The Elder Barr Blog

Thanks for the email. I always appreciate the update on the family, and the enthusiasm with which you present it.

That is too bad about the heater. Hopefully you will be able to get it replaced. Here in NY the heat is usually radiator or baseboard, which works well but the systems are usually old. A lot of the things here are old.

So, I am excited to be getting back into the computer world again. It will be fun seeing all the new stuff that comes out. I would think that putting together a couple of new systems would be good. I can’t believe that my mission easily is encompassed by the development of longhorn/vista/avalon. What would be the best OS to use. WS03 or WinXPsp2 still? Wow, 2 years and the same OS. Is it possible to do Second Life on linux or is that out of the question? Is RedHat 7 cds or 8? I don’t even know what the specifications of a “good” box will be. I think that you will have to give me a crash course on technology.

Things have improved with my companion and district leader. I went to President Searle for some advice, and that has helped. I am just going to do the best I can, but I do admit that the day count can be motivational. We’ll just keep going.

I hope you have a good week and that everything at home is doing okay. Let me know what more I can do. I am glad to be able to email individually now. I think it has helped for everybody. I haven’t got much email from anyone else. But, that is alright. I’ll see everyone at home soon enough.

I love you very much and again thank you for the email.
Love,
Your son,
Elder Stephen J. Barr

Thanks for the great email. I really appreciate hearing from you. Also, how was San Francisco. I hope to be able to accompany you on some of the trips that you make.

Things here are going okay. I am having a little bit of struggles with my companion and my district leader. I don’t want to rant about it though. Hopefully between my roommates and President Searle and myself we can get things sorted out.

I am glad to hear that the computer industry is progressing, and I am anxious to have access to a good computer again. It will be really cool I think to explore all the new technologies and things that have been developed over the last 2 years.

Speaking of trunky, I also realized that there are only 76 days left. Actually, next week is the last of the double digit weeks. This is week 11. I do double check the calendar from time to time. I have enjoyed the mission but I am really excited to be able to be back with my family.

The developer island sounds really cool. How does it work? Is it one giant world with different locations within it, or are there different instances of the world? Does it have its own language? What can you do within it? Can you incorporate live data on to the “physical” features on the island - i.e. a billboard on a building that gets its data from an xml feed? Anyway, I suppose I will need to play with it to get an idea of how it works.

We have been teaching a lot of good people lately and that has been nice. We have some people who are on the “faster track” i.e. within 6 months they will most likely be members, and some people who are much more throughly investigating the church, i.e. several years before they will be members. Our job is just to help them along the way.

The ward is doing great. Last night we went on a split with a young man from the ward, to teach one of the investigators. It was good. He’s coming out with us again tomorrow. I think that this is good for the investigator and the young man.

We tracted in to some great people this week, and now the trick is to follow up and keep their interest alive. I think that we will hopefully see more visitors at church in the upcoming weeks.

Alright, I better go. It is more work to email everyone but I enjoy it. Thanks for everything Dad. I really appreciate it.

Take care,
Love, your son,
Elder Stephen J. Barr

Thanks for the email. Sounds like everybody is busy. I am excited to see how second life works. I hope that we can make some good money off of it.

I am glad that you got to go the the Salmon days festival. That is one thing I miss. I tell people out here that there is really good salmon out there, but you have to live in Seatlle to get it. Here they only sell farm-raised “Atlantic” salmon. More like “pond-lantic” if you ask me. They have to spray paint them pink just to make them look somewhat normal. Gross. Because of the pollution it would be hard to eat fish that you catch in New York. We might go fishing with a guy we know in a few p-days, and hopefully there will be a good catch.

The work is going well. I have a young new companion, and it is fun working with him. He is a lot like me when I came out, which means that he may have some growing to do. But he will make a good missionary. We have some high quality investigators, and we are trying to find more.

I am trying hard to not get trunky. It is hard though. FYI today is the 12 week mark. . I hope we hear back from the UW. If not I would want to apply to a private school somewhere nearby. I am thinking that I would try to get into computer science before bio-eng, so I will probably have to spend a quarter or two taking some classes to boost my GPA. Anyway, I’ll have to worry about that soon enough.

Thank you so much for everything. Things are going so well here. The money is running out though. I will need a deposit by next week Wednesday for groceries. We are meeting some investigators for lunch in a few days, which is nice but going out to eat can be a financial hit. Plus there was an Elder going home 2 weeks ago and they wanted to eat out before he left so that alone put me behind.

Anyway, I should go. I have to write my siblings. Plus Tom J_______ wrote so I need to write him back. I like the new system.

I love you very much.
Love,
your son,
Elder Stephen J. Barr

Thanks for the email. It was great to see a whole bunch of email in my inbox. It is great.

The work has been going well. On Monday we were notified that Elder Peterson would be transferred today, so yesterday he got to say goodbye to a lot of people. We took some good pictures, which we developed this morning. By the way, I did tell you that the digital camera wasn’t working, right? Anyway, I should have a new companion by the end of the day, so you will hear about him next week.

We had dinner with a Trinidadian member family. They are really gool. They are teaching me how to make curry, Trinidadian style. We also have a Haitian family in the ward, and I am learning their style of cooking too. The islands really have good food.

General conference was great. I really enjoyed all of it. We got to watch all of the sessions. On Sunday, we even had some investigators come. We have this one family from the British Virgin Islands that we are working with. It is a large family. Anyway, the “grandparents” came, and they really enjoyed it. The lady cried during President Hinckley’s talk about the ring, since she had a piece of jewelery that meant a lot to her, and she lost it. Anyway, it was a lot of fun.

That family owns an ice cream store in town, and for some reason their freezer shut off. So, we helped them throw away 100 gallons of ice cream. It was too bad. It was a real loss for them. Hopefully their insurance will cover it. The “grandpa” took us out afterwards for a steak dinner. I ordered fish, since I wasn’t in the mood for steak. It was pretty good.

So, things are going well. Oh, I never got a chance to order the garments, so could you order them for me. 4 pairs of dry-lux bottoms and 2 dry-lux tops. I have no preference on neck style. That would really be great.

Alright, I better get going. I love you all so much and I appreciate everything that you all do for me.

Love, your son,
Elder Barr

P.S. - no BYU application, but maybe a UW Bothel application, or some other local schools. I want to stay local.

Tell Grandpa Steve happy birthday for me. It is great.

President Searle changed the old email rules, and I can now send and recieve individual emails, so I wanted to write you. I hope that you are having a great time in Boston, and that the presentations are going well. […] I hope the presentation went well.

I am excited for working on the projects that you have for me. I think that it will be great for getting back into programming again. I think the first thing that I want when I get back is a blackberry phone. Question, can you bluetooth to it from a laptop and use its internet connection. If so, I think that that would be a useful setup to have. That way you could use the blackberry phone for emails, but if you needed more power, you could use the laptop and still have internet access without a separate device.

Things are great here in Middletown. We have been working hard and we have some great investigators in various stages of progression. I hope that they will all eventually be baptized. The ward is great here. It is very diverse, and the people are really great.

Alright, I hope you have a safe trip back to Boston. Please take care.

Love,
your son,
Elder Barr