Elder Samuel Burge: More service than appointments this week - Directed traffic for a biking event & tried to help put in a YMCA playground

Hello everybody,

Hey thanks for doing that for me- I'm very excited about having a grey suit! That's pretty cool, I'll be sure to look out for an Elder Lewis! That's pretty awesome that Josh can just go around fixing people's cars for service- I bet people love when he knocks on his door! I'm glad he's doing well, hopefully being on a bike in Kentucky is alright (Portland is much more biker-friendly!)

One of my buddies, Shane, had a job doing janitorial stuff at the elementary school and he said is was pretty sweet! That's really awesome that he's going to have a job- he's going to love throwin' around money like it's going out of style! (Now he just has to have the discipline to save some of his hard-earned cash.)

Sounds like everyone is having a good start to this semester, which is really good! I bet criminology and sociology are extremely fun- my psychology class was really interesting but the most interesting things we discussed were all classified as sociology. It sounds like Kayleigh is enjoying her first week or so of high school as well. I'm excited to see Ben get out there and play the field! As it says in D&C 4, "...the field is white, already to harvest..." (I think it applies to both missionary work and the college dating scene.) There's a lot of ladies for him to meet! I think going to an institute social event would be the best place to meet women that would fit his prerequisites though. Him and Brooks hittin' up the dating scene would make me and Hunter oh-so-proud!

Way to go, Mom! Doing member missionary work! That's really cool that she's been able to share the gospel with somebody- even amidst the endless sea of Mormons in Utah! We've been trying to get the members here more focused on member missionary work, so we've been meeting with families in the ward a lot. Hopefully we'll see more people inviting their friends to hear what we teach. I know she'll do really well with her Kindergarten class this week- she's a great teacher, so I don't have a doubt in my mind she won't do incredibly well!

My week has been alright- we've had a lot of cancelled plans this week.. We're hopefully going to have no cancellations this week. We were able to do some service this past week though. We were directing traffic for this big ol' biking event that was happening near our area, and that was actually pretty good! There was a YMCA right next door to where the parking lot was, and they sent a woman out to direct some people coming to help them build a playground into their parking area. We had a pretty good discussion about family, and we even volunteered to help them build their playground afterwards! Unfortunately, however, they were mostly done by the time we got over there to help everybody gave us the cold shoulder.. It's frustrating how much people hate us sometimes, I think it's definitely been getting Elder Olsen a bit discouraged.

We also got kicked out of the Alberts' house again this week (only for a day though). I guess their son-in-law's brother was getting married and their housing arrangements fell through so we had to pack up and crash with the assistants again. It was pretty fun- I love hanging with the assistants.

Well, that was my week. Pretty slow- but hopefully we're going to see more things to do this week.

Hope y'all have a great week! Hope you all start believing in science and become medical doctors soon! I'll just be here enjoying my clean air.

Love always,

Elder Samuel A. Burge