1st week in Westwood

Dallon just finished his first week in Westwood 2nd ward which covers part of Westwood and part of Beverly Hills.  He sent some pictures from his previous area of investigators and 1 picture of a street in his new area.

I told him he needs to do street contacts along Burnside Avenue.  Anyway here is his letter:

The first week with Elder Provost was really good. He is from Utah and
loves rodeo and baseball, which of course we can relate about. He has
taught me how to rope at night on his roping dummy that he has, it is
a lot of fun. We cover the Westwood 2nd Ward. Our are goes from
Fairfax to the 405, and from Santa Monica down to the 10. A large
portion of our area is the Jewish Community, so that provides a little
bit of a challenge. Most of the week was spent just taking me around
and introducing me to the people that we are working with, both
members and non members. There is a family with a Single mom and three
kids we are working with. The mom and the 9 year old son (Lubia and
Gavinn) set baptismal dates for January 10 right before I got here.
So now we are working on involving her 15 year old son Zaine and
trying to move up their baptisms. We also work with a less-active
named Lucas, he is super cool. He went to church for the first time in
17 years the Sunday before I got here. he is an artist, and also does
stuff for movies, he helped work on the new transformers. My first day
here on Tuesday I was asked to prepare a talk. It went well, we are
getting kicked out of the visitors center and are being told to return
back to our apartments for the rest of day because of supreme court
case in Missouri talk to you next week I love you all!!! Sorry this
had to be short!
Elder Burnside

His companion is from Wallsburg, UT and he got back on the computer and sent the pictures:

The ruling actually isn't supposed to be released until later this
afternoon, so I have a little more time so here are some pictures.
They are of me Elder Ward and Dana, me and Alfred, and a street in my
new area.

Elder Burnside

Elder Burnside is being transferred

Start off with a short video that was emailed to us by a member

It was nice to see him and his companion (the blond guy).  We also got a letter announcing his first transfer to the westwood/beverly hills area.  Hopefully we'll know more soon about the area.  Looking at lds.org he is probably in either Westwood 1st ward or Westwood 2nd ward.  His letter is as follows:

Hey everybody! So I get 140 dollars a month as long as I don't have any fines. We usually just drive the car until we run out of miles, we have 800 miles per month. The other companionship was ELder Spencer and his trainee Elder Pierce, they are the other companionship in our tiny district. They are hilarious, we talk with them all the time. We are allowed to Skype on Christmas, as long as we find a family that will let us use there account, which shouldn't be a problem.
This week was pretty good. On Monday we found a new investigator while street contacting, his name is Marvin. His situation is interesting... he is gay and lives with his partner and two kids, so that will be an interesting situation to handle. But he really wants to learn about Jesus, and we will try to meet with him this next week.
This week we also made a big focus on making a list of all part member families both active and less active, and meeting all of them, because 52 percent of part member families end up getting baptized. One family we met, the Pittells, the wife was less active and the husband and their three kids are all non-members. The oldest kid seemed pretty interested, and the whole family was open to us coming back, so we are going to visit them this week.
On Thursday we had temple day so I got to go through the Los Angeles temple for the first time. That was a really cool experience. That temple is HUGE, and is is extremely beautiful. Then on Friday Elder Ward got to go to the temple again because he goes home at the end of December, so I went on exchanges with Elder Edwards who is a zone leader of the zone next to ours. He is also the missionary who trained my trainer Elder Taylor. It was fun talking to him and teaching with him, he is a very good teacher.
Saturday we went with the Ward to invite less actives to the ward thanksgiving dinner, the ward as a whole tried to go visit 100 less actives. All the missionaries went on splits with members, and I went with a recently returned missionary named Mosiah. It was cool to compared missions, and also learn from his approach to talking to people, since he had just finished doing it for two years. We got 1 person to answer there door, and he seemed interested enough to come, but he also wasn't exactly excited to see a missionary. We left 3 notes, and found out that 1 person moved, over all the ward left 25 notes found that 15 people had moved, and invited 5 people through a face to face conversation. SO that results weren't to bad, 2 new investigators were also found. After that we went and helped a member move, and he couldn't find parking close to his new apartment complex, so we had to carry his stuff for what seemed like forever haha, but it was fun. We also visited a referral named Anna, she is super interested we brought her a book of Mormon, and she said she planned on reading it cover to cover, and was overall really interested, so we will visit her next week, as she is a very promising investigator.
Sunday was good until the end of the day. Because I will not be visiting any of our investigators as I am getting transferred tomorrow.I am going to Westwood, which is in Beverly Hills, which is pretty cool to go to Beverly Hills, but I wasn't ready to leave Hollywood. I love the people here, Dana and Alfred are my favorites! But I guess it is time to move on.My new companion will be Elder Provost who was trained by my current companion Elder Ward. I will talk to you all from Beverly Hills next week, have a good week, I love and miss you all!!
Elder Burnside

He also sent another note to his Mom.

> Hey Mom, so I am getting transferred to Westwood tomorrow, which is in
>>> Beverly Hills. I love the people here in Hollywood and wasn't ready to
>>> leave, but Beverly HIlls will be fun. We just found a couple promising new
>>> investigators this week too. The letters have been shorter because we
>>> haven't really had any one to work with, but they were going to start
>>> getting longer again. I am keeping a journal, and I found a journal in the
>>> apartment that I am going to have people write in for me. Sounds like
>>> everything is going well, I hope you all are having a good time. I love you
>>> too!!
>>> love
>>> Elder Burnside

> Ya I was surprised by the transfer too, I had almost forgot it was transfer
> week. My new companion will be Elder Provost, he was trained by my current
> companion Elder Ward so that is pretty funny. Yeah I will miss Dana and
> Alfred they have made a big impact on me at this point in my mission. I am
> already mostly packed, only a little bit left. Love you!!

Oh and about that list that the president sent to you for Christmas,
we can get all that stuff at the 99 cent stores, so you can send
whatever you want, as long as it isn't absolutely huge haha. All the
missionaries were kind of frustrated when we saw that list haha. Just
wanted to let you know, I love you lots!!

Elder Burnside

That's it for this week

Elder Burnside's last 2 weeks

Why don't we change things up and start with pictures that Dallon sent on November 3rd.  I think he had fun on his birthday.  As you can tell he likes candy and treats.

Here is  his November 3rd letter

Thanks for all the Birthday wishes!! Sounds like everyone had a fun Halloween. The primary kids testimonies are always fun, there is a kid here who gets up every month, and thanks his dad for waking everyone up to go to church, and he says he is grateful that UCLA won and all kinds of funny stuff, everyone loves his testimonies. We had a good week this week with our investigators Alfred and Dana.
Dana got into trucking school and has several job interviews lined up!! We were able to read the intro to the Book of Mormon, and the testimonies of the witnesses and Joseph Smith's testimony. We taught the restoration, and at the end he just told us that he better read the book and find out if it is true. He committed to read the Book of Mormon everyday! He came to church yesterday , and really loved the testimonies, it was perfect for him because most of the testimonies talked about peoples conversion stories with the missionaries. So they all applied to him very well. His only concern real concern that he expressed is that he believes all good is good, and that it doesn't matter what church you are a part of as long as your are doing good in the world. But we know that that concern will be resolved as he gains a testimony of the Book of Mormon and continues to feel the spirit that we bring, and the spirit there is at church.
Alfred is still recovering from his eye surgery, but we made some real progress with him. Earlier in the week he was watching some show called Ancient Aliens, and the show mentioned Moroni, so when we came over later that week he was really interested in Moroni and wanted to learn more about him and the book of Mormon. So we taught him the restoration and had a really good conversation about the Book of Mormon and the importance of Jesus Christ. He expressed beliefs that are kind of similar to ours, but are way out there. He pretty much just replaces God with Aliens, so that is a concern that I haven't seen before, but we know it too will be resolved as he reads the Book of Mormon. We left him with a Book of Mormon, and bookmarked 3 Nephi 11 the part when Christ comes to the Americas, and he promised to read it when he was recovered from his eye surgery.
We had lots of fun celebrating my birthday! For lunch we went with the other Hollywood Elders to Buffalo Wild Wings, our favorite place to eat! There they sang me Happy Birthday and we had a good time. Then after that we just went to several members homes where we got loaded up with food, cheesecake, and some candy. When we were walking back to our car to head home, we saw someones old SUV die so we decided to go help them.We tried to push the car to the side of the road, and it was TIRING. We pushed it a block uphill, and when we talked to her afterwords found out that she forgot to take off the e-brake! It was all good though, we gave her a mormon.org card and headed home. We had a curfew of 6:00 because Halloween gets pretty crazy in LA. They have a massive Halloween party for gay people right down the street from our apartment, so we were happy to be in by 6 and avoid that.
So we had a fun week this week with plenty of progress. I hope you all have a good week. I love and miss you all!!!
Elder Burnside

I know his emails are getting shorter/fewer a little bit.  I suppose that means that he is getting comfortable with both the work and where he is at.  His email on November 10 was shorter and to the point.

How was everybody's week this week? I hope you have all had a good time. Our week was okay, we had some progress but not that much.On Wednesday Elder Pierce, the new missionary came on exchanges with me, and we just went and talked to people on the streets for pretty much the whole day. It got pretty tough, that was the most rejection I have ever had street contacting. At one point 17 people in a row told us some form of no not interested. But in the end we actually got several potential and new investigators that we hope to meet with this upcoming week. So it was a solid day.
Saturday we had stake conference, and since we were getting a new bishop, we had two members of the quorums of the seventy there. One was Elder Craig Cardon, and I can't remember the other ones name, but they gave really good talks about the work of salvation, and the part that everybody plays in it. One focus they made was that everybody needs to get to know there neighbor, and far to often we enclose ourselves with members of the church and need to outreach more. So it was really good.
Then on Sunday the new stake presidency was called. And they had all the former stake presidency and all of the new stake presidency bear their testimonies. It was a pretty powerful meeting. They then spoke again on missionary work, so that was a really important focus this weekend.
We didn't really have a chance to see Dana or Alfred this week, we were able to visit them each briefly and they are both doing well, but we didn't have a chance to make much progress. Our week was mostly just talking to people on the streets, as it will be this next week too. Its moving a little slow right now, but that just means the work is going to speed up shortly. Hope you all have a great next week! I love and miss you all!!!
Elder Burnside

Well that is all for the last 2 weeks