Photos from Shiroishi

Halloween Party!

 

Email October 24, 2018

Email October 24, 2018 – Elder Jackson Kunzler Burton

Hey Everyone!

                  This week has flown by! Today was temple P-day which is why I'm emailing late, I love the temple so much! It's such a blessing having it in my mission. It really helps me keep an eternal perspective and reminds me why I'm doing what I'm doing. It's also fun seeing missionaries from other areas, including my previous companion Elder Tonomura, he's doing great.

                  This week was busy! We met with a few of the people who were being taught before this area closed, and they have a lot of potential. A couple of them have been to church quite a few times, have taken all the lessons, and there's just a few problems keeping them from being baptized, but we're gonna try and help them through those so they can really come unto Christ. We've also been doing a lot of finding and found some people with potential if they'll just make time to meet. We also went to a member's English class's Halloween party to help out which was awesome, I love spending time with kids! I'll send pictures. I was a samurai and my companion was a pirate, it was a blast!

Photos from Sapporo

Closest thing to pizza - Cheese Naan!

My new companion Elder Minegishi!

Making sushi at zone conference

Email October 14, 2018

Email October 14, 2018

Transfers!

Hey Everyone!

                  This week was awesome and crazy! We had transfers, and after 4 transfers, or about 6 months in Ebetsu, I'm finally gone! I'm gonna miss it so much, I'll never forget all the memories and the friends I made there. I also grew so much during those 6 months. But I'm now in Shiroishi! It's a part of Sapporo, so I'm in the big city now haha. There's so many people! This area was closed last transfer so my companion and I are reopening it, meaning neither of us know anything about the area, which is actually really fun, it gives us kind of a clean slate to work with. My companion is Elder Minegishi, he's from Okinawa and he's awesome! He has a lot of energy and excitement, and it's funny because the stereotype is that Japanese missionaries are a little more reserved, while the American ones are really outgoing, but in our companionship it's kind of the opposite. I've had a Japanese missionary tell me I have a Japanese-like personality and I heard someone tell Elder Minegishi he acts like an American so it's pretty fun. I'm really glad to have a Japanese companion again, and he's an awesome missionary, he works really hard and is way good at talking to people. I know we're going to see a lot of miracles this transfer.

October 7, 2018

Email October 7, 2018 – Elder Jackson Burton

Hey Everyone!

This week was great! On Friday we did exchanges with the Iwamizawa elders, so I was with Elder Clinger, it was way fun! He's from American Fork, and he's a crazy fast runner, he literally won cross country nationals in high school. He's also a great missionary, I learned a lot from him. He's really good at putting people at ease and having a friendly conversation, something I want to get a lot better at, sometimes I'm too serious. But we talked to a lot of people and got a couple people's contact info. There was also another small earthquake that morning, and about 5 seconds before our phone went off yelling "地震(earthquake)！" so we braced ourselves for something big and it ended up being pretty small. But it keeps us on our toes haha.

We also had a Chinese cooking party on Saturday which was fun, the one Chinese member in our ward came and showed everyone how to make some Chinese dishes, and they turned out way good. A few members brought non-member friends too which was awesome. We invited a Chinese family we met a little while ago but they didn't show up which was too bad. It still went really well though. 

I'm so excited for general conference! I heard all the announcements, but in Japan they watch it a week later so I haven't heard the talks yet. But it's so cool to hear about the changes! Two hour church and 12 new temples! 12! That's amazing! I'm so grateful we have a living prophet to guide the church! It's easy to see how important both family and the temple is, I know miracles will come as we strive to strengthen our families and attend the temple more. That's all for this week. I love you all, I hope everyone has a great week! 

Love, 

Elder Burton

Email October 3, 2018

Email October 3, 2018 – Elder Jackson Burton

Hey Everyone!

                  Sorry this email is late, we had temple P-day today which was awesome! The temple always brings me so much peace, even when things are hard. Last week I mentioned that Yuu was doing really well, but last week out of nowhere he said he was done, didn't want to get baptized and didn't want to meet anymore. He wouldn't say very much as to why, he just mentioned something about talking to a friend at school and Christianity being too strict. This was over LINE, so we called him and talked to him and he was willing to talk a bit but he doesn't want to meet again, there was nothing we could do. So that was pretty disappointing, he's such a good kid and he was doing so well. And it was so sudden, a couple days before at Eikaiwa he was planning on coming to church and everything, he even got permission from his mom to be baptized! I don't know what made him change his mind so suddenly. But even after that, I was able to feel a surprising amount of peace and comfort, I was disappointed but not discouraged. The next day we were able to meet with Tatsuya, who we've been trying to meet for a while and we had a really good lesson so that was great. I guess it's true that when God closes a door, He always opens a window (haha sorry I saw a poster for The Sound of Music😅). We also had zone conference this week, actually at the same time all the stuff with Yuu was happening, so that helped a lot too. Zone conference is always amazing! The part that stuck out the most to me was the importance of listening to those you teach and then asking inspired questions through the Spirit. And silence in the lesson is one of the times when the Spirit can work on the person's heart the most, a lot of times we rush to fill silence with words but sometimes we need to just sit back and let the Spirit do His job. So I'm going to work on that and hopefully see some good things come out of it!

Photos

Dinner with Members