7 February 2011

Hey Family!


Yeah I did get it the other day. Also I went to SM today and got my shoes fixed. It cost me 225 pesos! Way too much for my taste. Oh well, they won't be done till 5pm tonight so I told them I would try to come next week. Hopefully they turn out pretty nice. This week was another hard one for us again. We taught a lot of lessons, but we are still having a really hard time getting people to follow through with their commitments. I guess all of this goes along with finding those who are actually prepared and teaching to each persons individual needs. I'm just hoping and praying to find that investigator who is ready and willing to read and find out for himself.


So it's pretty cold there? It's not too cold here right now, believe it or not. ^^


On Wednesday this week we worked with a ward missionary named Thor. He just returned from his mission last week so it was pretty good to be able to work with him. He was a really good guy and a good teacher, even though he used a lot of Tagalog since he's been in Manila the past two years. Actually he was a really good fellowshipper and bore powerful testimony to our investigators.


To be honest with you all right now this week was just really hard for us. It's getting hard. We're finding people and getting so excited for them, but then they don't read or don't pray or don't go to church. And even those we know had a spiritual confirmation or know that it is true still get scared to change. It's hard. I want to figure out how to help this people but some of them don't get the meaning of what it means to have living prophet on the earth; An actual living, true prophet to guide us.


We've been trying hard to study and ponder and pray and try to figure out how to help these people really progress. Elder Jenkins is a good companion and always works hard a bears strong testimony. Anyway, with the people who are here and their level of understanding and who the person is individually I think it all depends. But actually this morning at our zone meeting I really got some ideas of how to really help our area progress and kick off. Our lesson this morning that the Zone Leaders taught is on Revelation through the Book of Mormon. I really enjoyed it. Sometimes it's hard or weird here to share the Book of Mormon with people here because the Book of Mormon is in Hiligaynon and it is really deep. It makes it really hard for investigators to understand scriptures (and for us to learn the language, because we learn words from the BOM and then natives here don't understand it!) But what we focused on this morning in Zone Meeting was what our investigators might not understand about the Book of Mormon. The Zone Leaders, Elder White and Elder Reeves, shared maybe it's that the investigators aren't yet applying the scriptures to themselves. A lot of them tell us, yes, it's true, but they don't seem to understand yet what that means personally to them in their lives. They know it's good and about Jesus Christ but they need that spiritual confirmation that its true. We read in PMG Chapter 5 about how the best way someone can come to gain a testimony that the Book of Mormon was true is if they live by the principles in the Book. So in the long run, keeping commitments. I'm excited for this next coming transfer and for this area to take off!


Oh yeah. This transfer just ended and announcements were today. I'm staying here in Molo! But I'm going to lose Elder Jenkins :( and give birth. I'm going to have a bata/youngster, or I'm going to train. Actually I'm way nervous. It was hard enough just being senior to someone 6 weeks younger than me, but now I get a brand new spankin' elder. But it should be all right. I guess there are only 8 new elders coming in this transfer, 4 pinoy and 4 foreigners, so we'll just see what happens. I am nervous though, I want him to have a way good experience his first transfer. We'll do it, it will be great! I'm especially excited for the fire of the MTC with me. I love new elders and their attitudes so I hope he'll come and I can learn a lot from him.


So in our apartment right now with us we have 2 other Elders in our apartment, Elder Adams and Elder Perez. Elder Perez has 3 months and Elder Adams has about 6 months left till they go home. Elder Adams in the senior companion right now, and they are an interesting pair of kids but their nice enough. Anyways, so Elder Perez in the only pinoy in our apartment right now. Recently, every night, he has been putting this white stuff on his nose every night that he says makes his nose bigger. I think he might just be joking because Elder Jenkins always makes fun of me and my big nose to everyone. He just thinks it's funny everyone makes fun of my nose. Like when me and Elder Jenkins are on a jeepney. He'll just lean over to someone and say, taas ang iya ilong, 'di bala? Or, whoa, that guys nose is really tall. And they are just like yeah, because Elder Jenkins just knows that's exactly what is on their mind. It's actually a pretty easy way to start a conversation with someone and we actually got one persons address after starting a conversation like that.


Well anyway,
I got to go. Sorry I didn't have too much to say. But I love you all!
Halong!
Elder Burton