Pictures!!

Along with his email this week, Elder Burdick sent a few pics…

baptism for Keyla Largo

Country Boys, LOL – Elder Green & Elder Burdick

 

Elder Green & Elder Burdick with Bishop Clark and Family

Last Two Weeks

Email 2/16/09 - We had a really good week here, i felt a little slow at Spanish right at first, but we are back in the full swing of things! Our zone is doing awesome right now! A lot of changes happened in these last transfers, and everyone is so excited to put stuff that happened in the past in the zone behind them and go to work! We had an amazing zone development meeting this week! It was based on zone unity and Elder Eyrings talk of Our hearts knit as one, with Elder Uchdorfs Lift where you stand! We had different examples and things we used, but what was really awesome is struggling missionaries in the past got up and bore their testimonies of how much they love the work, how much they are ready to do their part to be unified! Everyone was so involved in the meeting! The spirit was so strong! We have missionaries in this zone from all parts of the world and all walks of life, but it was amazing to see all of them coming together to be ONE! We have missionaries from Iran, from brazil, from Dominican Republic, Connecticut, California, Nevada, Colorado, Washington, Idaho :-), Utah, Tonga, and some others that i cant remember right now, we have a missionary that served as a marine for 5 years, we have college football and rugby players, missionaries from the poorest of poor families to the wealthiest of families, yet they all are humble and are ready to do the lords will! We also set goals as a zone for some of our key indicators, and this last week we tied the most new investigators found since la zona hispana was created, 56 new gators! Things are looking really good in the zone, everyone is so excited to make things happen! This week should be really good!

I love my new area, members, investigators, and My companion! We get along really good and he is a really good guy, and very funny! I am so excited to be serving with him! we have a lot of good things already happening! There is a recent convert family here that is so awesome the Largo family, missionaries tracted into them and in a matter of months the father and son were baptized, but we just barely set a date for the wife for THIS Sunday morning before church and her husband is going to be baptizing her! Yesterday at church in relief society they were talking about blessings they have received from missionary work, because the majority in there are all converts and sis largo got up and said " it has changed absolutely every aspect of my life, when the missionaries knocked on our door we were in the middle of a divorce, our family was falling apart, both of us had just lost our jobs, and our son was getting into bad stuff, but then the gospel came into our lives and has saved everything! This is the happiest i have ever been in my whole life, our marriage is better than ever, we have great jobs that we love, and our son is so happy and loves going to church! It was awesome to hear her testimony! We have some other good things going on here, and some dates to set asap! The zone leaders have full permission to talk to each other whenever, and so i get to talk to elder green every now and then, and our investigators are doing great there as well, i have already got permission to go back to viera for their baptisms! I am way excited! i am very thankful for this opportunity i have been given to serve here in this ward, in this companionship, and the missionaries in the zone! Please pray for the missionaries in la zona hispana!

i better go, we have a basketball game that was challenged from the English missionaries here, so we need to go and do some schooling :-) jk

Email 2/23/09 - We had an amazing week! I loved it! My Companion’s name is Elder Law, he is from Gilbert Arizona, he played football and volleyball in high school, he is about 6'1", reddish hair, and AWESOME! he only has 3 transfers left on his mission! And we are praying that we stay together for them! I would love that! We get along so good, he has become in just two short weeks, one of my best friends (after the fam, of course;) He is so funny, and we have such a good time! We are always laughing, and when we are finding, planning, or teaching the spirit is so strong! This week has been amazing! The lord is blessing us sooo much! Everything is going great! We had our baptism on Sunday morning and it went awesome! It was so cool seeing the foundation being laid for an awesome eternal family! Throughout the week we found 14 new investigators and we set baptismal dates with 3 of them!! For the sake of time i will give a brief summary of them! We found a less active part member family, and when we knocked on the door the father invited us right in, and before we could even get completely settled in on the couch he told us that we was so thankful that we came to his house, because he has been thinking a lot lately and he would love to get back in the church and also to baptize his son! It was so cool, so right there we set a longitudinal plan and set a date with requirements to be able to baptize his son, we are going to be teaching him twice a week! The next one was Lauren Gonzalez, we tracted into her on Tuesday and as we were doing a regular door contact she started crying, and when we asked her if there was anything that we could do for her, she told us that we already have! She said that she has been wondering if God really loves her enough to answer her prayers, because she had been praying for a few days to have a sign or to open her eyes, because she needs something, she didn’t know what, but she needed something, she knew that there were more out there, and then she testified to us that we were an answer to her prayers, we left her the Book of Mormon to read and we went back on Thursday and set a date for her baptism on the 15th of march! The third one was Gilberto Sanchez! We tracted into him yesterday after church and as soon as he opened the door, he was so friendly, he is a from the Dominican Republic, about late 50s early 60s, had a car accident years ago that left half of his face badly scared a damaged, but when he opened the door he invited us right in, at first we were thinking that he might be just a lonely guy needing someone to talk to, but before we could sit down again, he told us that our Temple in Dominican Republic is beautiful and the church just recently built another "worship building" (chapel) near him that he loved to look at, he told us that the missionaries in D.R. had taught him for a long time and he had received all the lessons, but was never baptized and lost contact with them, but he was still reading in the Book of Mormon, and he was currently in Alma! He was soo friendly and open that we could be completely open with him! We immediately asked him if he believed that the book of mormon is true "of course i do" if he believes Joseph Smith was a Prophet "no doubt in my mind" if he Believed that this church is the true church of God once again here on the earth, "i know it is" so then we asked him, Why aren’t you baptized? he was a little nervous and he told us that he has the desire but that he has always wanted to complete the Book of Mormon first! So we told him that he already knew all he needed to know to be baptized, but that we respect his requests, so we set appts to come every single day to read with him for 45 minutes and in 3 weeks he is going to be baptized when we finish it with him! He was so excited! i am so excited too! It is going to be awesome! We set his date for the 15th of march as well! This week has been so good! We have some pretty awesome goals as a companionship and we are ready to do our part and we know without a shadow of a doubt that the lord will do his! D&C 82:10 -Life is good-

The Zone is doing amazing! Every area is doing awesome in their companionships, we found 70 new investigators as a zone this week and set 11 new dates, with 1331 people contacted! and it is rolling over into all of our other key indicators! Everything is going so well! The lord is definitely blessing the Zone! We just gotta keep them all up and running! They still have so much more potential, they are amazing missionaries! I love all of them so much! They are all excited to go to work even harder this week!

Elder Burdick with Elder Law at the Couples Valentine’s party for our ward, we were invited to be greeters for the non members! (And picture takers)

Transferred

Things have been going great here! We were so stoked, we had 6 investigators at church, two of which have bap dates, and a couple of them were people we just tracted into! We had an awesome experience with Mark, he is a guy in his mid 30s that we tracted into earlier in the week, and right off the bat we knew that he was Golden, he asked us all the right questions, he has been on a soul search for the truth, and just by studying the bible on his own, he knows that the authority of God is important, so he asked where and how he can find it, and he asked about Prophets in our day, and he even said "this might sound a lil crazy but I believe there is a literal spirit world where our bodies go before resurrection, where we can continue to learn and grow! Anyway he showed up to church yesterday and loved it, he stayed the 3 hours, and then after church it was just him and us in the chapel teaching him for about an hour or so, he said I love all of it, I really do, I just want to know about Baptism! It was awesome!

Another one of our investigators that was at church that has a bap date is Kacy Kemp, she is 18 years old and is living on Patrick air force base, she just entered the air force 6 months ago and is from North Dakota! When one of our members out there (an R.M.:-) invited over to another members place to play board games she asked if there was going to be alcohol, because she wont come if there is, he said, "nope, we are all mormons" and she didn't know what that meant, she had never heard of the church before! Her father and mother raised them going to a number of different churches, mostly presbyterian, and she was very confused about religion growing up, but we have started teaching her, and she is flying through the Book of Mormon, and she LOVES it! She already believes it is true, and she is so excited to be baptized. in her own words "this time the right way and for good" It is awesome, I can totally see this becoming one of those stories where he baptizes her and they get married in the temple! I hope so at least:-)

Our other date is Beth Ryan, she has had a date before, but this time she said that she is ready to "cut the crap" and she is giving up smoking! She is being so stalwart and is doing so good!

Orlando Florida Mission Home

Things are going so good in this area, I am very sad to leave, I got the phone call on Saturday Morning, and President gave me a new assignment, there is a zone called La Zona Hispana, and it encompasses all of the spanish missionaries in all of the actual city of Orlando, all in all about 12 companionships i believe, anyway he wants me to go there and be a Zone Leader over there, he told me some of the challenges and problems they have been having there, and since I have never served in the city, he told me to go in and "fix it". I don't know exactly what has been going on, but I am very excited to be serving in the heart of Orlando, and since our spanish zone covers all of orlando, I will get to see the entire city! I am really excited to be in full time spanish work again to! And I get to see all of the missionaries from my mtc district that I haven't seen in 14 months! It is going to be great, I hear that this is the best spanish ward in the whole mission too! but I am so sad to leave this area, I love this area so much! I love our investigators and I feel intertwined with each and every one of them, and I feel like a family member of each family in the ward! Bishop called me up from the congregation to come and leave them with a talk and a testimony, I couldn't believe how hard that was to testify while looking at the ward and people I have come to love so much!  Last night we drove around after our lessons and I got to say goodbye to some of our investigators and members, I greatly dislike being transferred, you get so involved and intertwined with all of these people then you have to say goodbye! I know that I have friendships that will last a life time here! I am really sad about leaving my companion, Elder Green, he has become my best friend out here, I have always loved my companions, but we had a perfect companionship, I love him! I am going to be way sad to say goodbye, at least I will still see him at zone leader meetings and stuff!

My new apartment is about 1/4 mile from Pres and Sis Darrington's home and about 2 miles from the mission office, so as far as mail goes, just use the mission office address, it will get there really quick and I can just pick it up from there when we drive past.  I better go because i still have to do alot of packing, I love you all so much and I am praying for you!

Love,  Elder Burdick

Today's email

We had another really good week, finding 8 new gators (investigators) having 7 lessons in members homes, setting 1 date with someone for the first time, and having another person at church for the first time besides our "usuals":-)

we have had some really cold days this week, like down to 50 some days, poor me huh:-( Jk, I cant believe how much I have acclimated and my blood has thinned out, some mornings I wake up freezing! it will probably only get warmer from here!

Yesterday we had a cool surprise, our bishopric found out right before our pec meetings that David Archuletta (cant spell his last name, the really popular american idol kid) was in town visiting some members from Palm Bay and that he was going to do a fireside in rockledge at 6;30 that night, it was funny, everyone thought it was a joke to pull people away from the superbowl, but then our bishop called our stake president and it was real, I don't know much about this kid, but he must be a big deal, because there were soo many gasps when they announced it from the pulpit, and we have two high school age investigators that were not going to miss it for the world, so we were allowed to go, because it would be dead trying to do work during the superbowl! It was funny, we got there about 15 minutes prior and the stake center was already getting packed, I think that there was all of floridas young women there, anyway he showed up about 10 minutes late, and when he walked in, everyone stopped talking immediately, I didn't see the big deal, but then he sang a solo, and that was amazing!!! he sang be still my soul, one of my absolute favorite hymns, he was awesome, then he answered questions for about and hour, it wasn't too well organized because it was set up the morning of, but then he sang I know that my redeemer lives, and it was amazing again, it brought such a strong spirit, i love music, especially the hymns!

afterward he was signing and taking pics, and we had to leave to be home on time soo bishop clarks daughters were waiting in the HUGE line, so we gave them our little white books, and he signed one of the blank back pages, i guess he must be pretty popular, because they were making a really big deal out of it, i thought it was cool though that he would take an evening while on vacation to talk to the youth and help them understand what is "important" in life!

This video is from a fireside back in June 08, but I imagine this is what Sam heard. :)

Today's Email

hey fam! We had another really good week, finding 8 new gators (investigators) having 7 lessons in members homes, setting 1 date with someone for the first time, and having another person at church for the first time besides our "usualls":-) we have had some really cold days this week, like down to 50 some days, poor me huh:-( Jk, i cant believe how much i have climated and my blood has thined out, some mornings i wake up freezing! it will probably only get warmer from here! Yesterday we had a cool suprise, our bishopric found out right before our pec meetings that David Archuletta (cant spell his last name, the really popular american idol kid) was in town visiting some members from Palm Bay and that he was going to do a fireside in rockledge at 6;30 that night, it was funny, everyone thought it was a joke to pull people away from the superbowl, but then our bishop called our stake president and it was real, i dont know much about this kid, but he must be a big deal, because there were soo many gasps when they announced it from the pulpit, and we have two high school age investigators that were not going to miss it for the world, so we were allowed to go, because it would be dead trying to do work during the superbowl! It was funny, we got there about 15 minutes prior and the stake center was already getting packed, i think that there was all of floridas young women there, anyway he showed up about 10 minutes late, and when he walked in, everyone stopped talking immediatly, i didnt see the big deal, but then he sang a solo, and that was amazing!!! he sang be still my soul, one of my absolute favorite hymns, he was awesome, then he answered questions for about and hour, it wasnt too well organized because it was set up the morning of, but then he sang i know that my redeemer lives, and it was amazing again, it brought such a strong spirit, i love music, especially the hymns! afterward he was signing and taking pics, and we had to leave to be home on time soo bishop clarks daughters were waiting in the HUGE line, so we gave them our little white books, and he signed one of the blank back pages, i guess he must be pretty popular, because they were making a really big deal out of it, i thought it was cool though that he would take an evening while on vacation to talk to the youth and help them understand what is "important" in life! anyway, i better go, i hope that you have a great week, i love you soo much, and i am praying for you! thank you for all you do!
love,Elder Burdick