the news

The long awaited news has arrived, and it has been determined that I am going to stay in Poughkeepsie for at least another six weeks! Elder L'Espérance, however, will be transferred to Darien, Connecticut so I'm getting a new companion!!! We're going to transfer meeting right now to pick him up. His name is Elder Glick and he hails from the distant, exotic land of Staten Island! I know, he's come a LONG way to serve a mission, right? Haha. There's actually a reason for the proximity between his home and the mission. He first came out to the mission without going through the MTC to serve a two transfer trial mission to see if he was able to serve a full time mission in spite of having cerebral palsy. He was given the okay and so he went to the MTC and then came back to serve full time! Preside Morgan fought hard to keep him in this mission and not let him be reassigned after the trial mission, and he succeeded. Elder Glick is also the Elder that replaced me when I left Scarsdale, so I'll definitely be talking with him about all the people down there.

So this last week's activities have mostly been taking Elder L'Espérance around to say goodbye to a lot of people. One of the families he said goodbye to was the Malcarne Family. Elder L'Espérance asked Brother Malcarne to give us a tour of his MASSIVE house, which we quickly realized we had seen very little of. We stick to the living room, dining room, and kitchen when we go over for dinner, so we saw for the first time the private gym, massage room, library, etc.

It's HUGE. We also said goodbye to the Greers, the Skriloffs, A*, Rhonda and Destiny, and many other people.

Unfortunately a lot of our investigators are being kinda lax with commitments lately, we're having trouble getting people to act on the things we're teaching them. The one person who has remained faithful is A*. He's continually reading and praying and is trying to rearrange his schedule so he can come to church. He promised us he'd watch general conference and with his track record, he probably will. But of course, because he's the one doing everything we ask him to, he is still waiting for an answer to know that the Book of Mormon is true. We had a good lesson about how the spirit speaks to us yesterday, and I'm hoping it makes a difference.

In other news, it's Easter his weekend! (Just in case you didn't know). That should be lots of fun. All the members are out of town for spring break, so we'll be all alone for Easter dinner and probably have to basically run the ward on our own this Sunday. It'll be good!

Love you all, and talk to you next week. I'll send pictures with Elder Glick later today.

-Elder Samuel Burton

Elder Glick and I with Elder Smith in the background making a funny face.