April 4th and 11th Letters

Let's start with the April 4th letter.  Included are zone pictures

and the letter

Sounds like you all had a good little vacation, I am glad everything went well. I am sure you all will have fun with the baby shower. Yeah conference was great! Lots of super good talks. It was a little bit of a pain because we had a lot of technical difficulties, but I still really enjoyed it. President Uchtdorf is always my favorite, I really enjoyed his talk. I liked a lot of the talks about remembering our divine potential, and how we should use that when making decisions and that kind of thing. Our week was a little rough at first, but finished great.
So in Wednesday morning we were walking around between potential investigators and we see Timothy, so we walk over there to talk to him. And he just didn't seem right, he wasn't excited to see us :/ so we started talking to him, and something happened, cause he was not the same person we met. He just started going off about how if he had been baptized it would have opened the gates of hell and released Satan. It was crazy, I think drugs played a part in that :( so it was pretty sad.
Then later we found out that our super cool and very sincere investigator John was in jail... So he wasn't able to meet us haha.
But then towards the end of the week we had a couple super cool miracles. The elders over on LA had a family of 3 that they were teaching that had baptismal dates move into our area. They came to general conference and that was okay, they have a lot of potential, but they want to go back to LA. But we are meeting with them this week and will hopefully be able to get baptized soon.
Then halfway through the Sunday morning session a less active member showed up with 2 random nonmembers who want to be baptized! They told us they love this church because they have been before, and that they are willing to do whatever it takes to get baptized! It was super cool! Our whole lesson they just talked about how much they want to get baptized, so we are stoked for them! They have dates for April 17th! They are super cool! The Lord is really blessing us so much!
I love you guys!! I hope you have a great week, and I will talk to you later!!
Elder Burnside

and the April 11th Letter  which starts with some pictures of their district at the temple.

And the letter

I am glad you all had a good week. Sounds like you all had a really fun week. I am glad everyone enjoyed the baby shower and that the baby got a bit spoiled. Sounds like you all had fun with the Illums. Lol it's funny just the other day I was talking with one of the other Elders that I have become friends with about maybe bringing a dirt bike to Idaho to go dirt biking with him haha. Our week was pretty good too.

We had our temple day this week. That was nice. That is like one of things I always look forward to the most. The spirit there is so strong, and it really stays with you through out the rest of the week too. So that was cool. And then the next day we went to do baptisms for the dead with a recent convert named Ira. Who by the way is from Taos, so that is cool. I got to do confirmations there, and that was a lot of fun. He really enjoyed that.  

We had a couple lessons with Tanika, Tori, and Kaliyah. They are a cool family that is getting baptized on Sunday. They are a referral we got from some other elders. They asked us about some Mormon rumors they heard, and then after we gave them an answer one of them said, " OK cool, but it doesn't matter anyway, because I prayed and God told
me this church is true so it doesn't matter what anybody says" So they are super prepared. WE took them to the Visitors Center too, and they loved it. The two girls were asking a bunch of questions about missions, because they want to go on one after they are baptized! They are a super cool miracle.

But otherwise that is pretty much our week. I love you guys and hope you have a great week!!
Elder Burnside

March 21 and 28 2016 Letters

Trying to get caught up on the blog.....  Start with the March 21 letter including a picture of Elder Burnside with a investigator's new dog.

I am glad to hear all is going well. I hope everything works out with Brandon. That is crazy it is your last pinewood derby, you know you will secretly miss it haha. Janelle's baby shower should be fun, we went to one this week that was enjoyable, and had really good food :)

That's too bad you weren't feeling well, but I hope you are doing better now.  Our week was pretty good. Itzia went to the court again and is now going to have a hearing on April 18th for them to get married. So that is good, but it sucks we have to wait that long to get her baptized. We had a good lesson with Rammy. He is progressing slowly but surely.  We had a lesson about prayer, and talked about praying about baptism.  He said. A prayer for us at the end of the lesson which was a first.  So he is opening up and doing good.  They were filming a tv series from the movie Training Day with Denzel Washington in our area. So we walked through and saw a couple of the stars. One of the actresses came up and asked us if we were real. We were all like, uhh... Yeah. And so she started telling us about her Mormon friends and she actually knew a ton about our beliefs. So that was cool.

Then on Sunday our investigator Timothy came to church which was really cool because he had kind of just disappeared and he is really solid. We taught him the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Word of Wisdom afterwords and it went really well. He is really solid to be baptized if he can just resist the temptations of the Word of wisdom for the next two weeks. But he is super cool so it was really exciting. But yeah that was our week. I love you guys and hope you have a great week!!

Elder Burnside

And the March 28th Letter.  Start with pictures of investigator Timothy.

I am glad you are doing good. Sounds like you had all your meetings go well, I hope your ones this week go well too. Sounds like you all are having a great vacation.  Considering you almost forgot too email me lol. But everything is going well over here too.

We took Timothy to the VC, and he has been doing good with the Word of Wisdom. He is good to go for April 10th! But it was cool to see the spirit touch him so powerfully,that was the happiest I have ever seen him! He felt it so strong, that he brought his 9 year old cousin Jovann, and now he will be baptized with him on April 10th too! He is super excited to be baptized, and just absolutely loved primary. So we are excited for them, they are super solid. So that is going really well.  We had a lesson with Rammy this week. We did it all about prayer and shared our experiences about prayer, and watched a  video called Origin. We read 2 Nephi 32, and at the end we got him to pray in front of us, which was a big step. But he hasn't prayed as much as we would have liked when we followed up. But we recommitted him and he is praying about baptism now.  

Sorry this letter is short, I am running out of time, and can't think of much else that happened this week, It was mostly just fortifying those that we are teaching. But I love you guys and hope you have a great rest of vacation and a great week!!

Elder Burnside