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!

                  In other news, there were a couple more biggish aftershocks this week which was interesting, it keeps making it feel like something bigger is coming but so far we're still good. We've been trying to use it a little bit as a way to talk to people, telling them we're teaching people about Christ's second coming and how to prepare for it, it's gone pretty well. I'm also excited for general conference this weekend! We won't watch it until a week later but I'm sure I'll here about any new announcements before that. I hope everyone gets a chance to watch it, if you have any sort of question you want answered, say a prayer, watch conference with that question in mind, and sometime during conference you'll receive the answer you need, although it might not always be the one you want haha. But really, I have a strong testimony that we are led today by men called of God, and their words are God's words, and if we listen to them our lives will be blessed. I hope you all enjoy it! I love you all so much! Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Burton