September 26, 2016
We’ve been working a lot with seminary and institute here
helping to make the classes a bit stronger here. And we’ve been inviting a lot more people to
attend. This week we had a member that is named Melvin Lance. He’s from Bogota, and he’s teaching seminary
in the mornings. With the Bishop on
Sunday he contacted a youth named Jason.
He found him in the house of another family that are members, he’s a
cousin. We’ve been teaching him about
the gospel, and he got excited this week to go see a baptism. Then he went with them to mutual—that’s how
you say it, right? The weekly activity of the youth people? And he went to church on Sunday.
The Young Men’s president came with us to visit him. His brother is also doing all of the same
things. We’re hoping to get him coming
to seminary really soon, because once they get into seminary or institute and
start going every day, it makes it so much easier because they start making
friends, they learn about the gospel, they get ready super fast preparing for
their baptism and do everything they are supposed to do. Such cool programs!
This week we went to Santa Marta to see a member of the seventy
that came to visit, Elder Favabella sp? with
his wife. It was really great to meet
them. They taught us some really cool
stuff about how to help our mission baptize more, how to ask for references, how to use family
history, and other great tips. His
message was doctrine oriented and had some really good ideas for us to
use. His wife was very excited and and
so happy. She brought such a cool spirit
to the meeting. We stayed with the Zone
Leaders in Santa Marta--Elder Bustos (from Chile) and Elder Munos (from
Colombia). I know them both pretty
well. We had a fun time with them. They are really funny!
Thursday we went back to Barranquilla, again, for another
Leader’s Council. I feel like we have a
leader’s council every single week. And
we have not been able to proselyte in our area as much as we should. I feel really bad about that. We came back and did divisions every single
day trying to get back to see all of the good people we have been teaching.
We had a very sad experience with one of our investigators
that we were teaching. Her name is
Eliana. She’s been listening to us for a
while. She has a very strong testimony
of the Book of Mormon. She’s come to
church 5 times with her kids. But her
husband is really hard. He doesn’t want
to listen to us. He has no
interest. At one point, he did tell us that he
would be fine getting married to his wife so she could get baptized. But in the last two weeks he has put a lot of
pressure on her, and her extended family has been cracking down too, those who live
with them, and it’s been making her feel really bad. So she has decided to stop having us over and stop listening to the
messages. We were so sad. She has a strong testimony, she loves the gospel,
but all the social stuff won out. We
hope that one day she will be able to have the missionaries come again.
Elder Permenter came this week to help us with a problem
with one of the missionaries here in our zone. He’s an assistant to the
president. He came and stayed with us. He personally worked with this
missionary. Then he’s been working with
us. Since it was p-day, we took him
around our area and let him see some fun places and take lots of pictures. It was pretty fun.
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This week we have to go, again, to Barranquilla for a different
kind of training. This will make it
three weeks in a row. We are excited
that this weekend is General Conference.
We are going to teach everyone we can that the Prophet of God will be
speaking to all the world. After that,
we are going to be preparing for Fadis’ baptism.
I hope you guys are doing better this week. I’m sad to hear
Lizzy is a little depressed without Lady around. Hey, maybe you guys should consider getting a
new dog, maybe a puppy! Then Lizzy will be happy
again. It’s a great idea. You should definitely pray about it. : )
Talk to you later,
Elder Burk
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| The rules changed, so now we can play futbol like 3x a week! |
