April 27th Letter

April 27th letter

Sounds like a good week. Does doing ok for an old guy mean you got to
first base with out tearing your hamstring? Lol. You guys are reading
in genesis huh, well that is about to get long, boring, and pretty
weird haha. I am in the book of Judges in my bible reading. It would
be cool to go out to the Carolinas for a family get together. Elder
Ward is in South Carolina. Jim says he wants to get into real estate
investing, but he says that he is going to go on a mission first. That
way his dad will have enough money to give him a loan when he gets
back. But I am not sure how set his plan is. He is definitely leaning
more towards a mission than he was a couple months ago which is good.
Our work was pretty slow for us this week. Tuesday was pretty cool
though. I went on exchanges with Elder Macdonald in the Baldwin Hills
area while Elder Shepherd was at a district leader training. It was
really cool because you won't believe who we ran into... Dana! He has
been doing really well. He still goes to church every couple weeks,
whenever he can. He is almost done with trucking school and has really
turned his life around. So that was super cool.
We had a lesson with Ron and he is acting more normal this week haha.
But he isn't really progressing. He told us that he believes he is
doing all that the can to find God permitting his circumstances. But
he isn't reading the Book of Mormon, even though he has a lot more
time then he believes. So we need to figure out way o get him reading
it, otherwise we may have to drop him :( We also taught our
investigator Buff. We taught some more about the Book of Mormon, and a
little bit about the Plan of Salvation. We gave him 2 Nephi 2 to read.
But we haven't been able to get in contact with him since.
For the next couple months we have a cool opportunity. There is a
temple service missionary who served a mission in Nebraska until he
had to come home for medical purposes. But he will now be coming out
with us every week night which will be pretty cool. While we were with
him we street contacted the coolest Jew I have met out here haha. He
is a Rabbi named Hal. Hal loves our church, and wished everyone
understood everything we do in our church more. He said he would love
for us to come by and bring him a Book of Mormon and share more about
it this week. So that was really cool.
Saturday we had a really cool experience. We went over to a potential
investigator named Nancy. She is a lady that is probably in the upper
50's, and we were suppose to have a lesson with her Saturday. So we
went over with a 19 year old member in the ward, Joe who is
considering going on a mission; but when we got there she told us she
was sick. So we taught her about the restoration of the priesthood,
and offered to give her a blessing. She accepted, and when we did she
cried the whole time. Afterwords she told us that the spirit was very
powerful during the blessing, and she said she definitely wanted to
start meeting with us, and she would tell all her friends and
neighbors! It was really cool for us and Joe. It is an experience that
will hopefully push him towards serving a mission.
Sunday we had stake conference which was really good. It was all about
temple work, and the joy that comes from finding and doing the work
for your ancestors. It was also cool because I got to see a bunch of
people from the Hollywood ward. I then went on exchanges with the zone
leaders because Elder Shepherd was participating in a musical fireside
at the visitors center. When we walked back to our car after dropping
off Elder Shepherd at the visitors center, two Ysa girls asked us when
the Ysa ward started. One was a less-active member that moved here a
couple months ago, and the other was her non-member friend. We told
them that it was stake conference, and it had already ended, but we
invited them to the fireside. They then cam, and both cried the whole
time. The less active one said that she hasn't felt the spirit like
that in a long time. And the non-member got a Book of Mormon in
Norwegian and said that she is going to read it because she wants to
feel that more in her life. So that was pretty coo. The fireside was
really good. It was missionaries singing songs relating to the
document, The Living Christ. One of which is my zone leader who is
from Japan and sang in a pop band that is number two in Itunes there.
So it was really good, and the spirit was powerful.
Anyway that was pretty much my week. Kind of slow, hopefully this week
is better. I hope you have a great week. I love you!!!
Elder Burnside
P.S. The picture is of me and the box of chocolates you guys sent. It
was missing a chocolate, so my first thought was that Mom ate it lol