Email October 5, 2015

Email October 5, 2015 – Elder Isaac Kenneth Burton

General Conference!

This was a great week with no better way to end it then with General Conference! What a great one too. Most of the week we spent our time passing by the houses of investigators, inactive members, and active members to invite them to come to conference this weekend. We made some invitations that we passed out to them and also to everyone we could on the street too, I think it was pretty succesfull. We had two investigators come with us to conference and a few inactives which was awesome. They all said they really enjoyed it too.

Conference is like a holiday as a missionary, I loved it. It was pretty amazing to see the three new apostles get called, I´m sure they´ll all do an amazing job. I´m excited to see what wisdom and knowledge they bring to this wonderful church.It will be very fun to get to know them over the next many years. I really enjoyed all of their testimonies, they were super powerful. I especially liked Elder Renlunds story of Chad, the boy he lost durnign heart surgery. That was super powerful and had such a great message. I think its so true, if we try to see all people in the way that their parents see them and the way God and Christ see them then we will always be filled with the love of God for all people and we will have more of a desire to serve others and be better people. Another talk that stood out to me was by James B. Martino. He talked about how Laman, Lemuel, and Nefi all went through the same experiences but those experiences had completly different affects on them. For Nefi, they built him into a prohpet of God but for Laman and lemuel they just became angry and more sinicle. Elder Martino said this about it, "Work without faith is dead." I really liked that cause in the book of James it says that faith without works is dead. It´s just as true the opposite way. I found this little story that explains this principle really well I think. It´s called Faith and Works. "A man hired a young boy whose father owned a small boat, to row him across a lake. About halfway across the man noticed a "W" painted on one oar and an "F" on the other. WHen he asked what the letters meant, he was told that the F stood for FAITH and the W stodd for WORKS. "If you row only with faith, you go in circles to the left," said the boy. "If you row only with works, you go in circles to the right. In order to go straight ahead you have to use both faith and works." 

To progress in life and you have to use both faith and works as Nephi did. If you only use one you just go in circles and wont reach your potential in life. I think it´s a pretty cool and important concept. I studied it a bit a few weeks ago and thought Elder Martinos talk was perfect for it. There were so many other talks that I loved but I dont have time to mention all of them.

On tuesday we got to go to the biggest city in our mission, Adrogue, to do some visa stuff so that was pretty cool. The city is super nice with huge houses all over the place. I guess the people there are super rich too. Definitly a big differnece from my area which is only an hour away by bus.

Interesting food of the week, my mexican companion showed me how to make mexican corn on the cob (yeah, the type that is in Nacho Libre that he stabs a guy in the eye with). Basically you rub lemon on it, spread mayo all over it, and then sprinkle it with chili powder and cheese. Sounds weird but it was super good.

If all goes well for Maria this week she should be getting baptized on saturday! She´s on track now so we´ll see how things go. I´m excited for her! Sorry this email is kinda late today, we had a early zone activity this morning. I hope everyone has a great week, I love you all!

Love, Elder Burton