This week has been fantastic!

Hey family!

This week has been fantastic! We had an amazing week this week- we set two baptismal dates with some people we recently started teaching and it was awesome! We got into our lesson and one of the people we taught, Trisha, had a ton of questions right off the bat from things she's heard, read, and things she's just thought about. Well, it was set up perfectly because every question was related to various aspects of the plan of salvation... Which just so happened to be the lesson we were going to teach, so that was really sweet. So at the end of the lesson we challenged them to be baptized and they readily accepted! We'll have to have them come to church a couple of times (obviously), but I hope they get baptized before this transfer is over so I'm in the area when it happens! (Oh, by the way, I didn't get transferred and either did Elder Snow).

It was also a really good week because we did an incredible amount of service! It was SWEET! We did all sorts of different things: cut up fallen trees for this great guy named Willy, we cleared a field with a weed-whacker for this nice Asian woman who was blown away we would work free of charge, and we also helped some members tear out shingles on the roof of this house one of them was flipping. It was so much fun, I love doing service and so many people actually let us help them this week (which is rare, because usually people will just shut you down).

We got some new sisters and an elder in the district, and they're all awesome! I knew the elder because he was serving in the Stafford Ward while I was down in West Linn, so we talk about Wilsonville all the time when we're together! It's cool to hear about people that got baptized, people they started working with, etc. It's really awesome! But they are all incredibly cool so it's going to be a good transfer!

Well, I'm excited to hear about school getting out for everyone. I hope you all enjoy summer break with your sleeping in, enjoying the warm sun, hanging out all day... I'll just be slaving away in the Lord's cotton field!

Love always,

Elder Burge

 Do you think I can Shout these stains out?

Part of the Lord’s Vineyard

Getting spoon-fed by his zone

He packs a mighty punch in each fist

People did not guess it was me!!

Our zone meeting was good, people did not guess it was me! (The missionaries all played a game where they had to guess whose picture was whose.)

The whole blonde hair thing really threw people off. It's interesting to see the changes we make as we get older and life refines us a little bit. Looking back at pictures of myself on mom's Facebook page throws me back a bit! It's weird (I say that a lot, I know).

Well that's awesome Silas is trying things out testing the waters with JROTC. My companion, Elder Snow, made a comment when I told him about Silas taking that course. In the words of a General Ackbar, he said, "It's a trap!~". Take that as you will, he said he did it for three years and ended up thinking it wasn't something he wanted to do. He can shine shoes like a boss though! The army tactics with paint-ball guns actually sounds pretty sweet though! Well, if he's willing to put forth the physical effort I'm sure he could get through all that military stuff alright- especially since he's now bigger than I am.

Tennis is awesome! I really like playing tennis actually, we've done it occasionally for preparation days. Kayleigh will be going to Wimbledon before she knows it! That will be sweet to do it with your friends who are also on the same skill level. Doing things with your friends is pretty awesome too!

It's good to hear Ben has finally gotten over that, "I can't do math, but I can use the same logic to do computer programming" thing. He's always been good at thinking, especially with computers. (Not always with his arguments though..!) Great to hear he's doing well with school too! Yeah, I wrote him a reply, hopefully he's gotten it. Sometimes the iPad has issues like that.

Our week was good. We found some more people to teach, a less-active family that moved here recently. Finally got to see a family we've been meeting with for awhile. Ryan, the father, was really sick all this week and ended up making a trip or two to the E.R. Luckily he and his family are doing alright though, which is good. We haven't met with them in awhile, so we scheduled a lesson this week. We've got quite a few things set up for this week, so I'm excited for that!

It's transfers, the last one before we get our new mission president in July! It's absolutely crazy- going to be very different with a new guy in charge! Our transfer is going to be five weeks to accommodate for Pres. Ballard coming into Portland. I'm going to miss President Morby and Sister Morby, they've been awesome..! But such is life, hopefully he'll transfer me somewhere awesome before he leaves!

Well, gotta' go! Love you!

-Elder Samuel A. Burge

Member missionary work is awesome

Happy anniversary, first off! Go get some Mexican food to celebrate or something!

I did get the school stuff you sent and I've managed to read through two of the big stacks of paper during some of my down time in the evening. A lot of the film classes at the University of Utah sound sweet! Of course, I'm going to be looking at the other schools and I'm thinking about other possible majors. Thanks for sending all that information! I appreciate it, haven't had much time to read a lot of it though!

This past week... Easily one of those, less than great weeks. We didn't end up teaching a single lesson! It was rough, I think we had like 6-7 possibilities but they all fell through one after another. It's not a big deal though, we had some silver linings! We actually received two media referrals and that was a little miracle in and of itself! One is a family that was referred from some of their friends in the St. Helens area over in Washington. They've been asking a lot of questions and so we got a media referral, then a call from this member that sent it! Member missionary work is awesome! We stopped their house and I find a green-cheek conure hanging out in a cage under a tree in the front yard! I went over and it was just a lovable little guy, he played with my hair through the bars and was talking to me. Then we get over to the door and talk with this guy, Adrian, and he's awesome! Turns out his last name is Osorno and he was taken back that I knew where in Chile it was! Weird, but cool! We're going to teach them tonight so we'll see how it goes!

It's been really hot, and I've definitely reaffirmed that I'd much rather have it cold than blazing hot.. Our attic room gets incredibly toasty and all we have is two fans to cool us off at night. I hope to be transferred before July/August when it gets it's hottest!

We had stake conference here this week and it was pretty good. The church building we watched it at had some MAJOR technical difficulties, so we ended up missing all the Sundays session and half the stake just sang hymns for an hour! Finally they got it working after attempting all sorts of stuff (holding an iPhone up to the pulpit microphone, etc.) it was funny.

Well I'm excited to talk (and see) you all on Sunday! I love you.

-Elder Samuel A. Burge