Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Apples and Apostles

Hello again, it has been quite an eventful week: got a new companion, got to watch a movie, got food from a person we never met, got one-upped by the sisters in front of Elder Perry.
So, Elder Nielson is great! He is from Hurricane, Utah... Yes, he is DEFINATELY from Hurricane, Utah. He loves country music, wears cowboy boots with a huge belt buckle on p-days, liked to go "hoodin'" for fun back home, which is riding on the hood of a truck as its being dragged across the ground by an ATV. Awesome! Very southern Utahn. He is a hard worker and is helping me keep things organized in our area. Since Elder Johanson left, I've discovered I know our area a lot better than I thought, with regards to both geography and people. I hardly ever have to use the GPS to get around. Now I just have to teach Elder Nielson how to get around.
So fun things that happened this week:
We got to watch Meet the Mormons at a special screening just for missionaries! It was awesome! We were instructed, however, not to use it as a Proselyting tool. We can invite people to see it, but we can't take people to see it or contact near theaters that are showing it.
Our car fast for the week snuck up on us and we weren't prepared so we ended up doing a lot of tracting. First house, this extremely friendly guy was just coming home with his fiancé. He was really nice and said he'd love for us to come teach him and his family sometime. As we were walking away, he called out to us, and came running after us with a big bag of apples. Apparently they had just come from an orchard upstate and had tons of apples and his future mother-in-law wanted to give us some. Sweet! Off to a great start with these guys. He said his name was something like C*. We're not sure if that's how to spell it.
Then as we were walking to the place where the Spanish elders were going to pick us up to take us home, We passed a house that was completely dark (obviously no on home) but Elder Nielson said he felt like we should try it. We did. No on was home... Yet. As we were about to leave, a van pulled into the driveway (which is always an awkward tracting situation). We went and found the van was occupied by a Guatemalan family that was really friendly. We talked to a guy named V*, we learned a bit about their family: their family consists of V*, his sister, his brother, his sister's boyfriend, and their three kids. Not your typical family, but very close and very solid. Unfortunately, the sister is struggling with English, so the Spanish elders get to teach them. But they are now the Spanish elders best investigators! Car fasts are good!
Anyway, on Sunday we had a surprise in sacrament meeting: Elder L. Tom Perry. Apparently he is in New York and wanted to come to our ward because he used to live in it. He gave a great talk about member missionary work (which our ward could do a bit better with) and in the middle of his talk he said, "where are the missionaries?" And then had us stand up. We made the Sister missionaries stand up with us because we were not going into that alone! He basically told the ward they need to do everything they can to help us, the. He asked Elder Nielson how many lessons we had planned this week. Eighteen. He then told the congregation he wants them to help us make it an even twenty. He then asked the same question to the sisters. They said thirty two... Dang. We're going to have to step it up. Elder Perry just laughed and said "We let them go at nineteen and now they're taking over!" He then wanted the ward mission leader to stand up. Brother Newton, our ward mission leader, moved out four weeks ago and the bishop has yet to call a new one. So the bishop got a brief chastisement for that. He called a new ward mission leader immediately after the meeting. So it was a pretty exciting sacrament meeting.
Unfortunately, J wasn't there because he just got a root canal and wasn't feeling up to it. Because President Morgan isn't free to interview him until next week, we're going to have to push his baptism back another week. Our investigator D* is on the brink of defying his family and coming to church, we had a great lesson the other day and the spirit was so strong! Also, P* told us he wants to get the priesthood and he has a meeting with the bishop set up this week. Sweet!
So it's been a great week! Thanks for all the love and support! Until next time...
-Elder Samuel Burton

Elder Nielson and I (I may or may not be standing on a chair) ... (All
my companions are so much bigger than me!)



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