Email September 29, 2014

Email September 29^th 2014 – Elder Kenneth Wm. Burton

Bunch of Burtons

Ahhh! Alex! Your first P-Day back home! So weird to think! And just in time for General Conference!

All the missionaries on Sjaelland are going to the church building in Copenhagen for the weekend to watch Conference. I'm so excited! It feels like its been hardly any time sence the last session back in April.

 Alma16:16 And there was no inequality among them; the Lord did pour out his  Spirit on all the face of the land to prepare the minds of the children of men, or to  prepare their hearts to receive the word which should be taught among them at  the time of his coming—

I'm excited to start preparing to receive the words of the Savior that will be given to us through his Prophet and Apostles. This is a great opportunity we have to learn and to increase our faith. We have a few investigators who are interested in watching conference as well, so that's exciting.

 We had a neat experience this week. I think it was Thursday we were planning on visiting a less active member in the evening, when it came to the time that we had planned to go we were still in a lesson that had started later than planned and so after the lesson we didn't have quite enough time to make it out to Lisse, share a message and get back on time. So we ended up using some of that time for finding. The next day we had an eating appointments and a lesson where both families gave the same name to pray for at the end of the lesson when we asked if they knew anyone who could use a prayer at the time, they both suggested Lisse. We were able to learn that her son had recently been diagnosed with a cancer in his lung, and that she's been going through a hard time right now because of it. We had more information about what was going on in her life before we went by. As we were planning that night to go visit her the next day, we were inspired to bring service cloths along with us just in case she had any service we could do for her. We stopped by, and she seemed grateful for the visit, but because we couldn't go in she looked a little annoyed and she didn't want to talk outside on the chairs she had on her porch. So we said a prayer with her and then left. We're going to go back this week with a member so that we can actually go in.  As we drove around the corner though we saw an older man outside trimming some bushes. All of a sudden we remembered the service cloths we had brought! We pulled around another corner, quickly changed in the car, and then asked the man if we could help, Henning agreed. We spent maybe 45 minutes helping, and chatting. He is currently moving here from Bornholm. Him and his wife will be coming back and forth for the next few months.

If we had not had our service cloths with us when we did I am positive he would have turned down our offer to help like everyone else does. But because we were prepared and had followed the prompting we were able to come into contact with a couple who otherwise may not have accepted the missionaries. We're going to be going back the next time we're in the area and help some more, they have quite a bit of work their doing on the house before they move in, and Henning said they would love some more help.

So sort of ish sad news. We stopped by Ditte and she answered saying her son Frederik wasn't home so we wouldn't be able to go in. But then she came out and told us that her and Frederik had talked about it and have decided they will not join our church. But... we are always welcome to come by and talk, both about life and faith. The good news is their answer can easily change. As they learn more and come to better understand the gospel they will recognize the joy they feel when we meet with them is the Holy Ghost. From what I can see the main challenge is that they are not wanting to change, Frederik likes hanging out and drinking with his friends and knows he would have to change if he accepted the gospel. He has such great questions. We met with the two of them last night and taught the plan of salvation and you could really see Frederik thinking it through.

Our friend Robert is having the same challenge right now. The only thing that's keeping him from progressing is a fear to change. He hasn't yet prayed because he's worried that he might actually get an answer and then have to do something about it. "Faith is not so much something we believe; Faith is something we live." -Joseph B. Wirthlin. Getting out of our comfortable patch of soil is hard and scary. But the joys that come from the growth of it are amazing! Acting on our beliefs pushes and build our capacity of joy. The scriptures warn so often against hypocracy, If you believe something but don't act on it your only being a hypocrite.

"True happiness is not getting something. True happiness is becoming something." - Marvin J. Ashton.

Our area is being kind of cleaned out right now in a way. The three new key indicators we're using, the three things Elder Textara has asked us to do, have helped to weed out those who are less positive. People who are not as positive as they had seemed when we were meeting with them only once a week. Our pool of people to work with has shrunk down quite a bit so now we're doing a lot more finding to fill it back up. This time with more solid investigators. We're focusing a lot in our companionship on teaching while we find. We had started falling into a rut of the same short contacting approaches that no one listened to. We're trying to keep ourselves "eternally uncomfortable" in our finding so that we're never trapping ourselves in a rut. The great thing about the gospel is we can repent and reach for Christs hand to be lifted out of the canyon we've dug ourselves into.

Good luck this week! "Keep going and the Lord will help you."-D. Todd Christofferson

Meget Kærlighed!

-Elder Ken Burton