Love yall!!

Well the country is slowly but surely growing on me. I am super impressed how important it is to these people to have three things: a huge garden, a tractor, and a church. I love the people out here and the work is going well. This ward is a little slow when it comes to doing missionary work, but we are changing that quickly. I think it is because of the massive amount of less active members that belong to this ward. It is crazy how many people we find out are members or are excommunicated members or members that want their records removed and so on. It is so sad that we have to do a ton of focusing on the rescue effort here. I don't have a problem with it since an apostle of the Lord said that rescuing is just as important as baptizing, but it is just depressing dealing with all these sad stories and horrible excuses of being offended and stuff like that. Plus they are all white people so I don't speak as much Spanish as I used to. But we are working hard and trying to find as many people as we can while working on the rescue effort. I love the people out here and luckily they love us too. It was funny because Saturday my companion and I had planned to spend quite a bit of time finding Hispanics and visiting some less actives and we had gotten that done pretty quick since not too many were home at that time, so I suggested we go to the ghetto part of the city where some members won't even take us. My companion was hesitant and kind of scared, but I convinced him so off we went to visit the ghetto. I don't know why, but I love teaching and talking with the black people. All my companions are scared of that work, but I get a kick out of it. I guess it just spices up the day. Anyway the second house we visited there was an older couple and their granddaughter. I contact them and the man first says to me, "Boy, do you know what block you are on?" And I just responded without thinking, "Well, this one." Then I continued talking about our message. He just laughed at me and didn't want anything to do with it, but his wife said she would hear us out. So we taught her and her granddaughter the restoration and even set up a return appointment. I just feel so comfortable over there. Probably too comfortable. After that lesson we walked further down the street and talked to some more crazy people, but no one too receptive.

Um, let's see this week, we had our last zone conference with President Cotterell on Wednesday. That was the last day our zone will ever see the Cotterells as missionaries. There he pulled up President Bernhisel's Mormon.org page and we read it as part of the conference. My comp and I get the feeling that he will be a little softer than Pres. Cotterell. He is an infertility doctor. You all should read his and his wife's page and let me know what you think. 

Anyway other than that the only other highlight of the week was doing service up at a girls camp up here and using a zero turn lawn mower to mow the giant field. It's like four wheeling and mowing a lawn at the same time how great is that! 

Well that was pretty much my week. It was a good one and I am learning so much out here. I am so thankful for the people that are searching for the truth and that I get to help them find it. Which reminds me, we had two investigators at church this week and that was a miracle! Plus I could tell they really enjoyed it even though we had to translate the talks for them through headsets. Oh yeah the missionaries do everything in the ward that is related to Spanish work. It's a little frustrating that so much is pawned on to us because the ward is struggling on trying to figure out how to be a functioning ward, but we work hard and help everywhere we can. 

Well I love you all and I'm glad to hear the trip was fantastic and that life is just dandy. Keep working hard and keep the love coming. 

Con Amor,

Elder Burnham