March 17, 2014

Email March 17, 2014 – Elder Kenneth Wm. Burton

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Bunch of Burtons

Happy St. Patricks day everyone! I had no idea today was St. Patricks until last night when a member invited us over to a St. Patricks day party/ eating apointment for tonight. I would have gone straight through the week and not even know. A lot sneeks up on you when your busy. This weeks been way busy. Elder Johnson and I went through our area book and Kraked everyone we didnt know. Krack is a danish website that has the address and phone number for everyone in Denmark. It makes it fairly easy to find out if people have moved or not, or if you were just given false information. Now we are able to visit all the past investigators without worring about if they still live there.

Starting Wednesday we have been taking an hour in the evenings just to contact people on the street using family history. Its amaizing how many more people actually let you talk to them once they realize your not talking about God. We've talked to a lot of people who right off the bat say their not interested, then I pull out my family fan chart from familysearch and all of a sudden the're willing to listen. We've given out at least five family search cards a day sense Wednesday and usually we'll get lucky to give out one or two a week.

 I was reading a talk in the Liahona by Eduardo Gavarret of the Seventy called Prepared Against the Day of Battle, which I'll email seperatly if anyone wants to read it. And old English parable in the talk says...

For want of a nail, a shoe was lost,

For want of a shoe, a horse was lost,

For want of a horse, a battle was lost,

For want of a battle, a kingdom was lost,

And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

The story is about a king in battle whose horse was not properly shoed. When they shoe fell off, the hores stumbled and the king fell in a critical point of the battle and the battle was lost. All because a simple nail was forgoten in the horseshoe. When we forget the small and simple things in our lives, it doesnt seem like much at first, but can be the difference between victory and defeat. As Joseph Smith said, "Courage, brethren; and on, on to the victory!" As we remember the small things like morning or family prayer, scripture study, and charity we will better prepare ourselves so that at the critical moment in battle we will stay steady on our feet.

About Elder Johnson. He's I think half Russian, and speaks almost fluint (spelling?) Russian and he does the Smeagol/ Golum voice as well as I do, so we have a lot of Smeagol/ Golum talks. He's from Lehi, Ut. Oh! He brought a Risk board from home! Its going to be a lot of fun to play one of these P-Days. He's been out in the feild not much longer than I have, but he spent seven weeks in Chicago when he had problems getting his visa. So his danish is only a little better than mine and what he does know is in a Ysk accent a very slow thick danish accent from Esbjerg his last area. So really there isnt a lot I can learn from him Danish wise, but the nice thing is it forces me to speak a lot more. Before with Elder Hinrichs when I wasnt sure how to say something I could just let him do all the talking. Now I have to speak Danish a lot more especially because I understand the Fynsk accent better than Elder Johnson does. I came to find I actually know a lot more words than I realized. This last week just for that reason, my danish has improved a ton, someone actually complemented me on my danish this week when when we were street contacting.

Oh, that reminds me we ran into this guy who was cleaning up the glass from the back windsheild. We asked him what happened and he told us the wind blew it in. Not suprising, the wind here is always blowing, and blowing hard. You watch the sky and the clouds are racing the birds past the window.

Love y'all! Har en fantastisk dag!

-Elder Kenneth Burton