Omaha with Jimenez take two

Family,

Because this is transfer week, we have preparation day on Wednesday. We had an activity this morning so we are writing later. This morning, about 12 of us missionaries got together and played sand volleyball outside while it rained lightly. It was really fun. We threw a frisbee and football around too and grilled a little food. It was a lot of fun. Several of the missionaries in the zone are leaving so it was nice to see them again before transfers. I will be staying here in Omaha with Elder Jimenez. I am excited. I am also going to be a district leader again. It is going to be a good transfer. The work is picking up and the members are getting a lot more involved thanks to the bishop. Good things will happen here. In fact yesterday we found a promissing new investigator. His name is Ariel. One of our other investigators talked to some people she knew about the gospel and they seemed intersted so we swung by! I'll talk more about him next week.

We are working with a part-member family- Adrianna and Salvador. She is the member and just moved from Mexico a few months ago. She had not gone to church in quite a while, but still knew it was true. He has talked to missionaries in the bast and was very close to getting baptized, but didn't. He likes what we teach though. The thing that has been holding them both back in the past is that they usually work on Sunday, so they cannot come to church. But on Saturday she called us and said that she wasn't going to have to work, so whe wanted to come to church. Her husband is the only one that can drive and he had to work so she asked if we could find her a ride. A member agreed to take her and we told the member we would meet her at Adrianna's house. When we got there, Salvador was outside getting into the car. We thought that was kind of lame because he told us he would have to work at 7:30. We were going to wait for the member, but Salvador called us and asked us where the church was. We told him we were at his house and got out and talked to him. It turns out he had woken up, but did not want to go to work. His wife said, "Well let's go to church then!" He agreed! They found the church and came and loved it. Salvador was participating like mad in the gospel principles class and got to know a lot of members. At the end of church, he said, I think we'll come next week too. I am excited for them. I hope he decides to get baptized.

I am about out of time. BUT. Saturday, we had an awesome meeting! Elder Cristofferson of the Quorum of the Twelve apostles, Steven E Snow of the presidency of the Seventy, Richard C. Edgely from the Presiding bishopric, Elder Cook of the Seventy, and our area Seventy, Elder Real all came and spoke to us. It was a two-and-a-half-hour-long meeting. Elder Cristofferson left it open for questions for about 45 minutes and they answered each one. It was a spirit filled meeting and we learned a lot. I know this is the true church, and that we are led by prophets and apostles that are led by Christ. I hope you all have a great week!

-Elder Burnham

Another Parade (5-16-11)

Family,

It is already Monday again. It seems like I just wrote you. Last weeks email turned out to be long, but I am not sure if this one will be the same. I will send pictures though. They're about a thousand words each right?

There was another parade this week. This one was for Florence- a historical part of Omaha I think. We were in it as pioneers pushing handcarts. It was fun. We handed out a lot of cards and fliers to those watching the parade.

This Saturday an Apostle and some other General Authorities area coming to the mission. We are excited. I will tell more about it next week.

Yeah that's all I got today. Sorry.
Love you all. Have a tanfastic week.
-Elder Burnham

Mother's Day Aftermath

 

Family,

 

It was so nice to see you all yesterday! I like Skype. It is a cooler experience than just calling. I could see you well, but when my companion got on, I found out I could have made you bigger during my call. Oh well. I am glad you are all well.

 

So- just some random tidbits about this week. A few days ago, we went to go get gas. We pulled up and my companion went to start pumping. Then this guy came out of the building and stopped him. It turns out it was a full-service gas station. The man pumped our gas for us while we talked to him (he did not clean our windshield) and then we went inside and payed. I did not know gas stations like that existed anymore. I felt fancy. I also felt old-fashioned at the same time. It was unique feeling.

 

Jose Soto and his wife have fallen off the face of the earth. We have called them many times and stopped by but cannot seem to get ahold of them. It is a little disheartening. On Saturday we called and his wife answered and we invited them to church and a ward activity, but they did not come. We are going to keep stopping by when we can and hope for the best. Our area covers a lot of area. We go to Council Bluffs Iowa every other day or so, and that is where he lives. If you are corious about our area, you can look at a map- We have everything south of the I-80 and Council Bluffs. The North Elders have everything else.

 

Saturday we had a ward talent show and culture night. It was good. There were a few people who thought they had talents, but...  not so much. They did their best though. Although no investigators came, a less-active did. He has come to church for several weeks now. He is a good guy. It was enjoyable.

 

We got a referral from some Sister Missionaries a few days ago. However, the address we got from the office was bad. We went to the address the office told us and then called the Sisters because they were appartments and we had no appartment number. Ther told us we were in the wrong spot and the referral was actually three miles north of there. We were short on miled and time so we decided to try back the next day. This time we could not use my companion's GPS because we did not have the exact address- only the house number and a general location. It took us about 45 minutes to find. It was quite a search. We FINALLY found the house and breathed a sigh of relief. The Sisters had told us the guy was eager to have us over, but it turned out to be someone else who was not interested. It was a little frustrating, but we laugh about it now.

 

Oh so two weeks ago the normal pianist for Sacrament meeting was gone. Last minute the bishop asked if I played piano and if I could play for sacrament meeting. I agreed with the warning that I could only play the top hand if I did not know the song. That is what I did for three of the four. It was not the best, but it was better than not having music.

 

OH! I almost forgot. On Saturday there was a big party on 24th street (The hispanic part of town) for Cinco de Mayo!! There was a huge parade and big rides and food booths and stuff. It felt like the State Fair. The parade lasted about two hours. Ten of us missionaries got together and attacked the people watching with Finding Faith in Christ passalong cards. The missionary I was with and I handed out about 100 each. The other missionaries handed out lots too. Hopefully we get a lot of people calling in that we can go visit! There were a lot of people giving out fliers and things and a lot of them ender up on the ground or in the trash. But I did not see a single one of our cards in either one of those places. In fact I heard one father say to his son, reffering to our card, "No te la tires. Este es el Diosito." In English it was more or less, "Don't throw this one away. It's shows God." It was cool. I like the respect the hispanic people have for things of God.

 

I hope you all have a good week! Love you much.

 

-Elder Burnham

 

PS That turned out to be a long one. Hope you enjoyed reading it.

Catch up!

***  I didn't realize it had been so long since I'd updated this blog!  I thought I was up to date... I guess time got away from me.  So here are the emails from the last month.***

5-2-11 Come to Christ!

Family,

I have good news and bed news. The good news is that I am doing well and loving life. The bad news is that I really don't feel like writing today... Sorry. I will try to get some good stuff down.

So. Jose Soto is awesome. whenever we teach him, he just soaks everything up. He understands so well and believes it. We read 2 Nephi with him, and when we got to verse 5, it says something like this, "If the Lamb of God, being holy, has need to be baptized, how much more need we, being unholy, to be baptized, yea, even by water!" Before I even finished reading the verse, he interrupted and said "a lot!" We invited him to be baptized and he is thinking about it. He says he wants to read a little more from the Book of Mormon before deciding. But I an confident he will make the right decision and do it. I am excited for him. He did not come to church though. :( We are meking a big push for next week. He should be there.

We went by an investigator's house this week, and it turns out his kids had locked the keys in the car. He and a friend were trying to use wires to unlock it through the window. We got there and wanted to help. I took a wire and squeezed it through the door on the side of the car they were not on. I messed with it a little bit, and BAM! A minute or two later I had pulled up the lock and was in the car. I must say I was proud of myself. I will include a picture for your enjoyment.

We also have a returning inactive named Miguel Sosa. He is so sincere and is doing all he needs to have the fulness of the spirit in his life. But funny story about him- he was trying to give us directions to where he lived. He told us he lived on Park and "walwoo" street. We were quite confused, but tried our best to find it in my companion's GPS. We couldn't. We called back and had wim try to spell the street name. He spelled it Woolwok. We looked some more, and found it: Woolworth. It is quite hard for Spanish people to say apparently. But it was quite a quest trying to find "Walwoo" street.

I hope you are all well. Love you all.

-Elder Burnham

4-25-11 Good week

Family and All,

Hello again! It's cray to realize it's already been another week. They go fast. We are here in some library in Ralston emailing. We did laundry with at the Zone Leader's appartment this morning, and are now doing emails with them. The computers are nice. I brought my card reader to send some pictures home, but it turns out they have them built-in here. That works too.

What's happened of importance this last week....  Elder Jimenez went to a specialized training on Tuesday morning, so I did my studies with the Omaha North Elders. It was nice to spend time with them. On Friday, while we were walking, we say a lady with a flat tire. We helped her change it. It was fun. Elder Jimenez also worked in a mechanic shop. We enjoyed helping. Right as we finished, her husband drove up. He could have changed it but I guess we saved them a little bit of time. She ended up giving us a rosary (I think that's how it's spelled- the necklace things with the cross on them) for helping her. It was a nice gesture. Because it was Good Friday, there were a WHOLE bunch of proplr at the Catholic church. They had police cars in the surrounding blocks keeping traffic away. I guess it's kind of a big deal. Ha ha.

There is a missionary here named Elder Carius. He just got transfered to Logan, where I have served. I did not mention this last week, but when I was talking to him, I found out that his MTC companion was Sam Anderson!! That was a surprise. I told him that I knew him and they had been in our stake a long time.It's a small world.

We are going to have a mission-wide conference in May!! Our president told us that an Apostle, a member of the presidency of the 70, and another General Authority will be coming to our mission the 21st of May, each one will speak in one of the stakes around here on Sunday. It is really exciting. I will let you know more about it when I find out.

We are teaching a man named Jose Soto right now. He is awesome. They had been teaching him a little bit before I got here, and we taught him Saturday and Sunday. He is a really good investigator. He says that it only makes sense that Christ would keep guiding us with prophets and apostles, and he told us he believed Jesus Christ came to the Americas even before we read about it with him in the Book of Mormon! Some of his ideas are a little bit off, but he had the right idea. Saturday and Sunday were the first times his wife was there too, so we are now teaching both of them. She has- well, they both have- lots of questions, which is great! We answer them and it really gets them thinking. we are really trying to help get them to church this Sunday! At the end of the lesson, She said, "So, when are you coming back?" They love having us in their home and want to learn. Then they asked at what time church started. He turned to his wife and asked, "Do you want to go? Do you think we can make it?" I am excited to see them progress.

We had a pretty good Easter. I hope yours was good too. I love you all!
-Elder Burnham

 

4-18-11

First Week in Omaha

Family,

Hey! Hello from Omaha. We are in the Bellevue University computer lab emailing. They are pretty nice computers, but they do not have built-in card readers, so I will not send pictures this week. I will bring my small card reader and send some next week. It's not a big deal though because I don't have a good picture of me and my companion anyway. He is Elder Jimenez. His grandpa is from Mexico, which is where the name comes from, but no one in his family speaks Spanish anymore (except him) and he is as white as can be. But I am kind of jealous of him last name. Most people have trouble saying mine... But we get along real well. He has been out about 6 months, and speaks Spanish pretty well for that long (in my opinion). We are going to have a good transfer. We have also been talking to each other in Spanish a lot. My Spanish is going to progress a lot this transfer.

So my first day here (Thursday) was real good. After transfers (from 6:30 to 7:45ish) we all went to IHOP. There were about 30 missionaries. I guess it's kind of a tradition here. It was delicious. We then went to our apartment and I unpacked, and we did a little bit of tidying up. Elder Jimenez is a real clean guy, but his last two companions were not. So we have gotten the apartment nice 'n' clean since Thursday. Later that day, a guy just came up and talked to us, telling us that he really liked the Book of Mormon and had gone to church in Mexico a few times as a kid (about 40 years ago). He is about to move, but we got his phone number. Then later when we were tring to visit a referral, someone called out to us from across the street, "How you doin Elders?" it was a member family from the Ralston-La Vista ward. The mother and father both speak Spanish because of their missions. It turns out that they were already trying to fellowship this family we were trying to contact. It was awesome. The only thing is that the referral family is almost never there. We will try to get them though.

I am getting to know the area and all of the investigators. Our teaching pool is a little small, but we get a lot of referrals from the English missionaries in our areas, which is nice. We cover the area of nine different English areas. It is pretty intense. It can be difficult at times. We were going to go to the trail center on Saturday with some investigators, but they canceled. I was excited to go because I have not been since the beginning of my mission. They have some cool bronze sculptures of Christ there right now. But we did some service on Saturday morning. We helped a friend of a member move. The sister missionaries also helped a little bit, and will hopefully start teaching her. The member is from the Bellevue ward, but was cool. He also speaks Spanish so we can use him for team ups in the future. To thank us, he invited us to dinner that night. We also got some money from another member there to go buy lunch. We went to a small taco place called La Chiripa. We talked to two guys there and gave them copies of the Book of Mormon. One of them paid for us too! He seems kind of set in hes ways, but he was really nice. So we ended up not using the money we had gotten for lunch. It was like we got three meals in one day. :)

Two investigators came to church yesterday- Fabiola and Jorge. They want to get baptized, but need to get married first. They are waiting for a divorce to go through for him (with someone else) so they can do it. I am hopefull for them. The missionaries in the North are Elder Keel and Elder Orellana, both of which I have served with. It is nice to be around familiar faces. This ward has two sets of missionaries- one in the North and one in the South.

Things are going good here. I hope they go well for you too. Love you all!

-Elder Burnham

4-13-11

Family,

Transfers come and go again, and so do I. I only got six weeks here in Norfolk. We got the call last night saying that I was leaving. I was a little surprised, but I think Elder Bittner was more. I'm still not sure where I am going yet, but I will tell you later today when I find out.

I forgot to tell you last week that preparation day is on wednesday this week because of transfers. It was like this last time too but I was going to remind you. We had two district meetings since I wrote last, but that's the only thing really different this week. We continue to find new investigators and teach those we have. No one showed up for church Sunday, even though some people committed to come. I hope the people here choose to accept the gospel. I love them as God's children and want them to have the happiness that comes from keeping all the commandments. Sometimes I wish the people we talk to could know that. But they often don't. I hope I can really help some people  in my next area.

That's about all this week. I will write more next week and tell you about my new area.

-Elder Burnham