Cool it sounds like you all have a had a good week. Baseball is always
fun, it is good that he is making more contact. Church sounds like it
was pretty good, I love testimony meetings especially here in Los
Angeles. You never know what you are going to hear. An 8 year old kid
got up and gave a super funny one for us on Sunday. He got up and
said, "Wow big crowd today, I am sure Jesus likes that. I am sure he
likes all the fellowship, and I do to. Take my dad for example, he met
his wife at church. In the name of Jesus Christ amen." It was really
funny. Lol another funny note I was looking through the SD card on my
camera just now and there is a video you took of Stevie's 6th
birthday. I couldn't listen to it, but I watched it and it was just
kind of funny to watch. For Skype on Sunday, we will probably Skype
somewhere between 1:30 and 5:30 your time. We will only have 40
minutes though, so make sure you prepare before hand. And just in case
can you send me your Skype address again?
Anyway getting to my week. Our week was kind of slow, mostly because
of Tuesday. On Tuesday night in the sometime between 6:30 and 7:30
Elder Shepherd and I both lost our planners. We lost them at the same
time! We couldn't believe it! The chances of that happening have to be
extremely small. So we haven't been able to find them, and so we lost
a ton of potential investigators information. I guess that will teach
us to update our area book more often haha.
So we spent a lot of time this week trying to find, and rebuilding our
potential investigators pool. One super cool experience we had this
week was, that on Friday during weekly planning we decided we would
start praying to teach a family of four. The next day we got a
referral for a family of four, although we haven't been able to get in
contact with them yet. Then yesterday as we were walking down the
street a guy named Amellio and his two kids turned one of the corners.
And when he saw us he just started smiling and waving at us, and so we
talked to him, and he said he would love for us to come by and teach
him and his family of four. He said they live in Inglewood, but that
they are moving into our area at the end of this week! So we are
excited to start teaching them, although the two kids are both really
young. We also had a cool experience Saturday night. We started
talking to these young guys who were sitting on the street smoking and
drinking beers. At first they weren't too open, and just kind of
wanted to take the card and have us leave. But then we just started
testifying about the Restoration, and they completely changed. They
started opening up and asking questions . We even gave one of them a
Book of Mormon (the other one already had one). When we told him he
could have it he was so happy he hugged us! It was super cool to see
the spirit touch their hearts. The number that Enrique (the one we
gave the Book of Mormon too) gave us didn't work though. So we are
going to have to stop by and hope they area there.
Then we had a bunch of lessons with Ron. He is progressing. We took
him over to dinner with a super cool member in our ward and he loved
it! Ron couldn't stop talking about how much he enjoyed it and how
great Mormons are haha. They connected quite well. We talked about a
lot of gospel stuff there. At one point we got to talking about how he
had some poor parents. And at one point he said that if he could
forgive them that would show that there is a God and he would get
baptized. So now we are having him pray for help to forgive his
parents. Then Sunday we had a good preparatory lesson with him. We
have been wanting to teach him the Plan of Salvation for a long time,
but every time we start we just get back onto the subject of faith.
But then at the end of our lesson Sunday he started asking a bunch of
Plan of Salvation questions. So we told him all the answers are in the
Plan of Salvation, and we would love to teach him that next time. We
also told him to invite his neighbor over, so that would be really
cool if he could do that!
That was pretty much our week though. I hope you guys have a great
week. I love you and will talk to you Sunday!
Elder Burnside
It always confuses me when people give fake information. I don't
understand why they don't just say they aren't interested when we ask
if we could get their information. But no it doesn't really bother me
too much, you can't take it personally. If they are ready for the
gospel than they will accept it, if not you just plant the seed and
move on. And the interesting thing I have noticed is that those who
are prepared will find you. We don't really find people. Our job is to
let our light shine before the world, so that those who are prepared
can find the truth.
Then we got to talk to Dallon on Mother's Day. That was wonderful. He is doing well and really acts like a Missionary. He followed Mother's Day with the following letter along with pictures!!
It was good to talk to you guys too, I enjoyed it. It is always
exciting to call home. I have had good companions, and I don't know if
I would call any of them difficult, I had fun with all of them. But if
you made me pick one, I would probably say that Elder Provost was the
most frustrating, because he would get on my back about a lot oh
stuff. But he was still a good companion. So why are you in Kansas
City again? I am glad that you guys enjoyed Mothers day and had a good
week. So you already know about most of my week, but I am just going
to pretend like you don't and email everything anyway haha. That way
maybe I will include stuff I didn't mention yesterday.
So a week and a half ago we talked to a kid named Julio on the street,
and he said we could come by and share more about the Book of Mormon,
so we went by last Monday. They didn't have much time so we just
shared the scripture 3 Nephi 18:21 about the importance of praying in
you families. When we shared the scripture another kid named Reuben,
who graduated last year said that he already has a Book of Mormon! He
said that somebody gave him one in High School. So that was super
cool, their family is really busy but we are going to try to stop by
again this week to teach them the Restoration.
We had several lessons with Ron this week. We are really pounding the
importance of the Book of Mormon into him, and he is finally getting
it. He has begun to listen to the Book of Mormon everyday so we are
making some progress again. We prefaced the Plan of Salvation with
him again, because he has so many questions that can be answered
through the Plan of Salvation if he would just let us teach it haha.
He committed to read the pamphlet and we told him that we will go over
it this week. He came to church on Sunday which was really good.
Although he only stayed for two hours, so we are still working on
trying to get him to come for the whole thing. It was pretty funny,
there is an old lady in the ward that is pretty crazy and we always
joke to each other about introducing Ron to her. Than after sacrament
while we were talking to some one else, she came up and made friends
with Ron, and when we went by Sunday night they were talking to each
other on the phone. So i guess that is good for Ron to have more
friends in the church. But she is pretty crazy so we will see how that
works out hahaha.
On Wednesday we met Aiden. He is the one I told you about on Skype. He
is a 14 year old kid that we met while trying to visit inactive
members. We knocked on the address for one of the members and Aiden
came to the door. It turns out that the member had moved out a long
time ago, but we started telling Aiden a little bit about the
restoration and how our families can be eternal. When we asked if we
could come back he said definitely! We went back on Friday and taught
him the Restoration. And afterwords he said that he knew that the
gospel and would help his family, and that if he followed the
commandments both him and his family would be blessed. So we
committed him to a baptismal date! He accepted to be baptized on June
13th! He is super prepared! We are excited to continue teaching him!
Sunday my last companion Elder Ching had his departing missionary
fireside, which is a fireside where all the missionaries that are
going home bear their testimonies and sing songs, and then greet
everyone after. It is a really good fireside. Anyway we took Ron to it
since Elder Ching helped teach him. It was a pain to get him there but
it was worth it! We were suppose to meet Ron at 5:30 because it takes
about 40 minutes to get there and it starts at 6:30. After I finished
skyping Skype decided to stop working. So we went the next 2 hours
fixing it, so Elder Shepherd finally finished calling home around
5:20. So we didn't get to Ron's until 5:50. When we got there he had
decided it was too late and he didn't want to go anymore. We finally
convinced him to go after a half hour of persuasion and offering to go
clean his house for him tonight. So we finally left around 6:20 and
ended up getting there twenty minutes late which wasn't too bad
considering when we left. So then we got there, and Ron complained
that he couldn't hear, so he spent forever walking around up front
trying to find a better seat. But finally he did and was able to
really enjoy it, and he said he was extremely happy that he went. But
that was our week. Attached our some photos from that departing
missionary fireside. I love you!!
Elder Burnside
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