Email from 12/29/08

Things are going really good here, we are getting ready to wrap up the month and the year in the zone and mission so we are super busy with paper work and getting goals ready for the 2009 year, our mission has changed soo much in just one year, it is really neat everything that is happening, i am excited for our zone leader council this weekend in orlando, as we review our goals and outcome from 2008, i am excited for what 2009 is going to hold!
I love the Christmas season, i just get frustrated with the work during it! The week of Christmas is soo hard to set return appts to teach people, because all of them say "after the holidays", so this week should be really really good for all of the appointments we set! Last night we taught a big group of spanish guys and we set two baptismal dates for january! We have alot more dates to set for this coming month, so things are looking really good for this next transfer! Speaking of next transfer, we got transfer calls this last saturday and Elder OBrien is leaving, he is being released as a zone leader and is going to southern orlando, it was crazy how fast this transfer went by, when i look back to this transfer it is going to be like a blink! I found out that my new companion is Elder Green :-) this will be his first transfer as a zone leader, so it will be fun going through the ropes with him, i have never met him or even seen him before, so tomorrow i get to meet him! But President told me that he is a solid missionary and that he is on fire right now! So things are going to be awesome this transfer!

Merry Christmas!

email from 12/15/08

Things are going great here, there was a spanish family that showed up last week at the spanish branch, so i set up an appointment to go back and teach them this week, and when we went there, we started talking about the restoration and the book of mormon, and he pulled out his own copy that missionaries had given him a long time ago and told me that he had read all of first and second Nephi, and he knows that it is true! Then he asked me what he has to do to be baptized! It was amazing! Ivan has been soo prepared by the lord! He wants to be baptized on Christmas Eve but we dont know yet, hopefully it will follow through, if not then, it will be short after, I love the power of the Book of Mormon! I recently started over again and it amazes me how much new things you learn everytime! I love it, if people would just humble themselves and pray about it they would know!
We have some awesome christmas activities going on in the ward, last saturday we had the ward christmas party and we had about 5 investigators show up! It was awesome, they asked us to be shepherds, and they made us sing a duet:-( oh well, this ward has alot of extremely talented musicians, so they made up for it!

bits and pieces from 12/01/08

We had a good week, we ended up eating three thanksgiving dinners, and i thought that i was going to die, but we still worked really hard, we didnt want missionaries just turning thanksgiving into a lolligag day so we challenged the entire zone to see who could talk to the most people on thanksgiving day, and we ended up with 88 contacts, it was pretty fun getting soo excited over everyone in sight! The zone is doing really really good, we are looking at reaching numbers for the month of December with soo many dates than cocoa has had in such a long time at least a couple of years! It is going to be exciting! We have two baptisms this saturday with a part member family that we have been working with since before i got here, but they are finally ready, and they are sooo excited, there names are Jonathan and Daniel Hayasaka! They are a great family, it is going to be really good! This week we had the Turkey Trot Run for the JDRF foundation that a bunch a church members put on, and there were about 470 runners, it was intense, some ran like it was the olympics, we just helped out wherever we could, it wasnt sooo much that they needed our help as much as it was a good opportunity for missionary work and people recoginizing us from such a good cause!This week Pres and Sis Darrington came and spoke in our ward, and everytime they speak in a ward they get members even more excited about missionary work, and they generated about 50 referrals, so that was really exciting! It is really nice in this ward, the members really trust us with their nonmember friends and family, and that is soo helpful!

Email from 11/03/08

We recently met with our stake president here to go over our zone/stake goals and concerns, and his name is President Humphreys, his mom still lives in Montpelier IDAHO, and he said that he grew up working in a podunk middle of nowhere place called GENEVA, and he couldnt believe it when i told him that i know where that is and that i have friends from there:-) It was neat, he knew alot of the older people from the valley.

This week i recieved a phone call from my last area that one of the investigators that wanted to be baptized but couldnt because he was on probation, was going to be baptized on last saturday, he was way cool, when we first found him he was in the pits, he was smoking, drinking, and sitting around all day long, he has since got his hair cut, cleaned up, broke all of his addictions, and basically changed his life around, it was sad that he couldnt get baptized, but he had a special interview with President Darrington, and was found ready and worthy to be baptized, and he had prayed about it and decided that he wanted me to baptize him, it is almost a two hour drive, but president gave me permission if i could find a ride from here with a priesthood holder, so i was able to go back to apopka this week and baptize him, it was a sweet reunion! I am really happy for him!

We received this 10/20/08

It was another amazing week here! First off, on Wednesday night we had an investigator fireside in Orlando as part of Elder Johnson, of the seventy) (the british one), as part of his mission tour, we were able to go out there with a member and take beth ryan to it, it was amazing, it was one straight hour of spiritual power, it was crazy i was actually exhausted afterward, he just laid it all out on the line! Then on friday we had our zone conference down in Palm Bay, for all of the south missionaries, It was amazing, General authorities are definently different when they arent behing the general conference pulpit, Elder Johnson has such a great personality! It was such and spitiual and fun zone conference, he kept calling people at random to do things, and he called me up and said Elder Burdick, bear us your testimony, my heart started to beat, and so i said a little prayer in my heart, and all of a sudden everything was sooo calm, like i was on the beach or something! Words were put in my mouth! After zone conference he met with the zone leaders, there were only four of us for the south, so it was just us and Elder Johnson and President Darrington in a room, that was awesome as well, i got to have a great conversation with him and being a missionary and he gave me some great advice, i got a picture with him to, that i will try to send asap.

Bits and Pieces from his email on 10/14/08

Well here i am in Viera, and still alive, it is definently different from my last area! But i love it already, i have met alot of the members here and they are awesome, there is WAY too much money here on the coast, but the members remain soo humble and kind! Alot of members work out on beach side at NASA or other really big industries. This ward is exactly like a Utah ward, it is very functional and well led, the bishop like i said is from idaho falls, he is awesome! I already love all of the members here. We live in Melbourne, which is actually like 5 miles south of our southern border, we live with the two melbourne elders, Viera is a very new area, only like 4 years old, and the ward here was formed last year when they built the brand new building! My new apartment is considerably worse, i got too spoiled with the nicest apartment in the mission last transfer, oh well, i feel like i am "roughin" it a little more now:-)

Although i really miss the families and investigators from my last area, i know that this is where i need to be and what i need to be doing! My companions name is elder Johnson, he only has like 4 months left in the mission, but it looks like we will be together for those four months, he is a great Elder and we work really good together, i am really excited to be serving with him in this area! It turns out that there is a spanish branch near here that hasnt had missionaries in like 6 months, and president and the aps didnt realize that when they called me here, and so we got clearence to work with them to, two nights ago we went and visited the branch president and his wife, and told them that i would be working with them in the spanish work, and she said, that that day in testimony meeting she told the small group that if they had faith that the lord would bring missionaries to help them, It is amazing how the lord works, i KNOW that this is his work!