26 June 2011

Hey Fam,

Wow, Camp sounded awesome. I liked how you timed them hiking the mountain for 2 minutes. Tell me about your family reunion.

Those were my old shoes by the way that I got fixed twice. But don't worry, the other week I got them fixed again. They actually look pretty good. But there's a hole in the bottom so water comes in but from the top the shoes look way good. I'm a gwapo missionary. It's kind of depressing all my clothes falling apart because they have to last a lot longer. But it's cool. I wore my new shirt for the first time yesterday at church. It was nice. I was scared because I was sweating a lot and I knew the shirt wouldn't look this good forever. It already has a huge neck stain. Anyway, the stake president was at church and he saw me and asked if this was my first area. I thought it might of been the shirt but then a different member said that I have a baby face, so sayang gid. I would have hoped being this far into my mission I would look more rugged. Hopefully it happens some time down the road. Anyway, that's not too important.

So last week I sent like 1/3 of my pictures and then the computer deleted them all. I didn't notice till the night. I'm kind of sad about it. I had some sweet ones! But, I must be content with what happened. I was kind of angry for like 30 seconds when I looked at my pictures that weren't there but then I was like, uh, oh well, I can't do anything about it. So then we left and went to FHE again. Anyway, monday was still sweet because after we emailed we went to Balete to a place called the Basura Garden, which was pretty cool, it was just a garden of trash.

On Tuesday I had to teach my first district meeting. I felt kind of awkward but it was way fun. I liked it a lot. And I think I learned a lot more from my gwapo district than they learned from me. We talked about how we receive revelation through church attendance. We read together the story of Ammon and King Lamoni and we talked about Abish and related that to church and being way excited about it! Because the spirit really is strong there and if people could just go and feel that, they'll know it's true and be convinced of the power of God. So we talked about how we could be more excited about church and have a more spiritual experience ourselves there. It was sweet. But the district always makes fun of me because I made the comment, "I like old men." Because I was thinking of Brother Carlito, and I do like that old guy! So they always laugh at me. Afterwards I had to interview the district. It was cool I guess. The Zone Leaders are in my district so I had to interview them. While I was interviewing Elder Scott we were talking and after a couple minutes I realized he was actually interviewing me. He said he did it on purpose to see if he could.. and he could. I love Elder Scott. He really teaches me a lot and he told me that that district meeting was what he needed, and made me feel good. And I liked being interviewed, just to talk to him about my investigators. I feel when I just talk about them new ideas come into my mind of what I can do to help them. Even if I have no clue I just talk and ponder and God puts some quan into my head.

Anyway, we had a sweet week this week. We really applied it and I felt way more excited than usual and way happy all the time. On Wednesday I conducted companion exchanges and worked with Elder Christensen in New Washington. It was way fun. He's a way good elder. We ended up visiting a lot of less actives. We visited one and Elder Christensen said to me, "You'll like this guy Elder Burton, he's old." I did like him, but he had one of the weirdest concerns I've ever seen in my mission. I looked at his Book of Mormon and he had every single word in it underlined, and every proper name circled, and he's retired, and his hobby is to draw designs for boats and buildings, he just makes me laugh. Anyway, he told us about his experiences and it made it seem like it's all a quest or something. He said he read the Book of Mormon and everything and then was baptized. And then he said his next quest was to get the Melchizedek Priesthood. So he stayed way strong and way active till he got that. Then he retired and switch into "once a month churchin." So he said he doesn't need to go to church every week since he has no more quests. He said he has no job anymore, so he doesn't need to pay tithing, which was his week 2 quest... etc. Yeah, it was weird. We told him about the sacrament and he said all he does is sit at his house so he doesn't really sin, so he just goes the 4th week. He also has a stack of Liahona's in his house like bigger than Jared and he goes every 4th sunday to get the Liahona. Elder Christensen asked him what would happen to him if he died June 25th, because then it would be a long time since he took the sacrament. Anyway, it was kind of palagpat, ridiculous. But we'll see if he'll go. He said he'd go the next sunday because it was the 4th anyway. There was also this old lady in his area that told me if she was 20 years younger she would "woo or courtship" me. I hear that all day though so it's not a big deal. It will be weird going back to America and being ugly again. haha.

Anyway, Juliet and Mark are doing great. They love us. It's funny because Mark's mom doesn't like us too much. It's okay, Mark's like 30. But every time I ask Mark's mom to join in the lesson and she's always denies. She didn't even want to let us in the house when we first tracked there. But I'm so grateful Elder Quinantoto asked if we could talk to that babies momma. It's sweet. Mark is way nice too. He really wants to put God first in his life but he says it's so hard because he's so busy. But he's really trying. He also always drives us home because we visit them last at 8pm. It's sweet because that doesn't happen too often. But the problem is we still have to get them married and Mark can only go to church every other week right now, but hopefully we can work something out!!! I'd give anything to see them both baptized and sealed together.

Brother Carlito is doing sweet too. He's been to church 5 times now! He loves it. His hand has been sick the past couple of weeks but he's been praying for it to get better and it finally did. He says he really is feeling the blessings from going to church. Anyway, now that he's better he has this hobby of building stuff. He lives in the mountains so he hikes around and makes stuff out of wood. He made this knife and it was sweet looking so we asked him to make us one. I'm excited to get it. He was happy we were so excited about his knife he started talking about it. Suddenly he rolled up one of his pant legs and was like "check it out!" And he started shaving his legs with the knife. It was ridiculous. Elder Quinantoto started cracking up. Anyway, I tried it too and now I have this huge patch of no hair on my leg. Actually the shave was pretty clean. Pretty impressive, Carlito.. Anyway, then we taught Carlito about Baptism and Confirmation. It was good he really understands. He told us he was baptized 5 times before, one of them being a naked baptism... but he knows none of them were true baptisms and he's really excited for his on July 9.

So Elder Quinantoto told me a story about how in this one area somewhere in the Philippines all you have to say to the tricycle drivers is "Totoong simbahan," or to the true church, and the tricycles will drive you to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. So anyway, we'll see if we can change that here too. I thought it was kind of cool.

Church on Sunday was awesome. We had a ton of investigators there, well, a lot more than usual. The members kept commenting. It's funny because in the ward here the leader likes to get all the investigators names from us and then when he conducts sacrament meeting he welcomes all the investigators by name. So he read them all. It was sweet. The best was Juliet came and the stake president was there and I guess the Stake Presidents wife was Mark's best friend in High School. So they started talking a lot and I think she had a great experience. We also have this new family we're teaching and we taught them 2 times only. We invited them to church but they ended up just sending all there kids there but they had work. But hopefully we can get the parents too. We can! Brother Romero said he noticed something different about our message. I really want to help them all. They are sweet. We also got this new referral named Ryan. He seems pretty solid and pretty interested in hearing the message. I'm way excited for the work, it's going great!

I realized this week I always seem to be transferred where I feel I want to go the least but always love it so much. Like when I went to Molo I didn't really want to go to the city but I went there and loved that area. Then I figured I would go anywhere last time but didn't really want to go to Kalibo because I wanted to stick with Ilonggo, but, here I am, and I love this area. That just means that God knows a lot more than I do when it comes to everything. We just gotta do it, and trust in Him, and nami gid things will happen.

I can't believe I'm already a yar in. It's scary man.. But, I still have a lot more work to do! I'm excited to make what happens!
I love you all,
Elder Burton