Mission Pictures

 Pre-Mission lunch at J-Dawgs with friends: Junie Havea, Heather Robinson, Travis Bloomfield, and Losa DeLeon.

 MTC roommate picture

 MTC Companion- Elder Ingram

 Awarding good behavior at the MTC- cookies for clean rooms

 District done Joker style

 Welcome to Washington!

Letter Home- October 2nd, 2012

The flight to Tacoma was crazy. I'm pretty sure I was shaking the entire way, but I made it.

I'm so glad that President and Sister Weaver have been giving you updates on how I'm doing. They are seriously the nicest people I have ever met and I absolutely love them.

My first area is Bremerton, Washington.It's beautiful: right on the sound and the weather is fantastic. I have two trainers right now (Elder West and Elder Thornton) and a third companion (Elder Jones).  Elder Thornton has been out for about a year and is an incredible missionary.  He's from Missouri. He's a really good example and has been helping me a lot through this crazy transition. Elder West is from South Weber, Utah and he's been out for about 22 months. He's way funny and works really hard. Elder Jones is from Layton, Utah. He's only been out for 10 months. He's a little more quiet but he's super nice and works hard as well. It's kinda weird being in a Quad, but we get twice the work done so it's alright. They're all super amazing missionaries and are great examples to me.

Work here has been crazy hard, but super rewarding. Our goal this term is to baptize weekly. I know that if we really devote ourselves to the work we can get it done. We even had a couple investigators make it out to church yesterday which was a really neat experience.

The members seem super sweet. We are working on gaining their trust so they can help us out more, so far it seems like they're responding really well. We've have two dinner appointments so far and I think we have another one tonight.  Apparently, the missionaries here aren't used to having dinner appointments.  Hopefully that changes :)

I've been trying to notice small miracles each and every day as we are out trying to spread the gospel. This past Thursday Elder Jones and I were tracting and I decided we should go over to the park in our area. It just so happened that there was a farmers market getting set up so we offered to help anyone out that we could. We helped this one girl, A____, and got to talking a little bit. She stated how she was actually praying earlier that day for someone to help her set up since it's a pretty big task. It's crazy knowing that we were the answer to her prayer.

Being a missionary is crazy hard. I'm not used to getting doors slammed in my face, having people yell at me, and getting told I'm working for the devil. I know that what I'm doing here is good work. Hopefully people start to lighten up a bit and realize that we aren't forcing them to do anything. We are simply inviting others to come closer to Christ.

I love you so much and hope you're doing well. I miss you like crazy, but it's great to hear from you and know of the love and support I have while I'm here.

-Elder Burton

Letter from Mission President