Family and Friends, its been another week here in El Salvador. What a blessing it is to be here serving a mission. I honestly do not know where the time goes. I feel like I write leave then I am writing again the next day. The time is passing faster and faster every week. So this is whats going on this week! We are having a baptism for Brenda the 27th of this month! SO next Monday I will have some cool baptismal pictures if everything goes well! Its super cool because she is part of a partial member family. Her two sisters were baptized and they are recent converts. Now a few months later Brenda is accepting the gospel of Jesus Christ. It just goes to show that God gives us our agency, and that everyone has their time and place to follow the example of Jesus Christ our Savior and be baptized. I had a thought this week that I would like to share.
Its super awesome how missionary work works. God puts missionaries, young men and women, into places to share the gospel. God doesn't force anyone to accept Him, he just has people share the message of the restored gospel and gives people the choice. Then, those who are ready, accept to follow Jesus Christ and are taught and baptized. Its subtle. Its not someone going around with a megaphone screaming "hey follow God!" Its 2 young men or 2 young women inviting individuals to come unto Christ. Anyways I thought that was cool.
Something else that is cool that happened this week is that on Friday I had the chance to go on interchanges and be the senior companion for a day. Which means that I worked in my area and was with a different missionary for a day. It was super cool! His name is Elder Albizurus and he doesn't speak hardly any English. Like he can say hello and that is about it so it was super cool to see how much my Spanish has improved because we didn't have any problems at all with communicating. The thing that I really want to mention is that we were doing LPE, which means lessons to find, and we found a family that said we could come back to teach them! So we basically knocked a random door and the family let us in to teach a little bit and said we could come back another day to teach which is super super cool.
So a funny story that happened a few weeks ago that I forgot to mention: a few weeks ago was fast Sunday, and this lady got up to bear her testimony which was super cool! But the funny part is that I noticed her shirt, because it wasn't a church looking shirt it was just a normal shirt, and it said "I love my tattoo artist", haha! It was super funny to me because as I was hearing her bear her testimony I was the only one in the whole chapel who knew what her shirt said. because a lot of the time the people here wear shirts with words in English but they don't know what the shirt says its pretty funny.
yesterday, I had to give a talk in church. It was terrifying because it was in Spanish and it was my first time giving a talk in the mission. But it was good, I was suppose to talk for 10 min but I only talked for 7 which is fine I did well. A lot of people told me I gave a good talk and that they understood it which made me happy. I talked about fellow shipping and about how as members of the church we all have the responsibility to help each other be stronger and happier in the Gospel. Because God dint give us the Gospel just for us he gave it to us to share with others.
So to end I would like to say that I am learning a lot more about humility here on the mission. This week I saw people who didn't even have food to eat and that made me realize that I have so much. It made me think of a song that we sing in church. It goes, "because I have been given much I too must give". I must have sung that song 100 times but now that statement rings clearer than ever before. We as members of the church have the responsibility to serve others.
I promise you that if you are reading this you have a lot more than a lot of other people in the world have, we in the United States are extremely blessed. I am not saying this to make anyone feel bad, I just want everyone to realize how blessed we are. To have food to eat alone is a privilege and blessing that not everyone in the world has. For this we need to follow the example of Jesus Christ the best we can through service and keeping his commandments. I love you all, thank you for all that you do for me and for all of your prayers. I would like to hear from more of you, I want to hear how you are doing. Thanks for all of the support, especially my family. I love you guys!
Elder Burris
Its super awesome how missionary work works. God puts missionaries, young men and women, into places to share the gospel. God doesn't force anyone to accept Him, he just has people share the message of the restored gospel and gives people the choice. Then, those who are ready, accept to follow Jesus Christ and are taught and baptized. Its subtle. Its not someone going around with a megaphone screaming "hey follow God!" Its 2 young men or 2 young women inviting individuals to come unto Christ. Anyways I thought that was cool.
Something else that is cool that happened this week is that on Friday I had the chance to go on interchanges and be the senior companion for a day. Which means that I worked in my area and was with a different missionary for a day. It was super cool! His name is Elder Albizurus and he doesn't speak hardly any English. Like he can say hello and that is about it so it was super cool to see how much my Spanish has improved because we didn't have any problems at all with communicating. The thing that I really want to mention is that we were doing LPE, which means lessons to find, and we found a family that said we could come back to teach them! So we basically knocked a random door and the family let us in to teach a little bit and said we could come back another day to teach which is super super cool.
So a funny story that happened a few weeks ago that I forgot to mention: a few weeks ago was fast Sunday, and this lady got up to bear her testimony which was super cool! But the funny part is that I noticed her shirt, because it wasn't a church looking shirt it was just a normal shirt, and it said "I love my tattoo artist", haha! It was super funny to me because as I was hearing her bear her testimony I was the only one in the whole chapel who knew what her shirt said. because a lot of the time the people here wear shirts with words in English but they don't know what the shirt says its pretty funny.
yesterday, I had to give a talk in church. It was terrifying because it was in Spanish and it was my first time giving a talk in the mission. But it was good, I was suppose to talk for 10 min but I only talked for 7 which is fine I did well. A lot of people told me I gave a good talk and that they understood it which made me happy. I talked about fellow shipping and about how as members of the church we all have the responsibility to help each other be stronger and happier in the Gospel. Because God dint give us the Gospel just for us he gave it to us to share with others.
So to end I would like to say that I am learning a lot more about humility here on the mission. This week I saw people who didn't even have food to eat and that made me realize that I have so much. It made me think of a song that we sing in church. It goes, "because I have been given much I too must give". I must have sung that song 100 times but now that statement rings clearer than ever before. We as members of the church have the responsibility to serve others.
I promise you that if you are reading this you have a lot more than a lot of other people in the world have, we in the United States are extremely blessed. I am not saying this to make anyone feel bad, I just want everyone to realize how blessed we are. To have food to eat alone is a privilege and blessing that not everyone in the world has. For this we need to follow the example of Jesus Christ the best we can through service and keeping his commandments. I love you all, thank you for all that you do for me and for all of your prayers. I would like to hear from more of you, I want to hear how you are doing. Thanks for all of the support, especially my family. I love you guys!
Elder Burris