3-29-10 Gabriela baptized and Transfers soon

Friends and Family,

This week was GREAT. Saturday was the highlight, with the baptism of Gabriela Navarro. It was amazing. She was so ready for this. She has such a strong testimony of the Book of Mormon and the restored gospel. I could tell she felt the spirit at her baptism, and her husband did too. They will be a strong family in the Spanish group, and hopefully pioneers for the Schuyler branch in the future. I am amazed at how the Lord prepares people. President Lindquist (the branch president) did the baptism. We told him he could do it in English, but he wanted to do it in Spanish. A bilingual member had written it out phonetically, but he still struggled with it. He did get it on his fourth or fifth try. It was a good experience.

We had an interesting experience at church this Sunday. Maria Gutierrez (an investigator about 60 years old) got really emotional during the second hour of church in the Spanish group. She started crying a little bit and then walked out during the lesson. before the third lesson, her daughter was looking for her. A few branch members joined in, but no one could find her. Finally at the end of the block, we found her in the truck they had come in. When we visited her later that night, she told us that she had just become overcome with emotion and couldn't handle it. She went for a little walk to cool down. She had meant to come back, but when she tried, the strong emotions came back. She is doing well though. She always feels the spirit, and says she hasn't found this in any other church. She had a Gospel Principles book, and reads it often. She read about fasting, and decided to fast on her own for her daughter and son-in-law. She is doing really well and we hope to help her set a baptismal date this week. She wasn't able to make it to the baptism Saturday, though.

il date this week. She wasn't able to make it to the baptism Saturday, though.

I translated for the first extended period of time in Church today. It was really hard. I think I got the message through, though. It was an experience.

I am really excited for Easter and General Conference. It seems like we just had it though. But I am not complaining- I love to hear the apostles and I am excited for our investigators to hear them too. It is nice to focus completely on conference, without the distractions of every-day life.

We went running this morning with our branch president. He had wanted to come two weeks ago, but couldn't, so we ran a little without him. Today, we jogged just over two miles. I need to get in shape. I had to walk a few times.

Transfers are this Thursday. They come so soon! But the funny thing about them is that they are on April 1st. I have a feeling there may be a few April Fool's Jokes played. I will write about how transfers go next week.

I love you all and hope things go well with you all!
-Elder Burnham

3-22-10 St Patrick's Day

Family and Friends,

come. End of story.
The weather is playing tricks on us. Wednesday it was about 50. Thursday it was 65. It was heavenly. We even left out suit jackets at the appartment, and opened the sliding glass door to let the air come in. Then Friday is snowed an inch. Accursed skies- they threw us for a loop. But it is back up to the 50s and about all the snow is gone.

We had six investigators attend church, one of which will be baptized this Saturday (Gabriela Navarro). I am really excited. She and her husband had told us they wanted to get baptized, but did not want to set a date yet. We had a team up this week with our branch mission leader that went really well. We went over Mosiah 18 and asked her what was keeping her from being baptized. She gave us a few reasons, but her Husband told her that they weren't really reasons, but excuses. She realized this and told us the only thing that was really keeping her from a date was that she needed to stop waiting and just do it. She agreed to be baptized the 27th, and she is super excited for it. They announced it on Sunday in our Spanish group, and it seemed like she was alive with the spirit. Her husband and son should follow along too, soon. We also have Carlos Sanches set to get baptized the 27th. We really hope he can make that date and be baptized.

I am also sending a few pictures. One is of a really tiny house. I don't know if the picture does it justice. Two are of out "Easter" eggs, and one is Elder Shumway standing on a table. We have terrible reception in out appartment. TERRIBLE. But if we stand on the table, it works a lot better.

Until next week,
-Elder Burnham

3-8-10 Keep Going

Friends and Family,

I don't feel much in the writing mood today, but we'll see how things turn out.

I guess first off, I'll talk about who came to church. We had Gabriela and Serafin come to church, with their three kids: 8,4,2 (I think). This is their second time and they really like it. We have talked to them about baptism and they say they want to be baptized, but we are working on setting a date still. We also had a friend of a member come. His name was Alberto. We talked to him briefly about coming to church when we say him at the member's house, and it turned out that he came! He seemed a little bored, but later that night he called us, and told us he really liked it! He asked when the next service and seemed a little disappointed when we said that they were only on Sundays. But he gave us his address and we are excited to teach him more.

There was a leadership council this week in Omaha. I was invited to come with my companion, who is a District leader. There were about 50 missionaries there. The meeting was about 7 hours long (lunch included) and we heard from one person from the missionary department and another from the MTC. We learned a whole bunch of good stuff and I feel like this is going to be a turning point for this mission. I remembered the MTC guy and he gave basically the exact same thing he did when I was there. I still had the notes on it and everything. Back to training for our mission! After the meeting we went to the temple. It had been a while so I was really glad to go.

Okay that's basically everything exciting for this week. We did find some promising new investigators though. I look forward to working with them.

Love you all.
-Elder Burnham

Everyone!


This has been a pretty fun week. I ate cow tongue tacos, we got pulled over by an investigator, and we met someone who payed eight cows for his wife. Schuyler is a fun area.


We had a good turn out to Sacrament meeting this week. We had Gabriela and Serafin come, a couple we have been working with. She has a really strong testimony of the Book of Mormon. They read it together at night and then discuss it. They both like what they read. She told us they ask each other "do we believe it?" and the answer is always "yes we do". Maybe they will be some of the pioneers of the Spanish branch here. We also had Ana and Adam come to Sacrament meeting. Ana is a member, and Adam is her boyfriend. She was baptized in Lexington many years ago, and has not been to church in over 15 years. It was great to see them come. Unfortunately Estela did not come with them, but we will continue to work with her. Estela is a family friend that lives with them. We helped set her for baptism this week.


We had three team ups this week. One of them spoke English, and the other two spoke none. I translated everything for one, which was good practice. It was interesting having them there, but it was cool to see how we could overcome the language barrier. I though they were all effective. All the people we went on team-ups to were the ones who came to church. Yay!


When we were shopping last week, Elder Shumway saw a 10 lb. bag of potatoes on sale for only $2. It was an amazing amount of food for so little money, so, you know, he just had to buy it. We got back to the apartment, and then realized that we had TEN whole pounds of potatoes. They aren't exactly a microwave dinner. It turned out well though. I had some sour cream already, and we had real butter, so I made awesome mashed potatoes. We even had a random bottle of minced garlic in the fridge (I'm not sure how old it was but it tasted good). It was delicious- I was proud of myself. Thank you mom for letting me help you in the kitchen to learn. I ended up using about a third of the bag. Elder Shumway cut up another third of them and fried them with onions. He had some meat that he ate with it. I tried a little and it was good. We just need to use the last third of the bag this week. Fun times.


I hope you are all doing well back in AZ. Hope you are enjoying the weather and such. I hope you all have the opportunity to help in missionary work. If not, Get to it!! I love you all-

-Elder Burnham