Never give up, Never Surrender

Staying busy is the way to go. Sounds like this week has been full of lots of experiences all across the board. Ryan seems to be having fun battling his branch, which reminds me of my third area a lot actually. He will get through to them eventually. Never give up, Never surrender. I hope Brianne makes it into the concert so I can go up and see her in it. Also I hope Sara is doing well in school and staying away from those fungus-filled creatures. Life seems to be good over there.

To answer your questions quickly, I hadn't heard about speaking with Russell, but I know we had mentioned it before the mission as a "what if" so I would actually really enjoy that and I'm sure others may love it too. If it's possible that would be a request from my side as well. I know he doesn't get home until about two or three weeks after me, but it would be fun. I haven't heard from Brianne yet about BYU so I'll wait on that, and I also got the itinerary. This is crazy. I don't like that the tunnel is starting to have a very large visible light at the end now. In fact this week we had a zone conference and because I am departing before the next zone conference I was asked to bear my testimony at the end of it. Only one other Raleigh missionary bore his testimony with me. I remember looking up at the older missionaries when they were giving departing testimonies and wishing I could be like that one day. Now I'm here and I guess I have gotten to the point of conversion that they were at, but I don't want to be at this age. The conference was a rude awakening to how fast this has gone by. The "real world" is right around the corner.  I AM NOT TRUNKY THOUGH!!!

We are working hard here and learning a lot. Elder Merkley and I are having a lot of fun and because he is so young and really kind of needs to be retrained on a lot of things I am being kept on my toes. We have been finding getting ready to baptize people every day. My purpose is getting fulfilled every morning with my morning prayers, inviting myself to come closer to Christ and be better. I have a lot more to learn for sure, but as for my purpose I got that down. We did meet a lot more rude people this week and we dropped a lot of people, but the Lord blessed us with new people to teach. This area really isn't the most prime spot for Spanish work, but we are doing our best to work with the few we have. We are getting there though.

Mom we don't have a ton of youth in this ward actually and we also don't even spend a lot of time with the families, because we are the Spanish missionaries and we only have 1 Hispanic family in the ward. When we do eat with the English members we are always trying to find people for the other elders to teach as well, but in order for us to do what we have been assigned to do out here, it doesn't help too often to visit with the "English-speaking white folk". They are a blast to be around though. Well that is where we are at for now. I hope all is going well and if you have more questions let me know. :)

Con Amor,

Elder Burnham

P.S. The picture is from our last week's preparation day. We went and toured the lighthouse on Bodie Island. It was the closest to a beach I have been my whole mission. Talk about trunky... :)

xoxoxoxoxo