October 28, 2013

Dear loved ones,

This week has been a great week! We had heaps of stuff to do this week. We had so much food this last week I feel I am going to explode. And much of it was unplanned dinners and some from investigators. We have this family we have begun teaching that we met door knocking. The mother's name is Michelle. Last night we went over and had dinner with them and taught the first half of the plan of salvation. Her son and daughter both joined us. We were able to introduce the Book of Mormon to them and to give them a passage to read. I feel the lesson went very well. It was very interesting. I had my scriptures out on the table and they saw that my first name was Derek. They thought that was a big coincidence because the name of the father and grandfather of the children was Derek. Then they saw that my middle initial was A and they guessed Andrew. Andrew was the name of Michelle's brother who also passed away this year. That was when things got REALLY weird. I felt at that moment that I was the person that needed to teach these people the Gospel. That we had been led to this wonderful family and that I must do all I can to help them receive the great truths we have. There was no way this was just a coincidence. She always sends us home with more food we know what to do with. It is great! 

We got to go up to visit our investigator, Kent, who lives on a farm on Mt. Bruce (every thing around here is named after Dad I guess....). He was going to have us for dinner and watch the Joseph Smith movie. Unfortunately, he had some trouble with a cow that was giving birth. I guess they calf had died a couple days earlier and he didn't know. So he went to pull the calf out and the leg just tore off....he had to call the vet and get some help. It took them some time to get the calf out, much longer than it should have. I just remember Mom telling me that the only time she saw her dad get really upset was when birthing a cow. Now I can see why sometimes. We also got a little tour of the dairy shed. It was pretty cool!

On Friday we went just over the hill to do some volunteer work. We heard that it was at a go-kart track. But when we got there, we found out it was an outdoor karting league track. There were people from age 6 and up that were driving these karts around the track. It wasn't too good of a day for it though...it was pouring rain and very windy. The track way very slick. SO our jobs as volunteers was to be flag marshals. So if there was ever an "incident" on the track we were to hold out our yellow caution flags. I was at the end of a long straight were there was a tight hairpin turn. There were quite a few crashes and spinouts. It was very exciting and makes me kinda want to do it now! They are much faster and bigger than the little indoor ones. These ones were cool!

On sunday we went down to Upper Hutt (just over the mountains) to go to a special fireside. At this fireside we had a former All Blacks player speak of his conversion story. His name is Norm Hewitt. He had been investigating the church for 13 years before he and his family were baptized. He had some very rough times in his life where his rugby career got in the way of everything else and he really treated his family very poorly. But he shared some very good insight and it was great for everyone there. We had an investigator that wanted to go, Kent. He even offered to give us a ride! So we rode down and back with him. There he got to meet President and Sister Kezerian. I think he really enjoyed that and the fireside. On the way back he had some good questions that he asked us and we were able to answer. We are looking forward to his baptism on the 9th of Nov.

We did some service the other day. I don't know if you remember the lawn that I mowed a while ago that was really long but this one was even taller. Probably like 18 inches tall, no joke. The mower had some struggles sometimes but over all not too bad. The crazy thing was what happened to my companion. He was pulling some weeds near a wire fence. He reached down and pulled a handful out and accidentally grabbed the fence. He pulled up the weeds and got a gnarly cut on his pinky. You could see the huge chunk of flesh that he got cut out of his hand. I was pretty sure it needed stitches but he decided he was going to just put super glue on it. But we had no super glue. So he just put a bandaid on it until yesterday when we got super glue. It was pretty crazy. 

Well I think that is about it for this week. Pretty exciting stuff though! I hope all is going well back home! Oh also I am emailing on a Tuesday because yesterday was Labor day, a public holiday so the library was closed. That's why it's a day later! Love you lots!!!

Love,

Elder Burnham