11 July 2011

Hey Family!!
This week was really great. I'm glad to hear you had a nice 4th of July! I'm excited to about missionary work happening in the ward. That's a cool story. I'm glad my cuzinzens wrote to me. I am an excited man.

So, I'll start with the best news. Carlito! He's really amazing. I love him so much. I know that scripture in Doctrine and Covenants that says how great shall be your joy with him in God's kingdom. I was thinking about that and all of us and Carlito are going to have a blast! Woohoo! Carlito so hilarious, man, I wish you all could just see him. He always see's little weird things we do as missionaries that nobody really laughs at but he always cracks up. Like one thing is like we walked into his house and his grandkid was drinking milo, like chocolate drink. So I just grabbed his cup and drank some of it and said thanks. Carlito laughed way hard. (Well I just pretended to drink it) Man!! I just wish you could see Carlito, he's hilarious, you'd love him too. Anyway, we taught him a little bit and just got him ready for his interview on Thursday. I actually went, on thursday, to New Washington to interview this one sweet kid, Bruce. I'll tell you about that later. Anyway, I heard when Elder Scott and Elder Quinantoto went there Elder K922 said, "CARLITO! THIS IS ELDER SCOTT! HE'LL BE THE ONE WHO WILL INTERVIEW YOU!" Then Carlito let out a big gasp and turned to elder Scott and said, "Hey Elder! Bale, they told me that it's forbidden to smoke, to drink alcohol, to drink cape..." It sounded funny how it happened. Anyway, his baptism was sweet. His daughter, a way strong member of a different religion came too! It was awesome. I think one day she'll be baptized, just slowly slowly. We actually invited her a couple times. But she likes us and Christ's true doctrine that we teach, so dugaydugay, it's gonna happen. That's the haps!

Anyway, Carlito was baptized on July 9 and confirmed July 10. We had a good show up and the baptism. Even Noel and Rutchie came! It was sweet, even though they live like 20 minutes from the church. We tried to get Noel to baptize Carlito. But he said he's way too shy. We need to help him with that. He's too shy too to pass the sacrament! But he's way strong man! We still got to help him lose that shyness!! Anyway, I was asked to baptize him. It was sweet. His body felt kind of week, I was scared I would break him. But he was way excited! I was too! I still am! Anyway, when we came out of the water and changed in the bathroom I talked to him about how he felt. He said amazing. He said 2 days ago, at his interview, he felt awful, like he couldn't move at all, grabe gid, but Elder Scott and Quinantoto gave him a blessing and now he feels way good and he knows this is what God wants him to do. Yeah!! On Sunday he was ordained and after like everyone in the circle just walked off but Carlito stood up and followed them and shook all of their hands and then walked around and shook like everybody's hands in the room. It was sweet. He just had a huge smile on his face and I just see how sincere he is to follow Jesus Christ in his life. Man, I wish you all could see him.

So I interviewed this kid for baptism named Bruce. Actually his name isn't Bruce, he doesn't even know how he got that name. He just went to church and everyone at the church just called him Bruce. Luckily he wasn't offended or anything. Even the missionaries called him Bruce until they filled out his baptismal record and found out his name was Erol. haha... Anyway, he was a funny kid. It was cool interviewing him, because he has a way strong testimony. Anyway, he was way good and way excited. I asked him about word of Wisdom and if he had problems with those 5 things and he said. "Well one Elder, I go onto the computer a lot at the computer shop" (I wasn't sure what this had to do with the Word of Wisdom but I followed up.) What do you do on the computer? Then he said, "I play a lot of games." I asked again, for fun, what kind of games? He said, "well, I go onto mormon.org and they had a bunch of games on it... I told him that that's not bad at all! hehe it was a funny confession he gave to me. He'll be a good member.

Anyway, besides that the week was just pretty good. We are having trouble finding new investigators and it's way weird because it seems investigators have a spiritual experience the first visit and they even tell you they are excited or that they'll read or pray because they want to and then they just hide the next time. It stinks because I just get way excited the first visit about someone, and see how much the gospel will help, and it's hard to see them hide and just not do what they know they should do. So we just had some trouble because we followed up a lot on people this week but they just weren't there! I was feeling way discouraged last night and really was searching how to help this area take off faster than it is. We really got to build a center of strength in the ward. Right now the main strength is in the bishop's family, but they live like a half hour from the church, and we can't go their after 6 because there is no transportation, so, we are just focusing near the church. Elder Quinantoto and I had a great companionship study though this morning and we got some good ideas of what we can do. But we really need your prayers because, to tell you the truth, we aren't too skilled, but God is, so, keep us in your mind! :D Anyway, we had a couple good experience and some good potential. At district meeting we practiced and worked on Teaching People, Not Lessons. So we really tried to apply that this week. Really apply every single thing we teach right to the investigator. We had some good experiences with that. There was this one day we were just getting punted over and over, we were having a hard time, and everyone we were trying to follow up with were just denying us! Anyway, once it happened again we asked who we could go teach instead and they told us a name, their cousin. We went to her, Sister Emily, and talked to her. We told her that her cousin said she'd be interested and she was wayy interested man. We talked to her a little about her job, she's a science teacher and then like biology, and then like the creation, and then about God. We talked to her and she told us she wished she could of lived on earth during the time of Jesus, because she wished she could have talked to him, and heard his teachings. Because, she said, people aren't perfect, and she kind of made her own hypothesis about things and how things are and doesn't believe the teachings in her church are 100% true. Elder Quinantoto and I just kind of looked at each other and smiled. And the lesson just went really good. Because God is still speaking to us today.

We also have this new couple were teaching. They have a 2 week year old baby so they said they can't come to church for a couple of weeks but they would some day. Anyway, when we taught them the first time they seemed pretty good. Brother Ullysis was excited to hear a message about families. We taught a little bit and then taught him how to pray. So here when we teach how to pray we usually say something like, "first call on our father in heaven (it's awkward translating to english), then express your gratitude for things, like for your family, or whatever your grateful for....etc. , then ask for stuff, you can ask questions, ask for blessings, etc.. then close in the name of Jesus Christ... So anyway, we just explain it's from your heart and stuff and then invite then to do it and then Elder Quinantoto gives a quick overview again of prayer. He says, so brother, Heavenly FAther, grateful, ask for, in the name... (that makes sense in Tagalog/Aklanon, trust me) ANyway, so brother said his prayer, "Father in Heaven, grateful, ask for, in the name..." So it was our bad teaching I guess but we decided to fix it next time. We just told him to read about it. So anyway, when we came back and asked if he read he said he did!! We followed up on him and it seemed he actually did read! (that's like a miracle!) Anyway, I asked if he had questions and he said no and then I asked if he had anything he wanted to say about what he read and he said, yes, "I thought it was cool how John the Baptist came back to Joseph Smith to give him the priesthood because Juanbautista is the one who baptised Jesus. So Joseph Smith has that authority too!! It was sweet!! I've never heard an investigator say anything like that before! His improvement was crazy, then his wife read too. They are such a great family. I hope we can help them get to church. He said he would be baptized when we committed him! He just has some WoW problems but he'll get there. It's going to be a sacrifice but it will help their family soo much!

Anyway, I guess that's it! Oh! I forgot. On the 4th of July the Zone Leaders showed me this new restaurant. They said President Pagaduan ate there. Anyway, I went there with them and to my great surprise they had waffles there! It was like Heaven, but I spent a lot of money on like bacon wrappers, waffles, shakes, fries, bbq bacon sandwich. What's up!? Anyway, it was kind of expensive though but I want to go there again. Not really too expensive, maybe 6 dollars for all of that. But a lot for our budget.

Anyway, that's all! I love you!
Love,
Elder Burton