October 20, 2013

Dear Friends and Family,

Well this week was the last full week of the transfer and today I found out what the transfer looked like. I am staying right here in Masterton! Our whole district is actually staying intact which is wonderful! I am excited to continue to work with the Elders and Sisters in my district and the people here in Masterton. It really is a wonderful little town and the month of November is going to be a very exciting one! We have a few baptisms on the horizon and other exciting things going on. This last week we went on exchanges with the Zone Leaders from Tuesday afternoon to Friday morning. I was with Elder Lawson, who actually grew up in the ward next to where he is serving right now. His family moved up to Auckland a couple years before he left on his mission. He thought he would never serve in this area of the mission but I guess it is the right place for him. It was really good to get to learn and grow from the things he has to share with me, as a younger and less experienced missionary. He told me that many of the struggles and challenges that I am facing right now, he remembers going through the same things. He helped me just to open up and talk with everyone I see. I even talked to a guy that was wearing a Tyreke Evans jersey. He had just gotten out of prison...but he is a less active member and asked us to pray with him before we left and talked to other people on the streets. It was interesting just praying right there on the street but a very neat experience too. 

Funny story. As we were leaving Masterton to go down to Upper Hutt, a suburb of Wellington, for exchanges we got a flat tire. What happened was we were going to stop and get some fish and chips. We passed the shop and so the driver turned around. One of the Zone Leaders was driving and he is a CRAZY driver. He whipped the van around super quick. I guess there was already a nail or something stuck in the tire and they knew about it but the little slide the back tires did caused the nail to be pulled out and the tire was rapidly losing air. So when we got to the fish and chips shop, my companion and I went in and ordered for the four of us while the zone leaders changed their tire. They have changed so many tires on their car that they finished changing the tire before the fish and chips were ready! And it was takeaway fish and chips! I was very impressed. So that is the funny story. Another funny but sad story. The crazy driver zone leader had the wheels and seat off of his bike stolen. We thought it may have been a joke by someone but when we learned it wasn't, it was kinda sad. He was "gutted" as they say here in New Zealand. Scary story. That same day we had to drive over the mountain range to get to the zone leaders area. There were several instances on this drive that I, no joke, thought we were going to catapult off the cliff to our deaths. This zone leaders is the most insane driver ever. And we were in a minivan! It was a very curvy road and while I was ok, my companion started to get sick. That part was kinda funny. On the way back though, he drive even slower than normal just for my companion haha. 

Things are going well over here though, overall. We have been fairly busy with stuff other than lessons so we hope to teach more lessons this week. But it will be good not having anyone be transferred because we don't have to drive down to Wellington to drop anyone off. Hopefully we can get lots of lessons to help these investigators with baptismal dates ready! There are several right now in the month of November. Some are very promising! We are working hard every day and loving every minute of it! One of the recent converts here just was called as a Ward Missionary. We really like him and he says he wants to serve a mission so we are going to bring him along to as many things as possible in order to help him reach that goal and so he can help fellowship people into the Church. We have also been having a ward basketball night for our investigators to come to but in the letter President Kezerian sent the whole mission, he clearly explained we are not to have Elder or Sister missionaries playing any sports with members, investigators, or nonmembers of the opposite gender. So we are going to have to cancel that but it was just for the month of October so it hopefully won't be too bad. 

Well that is about it for my week! It has been a pretty good one, very busy! I hope things are going well back home! I look forward to hearing from all of you next week!

Love,

Elder Burnham