentStakeID, #ofCompanionships

and a stake table:

stakeID, stakeName, StakeSLCUnit#, etc.

Anyway, the challenge right now for me is doing the baptisms per age/gender on a per month basis. That is what I’ll be working on tonight. I’ll send you the MDB file on a disk (ugh!) and see what you think of it.

Let’s see, so office work is great. We really get to see all that goes on in the mission. We see President Boren from time to time. Also, since we came in, they are putting one of the office senior couples out into the proselyting work up North, so Elder Willden and I will be taking over their duties, which include the referral system and apartment management. There will be a senior couple for apartment management, but referrals are completely on us for the time being. Anyway, it is definately a blessing to serve.

On Sunday, it snowed about 2 ft. Needless to say, church was cancelled. Since my companion, Elder Willden, has bronchitis, he wasn’t allowed to be outside in the cold, so we essentially had the day off. The snow has mostly melted now, and it is about 55 degrees.

Oh, sorry for not being able to send mail last week. The apartment was a disaster when we got there. Stuff everywhere. Junk on the floor. The walls were disgusting (grease, ketchup, various stains), and the other Elders living there were a little oblivious to it. It has been just the 2 of them for a while, and they had really spread out. So, we used all the cleaning supplies in the apartment to scrub down the walls and give the floor a good mopping. But there are still some real problems there. The dishes haven’t been “effectively washed” in a long time. When you look at the dishes, they look clean at a glance, but it turns out only the middle of the front side was ever really washed. The rims are disgusting, not to mention the back side. Anyway, I told President about it, and he embarassed my roommates about it in front of the whole zone. I felt bad, but something needed to happen. Luckily, my companion agrees with me that the apartment needs some serious attention, and it has gotten cleaner throughout the week.

Alright, I better get going. A few more errands to do, and then back to the office.

I love you so much. Happy Valentines day! Tell Andy and Tina to stay out of trouble .

Love,
Elder Stephen J. Barr

Thanks for the great email. I am emailing from the downtown white plains public library. White Plains is a cool city. I am with Elder Willden, who will be my office companion. We will be working full time in the office, and then doing some proselyting if we need a break.

[Personal Stuff Deleted]

Anyway, the work is great. I am glad to know things are going so well at home. A few days ago, we had a General Authority, Elder Jensen, and an area authority, Elder Christensen, visit our mission and the Yorktown stake. It was very inspiring hearing from both of them. They were great. I had a few seconds to personally talk to Elder Jensen, and the best part about talking to these people is that they are real. They are good people who live the gospel and try to share it with others.

Speaking of that, D___ B______ will be baptized on the 11th, which will be great. I am excited for him, even if I won’t get to be there. It was hard to leave Danbury, but at the same time it was definately time for a change. I will be working on the referral system, and also a MS Access system for gathering some data and generating statistics. It should be fun. I’m glad to be able to use my talents to help the Lord.

Other than that, I think things are going great. It will take me a little while to get used to White Plains and Scarsdale, but I am excited to be working here. I think it will be great.

I’ll try to send off some letters today. Sorry I can’t make this longer but the parking meter is running.

I love you all so much.
Love,
Elder Barr

Thanks for the great email. This has been an interesting week.

First, Mom, I’m sorry to hear about your back. I hope you feel better. Back problems can be a pain, as I’m sure dad can attest to.

We tried to visit the Bishop last Saturday, and his back was out. He was walking funny on church this Sunday. It is amazing on how much one small physical problem can really change everything.

Dad, how did you like Manhattan? I have only been there a few times to go to the temple, so I haven’t seen much of it. I am hoping to serve in Manhattan 1st ward some day, to work with the J_____ family. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the city and were in a good area.

This week has gone by so fast. So, Elder Brown and I are working Danbury and Newtown wards, and it is great. On Sunday, we had 8 hours of church. The Newtown ward is more affluent than the Danbury ward, and the 5th Sunday meeting was about how to more effectively raise kids. Bishop O. gave the lesson. He asked for suggestions from the crowd on how to be better parents. I gave a comment that, “well, when you tract in the nicer neighborhoods, all you get is kids until 5:00 or 6:00 pm. Parent’s aren’t ever home…". I think that recieved a mixed reaction. Luckily, a young woman in the ward backed me up. She is a nanny for a family in Ridgefield, and she said, “Yeah. It’s sad. I’m 20 years old, and I am a mom for these kids. They never see their parents. I’m the only one who ever talks to them.” So, it was interesting. I think it was worth mentioning.

Yesterday Elder Brown and I were at Scarsdale again. We told Sister Boren that we felt like regular Fairfield county residents, commuting to an office in New York for work. Anyway, the office is having a handful of issues that they need to be resolved. There is some issues with the referral system, and that the SLC solution doesn’t provied the granularity that week need. (They want to go by zip code, but in Manhattan that doesn’t work. Too dense.) Anyway, I may be working with the dev in SLC via phone to see if we can figure out some kind of system for smaller areas based on streets.

[Personal Stuff Omitted]

Our investigator, D___ B______, is progressing quite well. He is getting baptized on the 11th, and we are excited for him. He’s a great guy. We have an appointment with him tonight. It should be good.

Anyway, I should have some time to write today. After email, Elder Brown and I are going to go grab some lunch and that should be it for errands today. The laundry is already done. Study done. Cleaning done. It has been a good preparation day so far.

[More Personal Stuff Omitted]

By the way, could you review the college application stuff and see what needs to happen so I can get in by the March semester. If you could research the following:

BYU (comp sci.), UW (comp sci.), Harvard (why not?), and some of the other schools that you think would be good. I think BYU would work fine, although another shot at the UW wouldn’t hurt either. I think once I return I can research my graduate education.

So, tomorrow will be significant in terms of mission time. I think my time in Danbury has gone quickly, and I can definately believe that the second part of the mission will go faster than the first. I love the work. I love teaching the gospel to people. I love being of use to my Father in Heaven in whatever way I can be of service.

Take care! I love you all very much!
Love,
Elder Stephen J. Barr