Email October 27, 2014

Email October 27, 2014 – Elder Kenneth Wm. Burton

Bunch of Burtons

My trainer Benny Hinrichs has published his first novel and has already sold 10 copies. If anyone is interested in a good read here's the link that he sent me....

http://www.amazon.com/Oneironauts-Schools-Thought-1/dp/1501050974.

Great day yesterday. It began with a little disappointment because Familien Pelargu wasn't going to be able to make it to church because they had some family visiting from Albania. About ten minutes though before church began we got a text from our friend Andrei from Romania saying he was on his way and would be to church a little late! We hadn't been able to meet with Andrei in about a week and a half because of his rugby practices and games, he had a big game in Odense on Saturday and didn't think he would be back in time to make it to church Sunday morning. When he got home though he told us about how he stood next to his bed thinking about how comfortable his pillow looked, He had just spent a long trip back from his game the day before and I'm sure he was exhausted, but he decided to come anyway. And he seemed to enjoy it. He was basically a member himself with how much he was involved and commented during class. The ward was great too, he was well welcomed with open arms. I was with him in the hallway at one point talking to a member when the members daughter walked passed and she leaned clear over grabbing her daughters arm and dragged her over to introduce her to Andrei, his face went bright red, not what you would expect from a huge rugby player.

Photos from Denmark

Email October 20, 2014

Email October 20, 2014 – Elder Kenneth Wm. Burton

Bunch of Burtons

Per is back from Japan! He's a less active member we were meeting with fairly often before he went to visit his son in Japan two months ago. We always have great conversations with him that make you really think. A lot because he really thinks through the questions most of us just give a basic response too. At one point bacteria came up. He told us about how bacteria is able to live in the most extreme climates, its been taken to space and back and survived, and it has even been found living in magma channels deep in the bottom of the oceans. The reason it does so well surviving is because it mutates so quickly, one life span is so short that it is able to change itself to live in new climates before it is completely killed. This ability helps it to overcome almost any situation or trial, even the harshest of environments. Are we not better than bacteria? We are Gods children, as Elder Uchdorf put it "we are the stuff of eternity". We have the ability, through the Savior Jesus Christ, to change now. To strengthen ourselves against the world that is changing around us. We are put into situations daily that "push our buttons" and try to figure out which one will shut us down. We can choose not to have that button. Through repentance we improve ourselves, and the next time faced with a trial we are stronger than before. "And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness.... then will I make weak things become strong unto them." Ether 12:27. Isn't it amazing that we have this ability to change! This week we had made it to Friday and had only had four lessons, no where near what our goal was for the week. But we were able to change what we were doing, change the way we were approaching our work and in the last two days of the week more than doubled our lessons, finding a lot more new people to teach while we were at it.

Photos from Denmark

Email October 13, 2014

Email October 13, 2014 – Elder Kenneth Wm. Burton

Bunch of Burtons

Happy Birthday Sam, Boston, and Boone! I sent letters last week, I hope they make it in the next couple days!

Ahhh.... we weren't able to get a ride this week for Familien Palargu for church. We had a ride worked out, a family that lived in their area had two cars and would drive both to church to have room for our friends, but then Saturday night we called and found out it wasn't going to work, one of their cars broke down. We're going to need to work even harder to figure out a ride for next week. It will be a little interesting because everyone has school off this week and are on vacation because of a tradition from when everyone worked on potato farms and would use the week off for the harvest. Kind of sounds like Idaho.

This week, on Friday I guess, we started something new in Holbæk. We had been in our weekly planning and had noticed again how we tend to have a lot more lessons towards the end of each week and not as many at the beginning. We figured that this was because we would get to a few days left and realize that we had a lot more lessons to teach in order to reach our weekly goal. So we've started setting goals for sections of each day. Each time before we leave the apartment we figure out how many lessons we need in the next few hours to reach our weekly goal, and then make a goal, for the evening hours for example, on however many lessons we believe we can teach in that time depending upon what we are doing. Its helped us remember each time we go out that we are going out to teach. Many times we kind of get into a rut of "finding" and don't end up actually teaching anyone. From the last few days we've found this new goal to help quite a bit.

Photo From Holbaek

Email October 6, 2014

Email October 6, 2014 – Elder Kenneth Wm. Burton

Bunch of Burtons

General Conference! We spent the weekend in Copenhagen with the assistants to see the sessions. They weren't being shown in our ward building. Because of the time differences we watched the Saturday morning session live at 6:00 in the evening and then the Priesthood session at 11:00 Sunday morning and the Saturday night session at 2:00 on Sunday and the Sunday morning session live at 6:00 that evening. So we still haven't seen the last session, but I hear there were some amazing talks, and I'm going to try to download them onto my flash-drive to listen to later.

Did you notice how almost every single talk quoted or mentioned President Thomas S. Monson? He was by far the most quoted person in Conference.'

A few of the talks that stood out to me talked a lot about decision making. For example when Jorg Klebingal said, "choosing something bad over something worse is till wrong". Isn't it interesting how often we do that? Or the fact that we choose to make decisions that we don't want to make? For an example haven't we all sat down after school with in front of the TV or layed on the couch with a good book in hand, and then the thought comes... reminding us of the homework assignment or project due the next day. Yet we put it aside and chose to ignore what we know we should do. I've also seen many a wrestler, myself included, who when put in a critical situation in a match, end up giving up rather than pushing a little further or harder. Almost subconsciously, but not quite, you make the decision to quite. You chose to lose. Why? Why do we trade what we want most for what we think we want at the moment? And usually its not even something we want at the moment. No one ever wants to lose. No one wants bad grades. Yet we give up. Later we look back and wonder why we didn't just keep going a little longer. Latter we see that we actually did have the strength, or the time to do that assignment.