Week ending 9-17-09

Hello Friends and family,

Thank you everyone for your emails and letters! I always enjoy them.
SO. I mentioned last week that I was going to try and buy an electric keyboard from the thrift store. We went, and they had one!! It was eight dollars, so I bought it. The keys are smaller than usual, but still playable. I love it. It's not as good as a piano, but it's enough to satiate my desire for music and the piano. It should fit in my suitcase, so I'm planning on taking it with me my whole mission.

Okay I meant to write about this last week, but I forgot. The first week I was here, I looked for refried beans, and COULD NOT FIND THEM. That either meant that I was just an idiot, or that they did not have them. Naturally, I decided to say it was the latter. Sadly, I was wrong. As it turns out, refried BEANS are not on the BEANS aisle.......... way to go, Walmart. Who would have thought??? I discovered the next week that there is a Mexican aisle, which consists solely of refried beans and taco shells- what a waste of space. In Mesa, the entire Walmart is a Mexican aisle. I was surprised to see that the signs in the Walmart here were only in English!! Anyway, moving on.

Story time: Wednesday morning, I went out on the balcony of our apartment, and looked down at our car. The passenger mirror was broken and just hanging there. I was incredulous. I asked Elder Burton if he knew anything about it (we had been on exchanges with the assistants the day before and he was driving that car). He was surprised too. We went down to check it out. We got to the bottom of the stairs and were met by another surprise. On each side of the doors leading into our apartment, there are glass panels. One of them was completely shattered, and the other was covered with cracks. We went the rest of the way out to the car to see the damage. It was broken and we would have to get a new part to have it fixed. Our car was the only one with the broken mirror, and the doors going to our apartment were the only ones broken. It was a little scary. I felt like we were being hunted. We looked on the windshield and there was a police business card with an insurance claim number on the back. We called the number and they just said to put that number on our insurance thing.
Well- as it all turns out, some girl in our apartment had a drunk boyfriend who felt like going on a little rampage in the middle of the night. He broke two car mirrors. We had the awesome luck of being one of them. He is in jail now. Now we have to go get our car fixed. Lame.

We had zone meeting Tuesday. Me and Elder Burton gave a training there. It went well. And we also get to give another one this Wednesday at interviews! Man we're so lucky. (For those of you who don't know, a training is where you get up in front of people and talk for about 25 minutes on an assigned topic that we as missionaries can do better at.)
Zone meeting was good though. We played dodge ball for about two hours after.

We went on exchanges Tuesday and Thursday this week, with the assistants to the president and our zone leaders. Not much to say, but I learned a lot. (can you tell I'm getting a little sick of writing?)

We set four more people for baptism this week. Mike- someone who I found with one of the APs, and the Pendletons- a family where the dad is a member but the wife and two ten-year-old kids are not. It's way exciting. Most definitely, the best thing about missionary work is seeing people change their lives for the better and finding greater joy because of what we teach them. We also have an investigator, Vihn Tran, who stopped smoking about a week ago. He is so determined. It is awesome.

I like to wave to people and see how many people wave back. It doesn't matter if we are in the car, or walking down the street. I wave to everyone I see (well, almost). It just makes me happy. Usually about 70 percent wave back. It's great.

This weekend was teh 12th annual Kool-Aid Days!! Yes, once a year, they celebrate koolaid here. And it's big. There were so many people. There were a whole bunch of blow up things, a band, and the worlds largest Kool-Aid stand!! I bought a shirt and a commemorative mug. I will send pictures home.

To the priests in Westwood ward back home:
Thank you for your emails! It's nice to hear from all you and I'm excited for you guys to go on missions as well! It's nice to know a little bit about what's going on back home.
The mission field is awesome. As I said earlier, the best part is seeing people change their lives because of what we teach. It brings such great joy. A mission is definitely worth all the preparation and sacrifice.
I recommend you all go to mission prep class. You will learn valuable things there that will help you prepare. I also suggest you prepare to enter the temple and make more covenants. It is an amazing place, and the more you prepare, the more you will get out of it.
Go on splits with the missionaries as much as possible. I'm glad I went as much as I did, but I definitely could have learned more if I had gone more frequently. Those experiences made the MTC a much better learning experience because I already had some missionary experiences to look back on. Splits are definitely worth the time.
I also suggest you become as familiar with the scriptures as you can. Learn how to study effectively, and learn to love it. Out here, you study an hour a day by yourself, and another hour with your companion. All the knowledge and studying habits you bring with you will help.
I'm excited for all of you to continue preparing and eventually serve a mission! Check back here every week and I'll try to include some more advice in every email.

Love you all,
Elder Burnham