Photos from Argentina

Baptism of Mabel in Alejandro Korn

Email May 30, 2016 – Elder Isaac Kenneth Burton

A week of miracles

Wow what a week!!! Really it was a great week. I don´t have nearly enough time to say everything that happened because yes, I got transfered this morning and we had a ton of problems with transportation so I got to my new area super late. But thats alright, it has been awesome! So I am now in the Banfield 2B where I will continue as zone leader. My new companion is Elder Thomas, from South Jordan Utah, and is super awesome. My first non-latino companion, so that should be interesting. He has 16 months in the mission.Tis area is totally different than my past areas. It´s the richest, nicest area in the mission. President and his wife live in our area and we share the ward with the assistants. So should be an experience totally different and awesome, I couldn´t be more excited.

When Elder Bednar came to our mission a few months ago, he blessed us that we would be able to see mini miracles in our missions. I definitly felt that blessing come to pass the last week. I don´t know if I´ve mentioned about our investigator Mabel. She has 16 years and we began teaching her about three months ago. From the first day we found her she has come to church every sunday and gone to almost all of the activities for the young women. She even has been helping the sister misionaries teach lessons and decided a few weeks ago that one day she wants to serve a mission. She´s awesome, super prepared. The only problem was that she didn´t want to get baptised. She was afraid to get baptised because she didn´t want to make mistakes after her baptism and feel bad. We talked with her a ton about it and tried to set a baptisimal date for the 28th of may but she always just told us no, that she wanted to wait for at least 1 year to do it. Elder Rivera and I had accepted her decision and stopped pressuring her about baptism. But friday we had an appointment with her and when we arived the first thing she said was, " So about my baptism tomorrow...I want to do it..." We just about freaked out, We couldn´t beleive it. She told us she had been thinking a lot about it and recieved the answer that she needed to be baptised. So immediatly we made a few callx to the president and he aproved her to be baptised Sunday. And thats what happened basically, long story short. We had a miracle baptism. And it was perfect. There couldn´t have been a better way to end my time in Alejandro Korn. And Mabel was so happy, I´m so happy that she made the dicision and now will see the blessing in her life.

Sorry this email is kinda all over the place. Too many thoughts and experiences in the week and not nearly enough time to put it all down on paper. But it was a great week.

Thanks for everything, I hope everyone has a great weeek!!

Les quiero, Elder Burton

Email May 23, 2016

Email May 23, 2016 – Elder Isaac Kenneth Burton

Early to bed, early to rise

Another good week in Alejandro Korn! It was kind of a weird week too, I don´t really know why. Recently we have had a ton of exchanges to do with the missionaries in our zone, 2 every week. It´s been awesome, I´ve learned a ton from all the great missionaries in the zone. But also I feel like we haven´t been able to really focus in our own area like we should. But thats alright, we´re just learning to balance it all out a little bit.

In the mission we are always talking about obedience. I think we do it in life in general too a ton. We talk about the importance to obey the comandments for several reasons, the two of which are the most common in my opinion are because we´ve made covenants to keep them and because we love our father in heaven and keep the commandments out of our love for him. In the mission we have been focusing a ton of these two reasons to keep the commandments and obey the mission rules. And they are super good reasons to be obedient. But a thought that I had this morning during my study is that often we forget the reason why God gives us these comandments. Every commandment that God gives us is for our own benefit. Without exception I beleive. It is when we keep them that we are happier and become more like him. 

Email May 16, 2016

Email May 16, 2016 – Elder Isaac Burton

Capilla Abierta, intercambios

Another great week! This week we did two exchanges with some elders in the zone which was great. The two elders that I was with are both pretty new, they have less than 3 months in the mission. I love being with new missionaries because you can just feel their excitement and passion for the work. They just want to do everything and work hard, it´s so awesome. Gives me a greater desire to have that passion and energy in all that I do.

This week we had a capilla abierta (Open chapel) in one of the wards in our stake. It went super well, we had a ton of people come and we were able to talk to a ton of people.

This last week I studied a lot about repentance. It´s something I´m trying to understand better so that I can better apply it to my own life and the lifes of my investigators. I have a talk by Elder Bednar that talks about the two powers that we recieve from the atonement: the redeeming and the enabling powers. The way that we use the atonement in our lives is through repentance. So there are also two types of repentance: one to help redeem us from sins we have done, and the other to help us improve and become more like our savior. I think we often forget about the second. Repentance is change. In this way we really can repent daily. We might not have major sins to repent of but we all have weakness and errors that impede us from becoming like Christ. We can change things on a daily basis, a little at a time, though repentance and through the atonment of Christ. 

Baptism

Griselda and Juan Carlos Maldonado Baptism

Email May 9, 2016

Email May 9, 2016 – Elder Isaac Kenneth Burton

Baptism!!!

  It was another awesome week here in Alejandro Korn! And no better way to end  it off then with a baptism! Griselda and Juan Carlos Maldonado were baptised on Saturday and on Sunday my comp and I had the oppotunity to confirm them in sacrament meeting! What an amazing feeling to confirm someone with the gift of the holy ghost. There really is power in the words "recieve the holy ghost". What an incredible gift that we are able to have in this church. To have the holy spirit with us as a constant companion. I think sometimes we forget that he really is our constant companion. He is always with us; guiding us, teaching us, warning us. Most of the time we don´t even notice it cause we aren´t paying good enough attention. But I have seen in my life that when I really try to pay attention I can see the ways the holy ghost touches me and guides me constantly. I am so happy that Griselda and Juan Carlos now have that guidance in their lives. 

Email May 2, 2016

Email May 2, 2016 – Elder Isaac Kenneth Burton

Interviews, white storm

Wow, this week the tempurature dropped a ton. We were in the low thirties for most of the week. It usually doesn´t get that low until july or august. Weird how that is like super cold here haha.

On saturday we did a white storm here in our area. A white storm is when a bunch of missionarys come to one area for a few hours to do divisions with the members and contact tons of less actives and other people. They´re awesome, it was pretty succesful here. We now have a ton of people that we can visit and teach, should be a busy week.