Email April 20, 2015

Email April 20, 2015 – Elder Kenneth Wm. Burton

Bunch of Burtons

Warm today! I'm heating up in just my white shirt. The weather the last couple of days has been so beautiful! So much sun! From nothing all winter to constant light.

Lets see... So Kent dropped us this week. He explained that he doesn't want to leave the Folke Kirke (The Danish Peoples Church). I feel like he is thinking a lot more about the social aspect rather than the gospel truths. He made his decision though and as of right now isn't really open to continue. I feel though that in the future he'll open back up with questions, and now he knows how to find us and the church.

Jesper is still doing great. The two things he's struggling with is coming to church and he doesn't feel ready to pray. Although he believes the Book of Mormon, and loves the Plan of Salvation. We're hoping to get Erik to another lesson again, help Jesper find a desire to come to church.

 

Erik is great! He was baptized in January and already has the Melchizedek priesthood. He is such a loving man, there is a family moving here from Hungary and he has completely taken them under his wing. The dad and son are the only ones here right now, and are temporarily living in Eriks camping trailer that we have spent days with Erik preparing for them. It was falling apart pretty bad before but looks great now. Erik made them a Christmas dinner for their first evening here and has been helping them with basically everything to help them feel comfortable here. He was teaching them some danish during Sunday school, he translates for them to German.

We used a lot of time this last week contacting referrals we have recently received. We got nine media referrals within a few days. The once we have contacted haven't been too positive. But there are some out in Grenaa, the far east end of our area, that should be positive. One was an investigator back in California, and just moved here to Denmark. One of the less positive ones was a larger woman who wasn't wearing any clothing, just a hand towel. Kind of awkward.

Quote: "Work is the miracle by which talent is brought to the surface and dreams become reality."-Gordon B. Hinkley

Isn't that an interesting line "by which talent is brought to the surface". We all have so many talents that maybe we don't even consider talents because they aren't yet on the surface. I use to always think I was terrible at Soccer but have recently found that I'm not to bad. How many times do we tell ourselves we're not good at something? The moment we do that it makes it true. Recently I've been trying to replace saying "I'm not good at that" with "I could use some practice" or "There's room for improvement". "Work is the miracle by which talent is brought to the surface." I remember a statistic that it takes 10,000 hours of practice in order to be a professional at something. I would say my sister Alex has a talent for the violin, but imagine if she hadn't taken the time to practice? That talent would have never surfaced.

I guess the hard part would be knowing what things to put work into. I believe though that a lot of our desires are given to us by God to help us feel what our talents are. I may not be incredible at Danish right now, but I have a strong desire to be. I feel that is God showing me that I have a talent for Danish even if it is not yet completely surfaced. I still sound American, but the miracle of work will turn my dream into a reality.

I love music as well, makes me consider putting work into that talent. Right now I have a lot of room to improve in that aspect, but only work brings it to the surface.

I love righteousness. I'm not perfect, but with work that talent will improve.

Its good to hear everything back home is going well, Bee's! That's exciting! Thanks for the emails every week!

Meget Kærlighed,

Elder Kenneth Burton