Two Weeks of Busy, Crazy, Incredible 02/08/16

Hello! I am going to try to cram like two weeks worth of content into this email.

Whoo hoo! Super Bowl.  I honestly would not have paid a ton of attention to the Super Bowl even if I was home, but I am so out of the loop here that I didn't even know that it happened only 30 minutes from my house. haha.  Sounds like the half-time show was pretty good though.  

Last Monday, Elder Rivadeneira left the office officially and Elder Johnson finished his training as the new membership secretary.  He has been a really awesome companion and he is my second American companion (he is from Utah).  

Last week we finished all the multi zone conferences.  I ended up missing the first part of my conference because we had some immigration emergencies.  Sandra called me and told me that two certificates to be able to take out missionaries' residencies were going to expire in two days, so we ended up scrambling around to make sure we could take these missionaries to immigration before the expiration date.  We had to strategically plan the two days we had so that the missionaries would not miss their multi zone conferences.  We had one group go on Wednesday and the other on Thursday.  Everything worked out in the end, like it usually seems to do.  

The next night after the conference, a ton of missionaries got really sick and were throwing up, and it turned out that they got food poisoning from the meal we had at the conference.  oops..We kept getting notification after notification that missionaries were really sick.  Including Elder Bingham.  The rest of us in the office didn´t get sick though.  

On Saturday (Jan 30), President had some important meeting with all the bishops and stake presidents in the mission.  So on Friday night we were all in the office working like crazy preparing all kinds of presentations and graphs and data about the missionary statistics in every ward/branch and stake/district for 2014 and 2015.  So we were in the office SUPER late getting all of that ready.  We were all starving and we jokingly asked President if we could go to Denny´s (because it was the only place open) and he said YES.  I was so surprised. I think he felt kind of bad for making us stay in the office so late.  He told us to be careful. haha.  So here we were, six missionaries eating at Denny's at 2:00 am in Tegucigalpa.  And this was a brand new Denny´s that they opened near the airport.  It had only been open for a few days.  And that was about the time that all the food poisoning took effect.  Elder Bingham got to break in the brand new toilet in the Denny´s bathroom.  So that was a really interesting night.  

Also on Saturday, we were able to go to the Temple.  It had been 7 months since the last time I went, so that was really refreshing.  Elder Johnson and Elder De La Rosa both brought family names to the temple. so that was really cool to help them out.  We even got to do initiatories. That was really cool,  because I hadn't done that in a really long time.  And it was in Spanish.  Brother Matkin (the new couple missionaries from Canada) was in charge of the session, so it was cool  to see him.  I love going to the temple because there is such a strong spirit and I always get motivated to work harder in the mission field.   

When we left the temple, there was an IMMENSE traffic jam on the highway.  To the point where people would turn there cars off because no one was moving for ten minutes at a time.  After almost three hours, Elder Johnson and I decided to just walk home.  We weren't too far and it would have been much faster.  I don´t really know why, but the highways in Honduras have nice paved sidewalks on the highways, like it is a normal thing to walk down the highway.  We got back to the house in like 25 minutes and the other elders got home about 15 minutes after us.  They somehow managed to get the truck over the median on the highway, and drove the other way and found anther route home. haha.  The rest of the cars remained stuck on the highway.  We found out the next day the cause of the traffic.  The trailer of a huge semi-truck somehow skidded off the truck and fell on top of a car and completely crushed it.  The two people in the car were both killed.  So that was kind of scary.  

On Saturday we had the baptism for Jina and her son Manuel!!!  Everything was going perfectly well until they arrived.  We realized we didn't have any baptismal clothing that would work for her.  So were were kind of just sitting there for a while like...what do we do.  Then Elder Bingham had the idea to stop by the temple and ask the Christensens to find a temple dress that would work.  They ran by and were able to pick it up.  We ended up starting the baptism an hour late, but everything after went really well.  It was a really great service.  Elder Rivadeneira was able to come and do the ordinance for Jina.   She bore such an incredible testimony. She and her family are such great people.  It was amazing to see so many things fall into place so fast for this to happen.  She received so much guidance from our Heavenly Father and so much help from the members in the ward.  so many miracles!  

This has honestly been the start of a really good transfer.  There have been so many things happening.  A new companion, two new secretaries and a new assistant in the office, a new (and really motivated) ward mission leader, and the trip to the temple.  We have been working harder in our area and have been really seeing some potential.  We are meeting so many new incredible people.  Things seem really good right now.

Have a great week!  I hope all you football people enjoyed the Super Bowl.  

- Elder Burnham

 

 

New Companion 01/25/16

Hello!  Just kidding, Elder Rivadeneira has transfers!  We found out on the day of changes.  President kept it on the down low for some reason, so Elder Rivadeneira is leaving the office and training the new secretary this week.  My new companion is Elder Johnson. He is from Utah.  Now just within the office (including the assistants) we have Elder Duncan, Elder Bingham, and Elder Johnson who ALL went to the same high school and were friends before the mission.  So that is kind of crazy.  Who knew that this would happen on your mission? haha.

This week was kind of a rush, I am trying to remember all what happened.  We got through transfers pretty good.  It was interesting not having a transfers meeting.  In fact, we seemed not to be so busy.  Wednesday we had like three trips to the airport to drop off the missionaries that were returning home.  Then one more on Thursday morning.  It is not the funnest thing to have to take people to the airport to catch their 6:20 am flights.  That means we have to get up early...But that is the nice thing about having four secretaries, we don´t all have to go. So I ended up getting to sleep in until 6:30 on Wednesday morning. 

Thursday morning is a different story.  I must have had some kind of food poisoning because I was in the bathroom at 3:00 am throwing up.  I still didn't go to the airport but I was awake while everyone else was getting ready to go.  I am pretty much back to normal. I think it was just some stomach bug.  Pepto-bismol came in handy. haha.  

On Thursday night we met with Gina and her boys.  She is one of those people who loves to talk so she is speaking like 80% of the time during the lessons.  Which is fine because she is always talking about spiritual experiences.  She has been able to notice so many blessings in her life recently which has been so amazing to hear about. She has been reading the Book of Mormon and wanted to share with us some verses that she was reading and how she was able to apply what she learned to her current situation. We decided to invite her to be baptized and she said yes before Elder Rivadeneira even finished his sentence.  She then went on about how she was going to make her own white dress for the baptism. Why can´t there be more investigators like her? haha  She and her three sons are amazing and I hope to see them continue to progress.

Last Wednesday, we had the missionary conference broadcast.  We got to hear from some general authorities.  They seemed to be really focused on teaching repentance and teaching with members. They had a chart that showed the higher percentages of success that the missionaries have when working with members rather than finding people to teach with their own efforts. 

Today, tomorrow and Thursday we have multi-zone meetings, so yesterday we were scrambling around to get everything ready for that.  We have our meeting on Thursday, so that should be good.  I was already able to see a sneak peak of what the assistants are going talk about. haha.

- Elder Burnham

Staying in the Office...

Transfers are tomorrow!  I´m not going anywhere, haha.  Neither are Elder Rivadeneira or Elder Bingham.  Only Elder Olmedo, but that is because he is finishing his mission and returning home.  My ´´son´´ Elder Gomez is going to train this transfer and also be a district leader! My boy is growing up! haha.  On Wednesday we are supposed to have a worldwide missionary meeting with Elder Oaks.  It is going to be some kind of international broadcast to ALL missionaries.  We´ll see what that is all about.  

Last Thursday I had another trip to immigration.  But we only had to register three missionaries for residency.  We also had a mini missionary with us there.  He is from Zambrano (one of my old areas) and he was taking out his passport so he can send in his mission papers! Exiting!  While we were there, there was another elder waiting for his companion. While he was waiting, he took out one of those plastic recorder flutes and started playing church hymns...just in the middle of the waiting area in immigration haha.  I thought that one of the workers was going to get annoyed and tell him to stop, but they didn´t.  That was fun, and he wasn´t bad at all.  

On Saturday night, we get a text message at 10:30 from the 1st counselor in the bishopric asking if i could give a talk the next day! Talk about late notice, but it was fine. haha  It was open topic too.  I decided to talk about Charity because I like to talk about how we all need to serve and love each other and be happy.  Yay!  If you want to learn more about charity you should go study Moroni 7 and 1 Corinthians 13.  

Have a great week!

- Elder Burnham

¡HOLA! I hope you all had a great week.

¡HOLA! I hope you all had a great week.  I had another lovely day going to Immigration will 11 missionaries for their residencies.  But I was only there for 5 hours this time, haha.  I was with Elder Duncan because he was one of the missionaries taking out his residency.  The immigration building is right next to a big mall, so afterwards we went to JOHNNY ROCKETS! haha That is not somewhere I thought I would go eat while on my mission.  It was kinda pricey, but so worth it!  That day I completed an entire year in the mission field so we decided it was a good excuse to go eat there, haha.  I ate the most (and only) delicious BBQ bacon onion-ring pepper jack cheese burger in all of my mission.  So that made a stressful and boring day into a better one. 

As I mentioned last week, we are teaching Jina and her three sons.  Last Saturday, they were in the hospital because Luis (the mute son) had heart complication.  I didn´t quite understand what the problem was, but it sounded like he had a heart attack.  But that doesn´t make much sense for a 16 year-old boy to be having heart attacks.  It was some kind of stress/anxiety induced heart complication.  It must have not been a big deal because he was back later that night and was doing fine.  It was just a little stressful, but we should be able to go visit all of them again pretty soon. 

On P-day we went back down south to Sabana Grande to go cook pupusas at a members house with the missionaries that are serving down there (where Elder Alvarado is serving).  It was fun, we just got to hang out and kind of each take turns making pupusas.  They turned out pretty good, and we ended up with a ton of leftovers haha.  Later that day we went to this really random place that Elder Rivadeneira went to when he served in this area.  I am still kind of confused to what this place was supposed to be.  It was up on this hill where there are a ton of those giant wind turbines and you can see all of Tegucigalpa from a distance.  They had this giant cross that looked to be made out of old junk and car parts.  And little spots dedicated to different religions and philosophies like Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and others.  Then there was this little house/museum with random relics from the past and more religious artifacts I guess you could say.  The people that owned the place were LDS and had copies of the book of Mormon in various languages and pamphlets out on display too.  They also had donkeys walking around on the property and they kept coming up to us and were sticking their heads inside our car! haha.  It was a really random, but neat place that we would have never even had known existed if my comp hadn´t already known about it. 

Elder Olmedo goes home this transfer so we already have a new secretary training in the office.  He is Elder De la Rosa and is from Mexico.  He seems pretty cool.   Yep, transfers are next week, so life might be getting a little crazy pretty soon.  I probably will have two more transfers here in the office. We´ll see.  

Have a great week!

- Elder Burnham

Happy New Year! 01/05/16

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year!  Yeah that was all a week ago and stuff.  I hope everyone had a good time.  Yup.  I got to eat two more times with the Christensen´s for Christmas and New Years.  The AP´s were invited for Christmas dinner, but one of them was busy in the office and couldn´t go, and that whole mission companion thing meant that someone else had to go.  Oh darn, I guess I had to go eat Elder Luquez´s meal and visit the Christensen´s haha.  We had the traditional ham with mashed potatoes and other delicious things. We were all invited the second time for New Years and had teriyaki chicken and rice. They like to cook things that you won´t come across in Honduras. 

We were just in our house on New Year's eve, but everyone in the world was setting off firecrackers and fireworks the whole night.  We have a pretty decent view from the house and the world went crazy at midnight. haha.   P-day was really boring because we didn´t really do anything. haha.  But P-day LAST week was pretty fun.  We went down to Sabana Grande and they have this little zoo.  They had lions and mountain lions and other neat animals.  I always find it so funny when I see a raccoon in a zoo as if it were some kind of rare or exotic animal.    

We are teaching this lady Jina, and her three sons, who are all teenagers.  I love them all.  She basically grew up going to church, but never really kept up with it, never was baptized.  She is one of those investigators that already feels like a member.  In fact, the second counselor in the bishopric thought she was a member and took her out of class so he could look for her records.  They had no luck. haha.  Her middle son is mute, so that has created an interesting perspective on how we should teach and communicate with him.  At first I thought that he was just a really quiet guy, but then I realized that he actually can´t speak.  Awkward on my part, but he is really awesome.  We talked to their neighbor and he ended up knowing Elder Torres (my trainer) when he was in this area. Neat.  

Yep, that´s all I can think of in this moment. haha.  Have a great week.  

Elder Burnham

 

P.S.  Tomorrow I will complete one year in the mission field. what?