Email August 22, 2018

Email August 22, 2018 – Elder Jackson Kunzler Burton

Hey Everyone!

            Sorry my email is a bit late this week, we went to the temple today! I love the temple so much, it's such a blessing to be in a mission where we can go so often. This week most of the people we're teaching have been out of town for summer break, so it's been a little slower teaching wise but it was still great! I went on exchanges with Elder Moulton yesterday, he was in my district at the MTC so that was fun. We talked with a less active member in Iwamizawa and did some finding, it was good. We also had a table tennis party this week, and we got a lot of members to come, but no nonmembers came which was kind of disappointing. But the members are slowly getting more motivated to do missionary work so I really hope we'll start seeing a lot of success soon. I've been trying to find ways to use my talents more in missionary work, so while knocking doors this week I tried singing "I Am a Child of God" in Japanese after people told us they weren't interested. I've only done it a few times for some old ladies so far, but it went really well. The Spirit came in really strong and although they didn't accept our message they all said thank you and opened up and talked a little more after which was cool. One lady told us her husband had passed away recently so she was really grateful for the song. So we testified of eternal families and hopefully gave her some hope. I'm going to continue trying this and work on finding other ways to bring the Spirit and soften people's hearts. I love how music does that so well. If you're ever down, or just need to get motivated or feel the Spirit, good music always does the trick. Besides that, nothing else too exciting happened this week. I've  been trying to increase my understanding of the atonement, which has been really good. There's a talk by Elder Bruce R. McConkie called the Purifying Power of Gethsemane where he talks about how the atonement is the most fundamental and basic doctrine in the gospel but the least understood. In order to have the faith of Enoch and Elijah, we must believe what they believed, know what they knew, and live as they lived. I thought that was cool, we can all have that kind of faith if we pray always and strive to do what's right. Then we can see great miracles because of our faith. I hope you're all doing great, I love you all! Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Burton