We’re just continuing to get out there and work

Familia,

Well I'm glad that Kayleigh is doing alright- that sounds really scary. I'd be pretty freaked out too if I lost my vision. Hopefully nobody else gets too terribly sick or have medical problems.

This week was pretty alright- we're just continuing to get out there and work. Haven't had much success teaching some of our more promising families and people though. People have been sick, life's been busy for some of them, etc. We have one family that wants to set firm times to meet every week though which is great! I really like them too, down to earth people I enjoy talking with. We have some pretty consistent people still though, which is nice (like John, the guy we work out with and read scripture with. I love John, he's freakin' awesome!)

It's a little weird having just one companion again, but I've pretty much adjusted back now. He's doing good over in his new area up in Aloha (which is right next to Beaverton). It's funny though because his Facebook got hacked and he's been getting super bad posts thrown up on his wall! We got a call during choir practice on Sunday from this guy in our ward telling us about it. So we changed his password and got onto his account at the church, but it happened again not even five minutes ago so now we had to deactivate his account! It's pretty funny- one of the people we meet with made tons of jokes about him after he read the inappropriate post! It was pretty funny!

That's pretty funny you all got Portland on that quiz! I'm 99% that's how they assign people to where they're called to serve: plugging your personal information into a Facebook quiz! Just kidding- but speaking of apostles, Elder Christofferson is coming to speak with the Portland missionaries on Friday! I'm excited for that, it should be really good and insightful. Hopefully he doesn't "gently rebuke" us too much..!

I'm glad to hear that Ben is getting out into the dating scene, there's hidden treasures inside every singles ward (hopefully). It sounds like school is going well for everybody- I'm glad to hear that Silas is doing better now that he's in a better fitted math class. I think getting the right class is so crucial to get anywhere in the subject, I wish I could have taken my sophomore math class again and still have gotten a math credit.. I saw some of Mom's pictures with her team out in SLC for their teaching conference. Whenever we try to do an overnight trip for our zone conferences we always get yelled at!!

Well, I hope that things go better for everybody this week. I'll hopefully have a good story or two for next week. Also, I promise I'll write back to everybody that's written me within the next day or two!

Love you,

Elder Samuel A. Burge

(I didn't have many pictures this week- but now Mom can rest assured that I get a wholesome breakfast!)

Frustration & a Little Miracle

Well, I didn't get off terribly easy. I would've been able to get it reduced if I drove out into Portland (out of our mission I think) to some driving course but he was being really difficult so I ended up paying $200 for the ticket.. Nothing came out of the speeding ticket either - but that's alright. Part of life: paying speeding tickets when you don't always feel the fee was justified.

Transfers were today - Elder Pearson is being transferred out, training a new missionary, and is being white-washed (he and his new companion are both new to the area). It was a bit daunting for him I think, but he's going to do great! So Elder Stovall and I will be together for another six weeks - which is alright with me. So I'm still here in Willamette for a little while! Elder Pearson is happy (and I'm envious) because he's going to a bike area in Aloha (which is like a part of Beaverton).

My week was a bit frustrating last week, I'd lost my camera on preparation day and I couldn't find it anywhere! I was so ticked about it, but luckily I still get some tender mercies from time to time and I figured I would check the West Linn elder's car one more time to see if it was in there and sure enough, I found it this morning! I'd checked the glove compartment twice, but third time was the charm! (Sorry, but no pictures this week.)

We're going to start working out with a less-active in our area, his apartment complex has a sweet gym and so we're going to get both physically and spiritually stacked with him! ("Stacked" is apparently another word for getting quite muscular.) We also had a little miracle happen- there's a really awesome guy we're teaching, and we talked with his son once or twice but never for very long. Well, he has a friend in the ward and apparently asked him at school for a copy of the Book of Mormon. So we of course gave him a Book of Mormon and he took it to school. He told the kid in our ward that he was going to try and read a chapter a night! It was a freakin' awesome phone call to get right before you're going home for the night!

Winter school- sounds like a blast! I had friends that would always tell me how lame it was, and that it was a huge joke. Hopefully that goes well for Silas. Math is gonna' kill me when I get home and start going to school..!

Well, I hope that my older brother can find some game before I get home! Or some girls that he'd actually want to date!

Well, I'm glad Dad is getting to know Portlandia a little bit better! There's some really crazy weird things to find in the city (again, I pray that I will serve there if even for a short season on my mission). I really want to explore some of those oddities, but getting out there for preparation day is difficult and usually we don't have much time when we go.. Voodoo has some really, uhh, interesting doughnuts on there menu to say the least..!

Well, tell Kayleigh I'd love to get some mail from her! I still have to finish writing my letter back to Silas, and a few other people. I love when I get letters, always makes your day better!

Well, I love you guys. Good luck with school this week!

-Elder Samuel A. Burge

We did a lot of country-side door-knocking this week…

Unfortunately, my court date is for this Thursday in the morning so I have another few days of blissful anticipation! I've heard from people in the area that they'll in the very least lower the fine, so that's comforting. If I'm lucky- maybe I can get off without having to pay anything!

Our week was good. Not the best week I've ever had, but we had some good lessons with a few less-active people in the Willamette area. (We had two of them come to church, which is sweet.) We did a lot of country-side door-knocking this week! (well, only like two hours) but that was really successful actually! We met some people that love Mormons- they just moved into the area and some of their best friends were members. Her parents from California were there and they also liked us a lot.. It's funny though, he was asking about us being eagle scouts and out of our trio nobody quite made it that far! He likes neckerchiefs though- a lot. Her husband (which we didn't meet) is apparently a really nice guy, but isn't the...friendliest person at first encounters. So we'll see how our return visit goes!

There was another lady we met that was golden! She was standing outside her house smoking a cigarette, so we went up and started talking to her about the Book of Mormon and Jesus Christ. She was so friendly and curious, so we tried to set up a time to come back... She's moving next week! It sucked because now we have to pass her along to the missionaries up in her new area. We're all on the same team, but I'd really like the Willamette area to score some "touch-downs"..! (It's okay though.)

Besides some other less-friendly woodland folk, that was our week. Transfers are next Monday so I think I'm going to lose both Elder Stovall and Pearson (Pearson definitely, he's been here six months). I'm thinking I'll get a greenie again, but we'll find out this Saturday for transfer calls.

That's exciting, Ben's got a new whip! It's even funnier about the old folks wrecking a brand-new car outside the dealership! It will be cool to see how his new Hyundai drives- and all the bells and whistles. Those are pretty cool, bluetooth is awesome. There's a new line of electric cars made by a company called Tesla, they make these really sweet luxury/sport electric cars. I've seen quite a few of those in this area!

Being on Facebook is kind of interesting.. To be totally honest, I feel like I'm wasting a lot of time trying to find people to talk with. Any success that I've seen from other missionaries has been with like college roommates that they'd talked with a little bit, but I think 90% of the missionaries I've talked with are struggling to find work. I think it's a new avenue to be explored, so it's going to take time before we make online missionary work an effective way of communicating with people. We're going to try "online-tracting"- sending out friend requests to random people we don't know and trying to strike up gospel conversations. Either way, I hope that people back home are at the very least reading some of the posts I've made- maybe I'll start teaching people from back home, who knows!

Well, it's weird to think that Ben is now a sophomore in college and pretty soon I'll be sitting at a high-school reunion tripping over everybody being married with kids, having a mid-life crisis or something.

Have a great week- I love you guys!

-Elder Samuel A. Burge

The eagle flies proudly at our post office

 

Country road

Tracting in the woods

Woodland selfie

Did we walk too far and end up in Chile?

Mossy Oregon

Our day is getting brighter

Feed my sheep?  I think these need a baaaath instead!!!

Abandoned house?

Yep!!  This is creepy.

There’s a screen door, but no front door.

Didn’t do too much with the holidays and being sick

Happy birthday, Dad! Now if anything gets him too frustrated on his birthday he can just riddle it with bullet-holes!~

It sounds like you all had a pretty enjoyable Christmas though, which is good to hear. Ben is going to have a car payment, he's in college.. That's the strangest part about being away is how everybody is getting older (Kayleigh's going to be to be sixteen by the time I'm back which is super weird to think about)!

Hope that everybody is feeling better now. Silas is right, I had a very similar experience some tacos and it was the worst night ever.. I still won't eat the beef at fast-food Mexican joints. I spent the two days after Christmas stuck in the apartment because of the flu/cold that I caught. I was feeling really bad, my throat hurt and I was running a pretty high fever. I hated it, you just feel unproductive and there's absolutely nothing to do. I think I watched just about every video produced by the church on the little portable DVD player we have in the apartment. Funny though- I found Harvey Dent from the Dark Knight trying to take some chick to the Provo Temple in a really old seminary video! (The hidden treasures you find sometimes.)

I eventually was feeling good enough to get out and work, so luckily the zone leaders came by to check up on us. They offered to let me go on an exchange with them for the day so I hung out with Elder Bennett and Schildknecht on Saturday.

Don’t get me sick

They could be brothers

They fed me cake!

How can you not be happy at the Walnut Market?

Other than that we didn't really do much this week with the holidays and us being sick, but hopefully we can find work this week! We're excited to get back to work, to say the least.

I hope that your week is good and car shopping goes well- I'll probably get thrown in jail before next Monday so sorry if my next email is late.

Love,

Elder Samuel A. Burge

Mission Christmas party pics:

We’re gonna be late

Who’s honking?

We made it just in time

Elders Richey & Varble

My son

 The only missionaries in my MTC group left in the mission

Elder Hendrickson

Elder Lasley

Nice guns?

Elder Wintana with red tie

My Christmas party bounty

Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas!

It's been a busy week for us, tons of meetings and some doctor's appointments- not to mention some big changes for us here in Portland, including the use of Facebook once again.

So on Wednesday we had a zone conference, and half of the day was spent with us just talking about us now using social media and other online tools for missionary work. Right now it's mostly just the use of blogs and Facebook, but eventually we'll be using things like video chat to teach lessons, etc. It's going to be interesting, but again they made a big emphasis on using it strictly for missionary purposes- so we can't use Facebook on preparation days to talk with our friends/family, etc. I'm not quite sure, but we might even have to take my blog off the internet- just with the pictures I send home and some of the things we talk about. I'll let you know if it becomes a problem or anything like that. Again though, you can still read my posts and things so that's kind of neat I guess.

We didn't have very many lessons this week- just with the holidays everybody doesn't want to meet. We did a lot of service this week, like helping out at the food pantry. I love helping out there, it's great and the people that we volunteer with are sweet! The food pantry gives away holiday packages and gives away toys so people can have a nice Christmas dinner with the works. It was awesome to see how many toys they got- we'd filled this whole back room with various trinkets and things for the kids to come through and pick out gifts. I felt like I was working in Santa's work-shop though, just unloading and setting out bags upon bags of board games, dolls, and all sorts of stuff.

We also helped some people build an extension to their chicken coop- that was really cool! They'd been meaning to build this fencing around the coop so the chickens could have more space and so cleaning up after them would be easier, so we put up these big walls made of 2x4 and we're going to finish covering it with chicken wire and putting a door on the enclosure. It's definitely not the most... quality construction job I've ever seen, but it's sturdy and will keep the chickens from being eaten by raccoon's or making a break for it. Either way, it was pretty sweet service experience.

We've also joined the ward choir as of a week or two ago! I'm singing as a tenor- even though I can't really read the music at all. I don't quite know the notes well, but I've managed to get through a performance without totally messing up! What's really awesome is that another person we're teaching happens to love singing, and since we'd just joined the choir we invited to come sing with us for Christmas- and she came this Sunday and joined our ward choir for the performance! I never thought using the choir would be a missionary tool, but apparently it worked very well. She's a great singer, and our choir director was stoked to have the addition (the choir isn't super big). Either way, it was really fun and a helpful tool for getting people to come to church.

This upcoming week will probably be pretty slow, but we've got a lot of people in the ward to hang out with for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. So I imagine we'll probably be calling home around 10:30 AM (my time) on Wednesday. It's a little early, so hopefully Silas and Ben will be awake (it is Christmas though, so hopefully not).

Yeah, I was really ticked that I have to send the guitalele home- I still don't understand why I can have something to learn to play hymns on, but I figure I should just be obedient and not worry about it (some mission rules are so frustrating and make no sense). Thanks for the gift though, I was really happy and excited about it for a whole three hours.

I hope that this holiday season is good for you back home- I love you and really miss you. I'm excited to talk with you all this Wednesday!

I love you.

-Elder Samuel A. Burge

Starting to feel a tiny bit cooped up

Are we screwing it down or just screwing it up?

This place is for the birds

Elder jammies

My new blanket

Hitler Snowman?!

Santa’s Helper

Look at all the toys!!!

Has anyone seen Elder Stovall?

Some funny looking elves

Cool Stained Glass

Hanging at Lake Oswego

Who wouldn’t want to invite guys like this into their home?!

The other side of the tracks

An amazing week for us – Elder Stovall is our lucky charm

Hello family-

Thanks for sending such a great birthday gift!~ I've been listening to those CD's non-stop since I got them, and that compact pool table is freakin' sweet! After we finish our planning at night we play some pick-up games of billiards!(seriously, that was a great idea- it's really fun.) The shoulder-bag is also really nice, it's been useful!

This week has been an amazing week for us, we had so much success it was ridiculous. We were able to set some dates with two people that we've been teaching. We were teaching this lady, Kathy, about the gospel of Jesus Christ and she said that if she was ready by the end of January that she'd be baptized! What's really cool though is that her friend had joined us for the first time, and when we asked her to be baptized she turned to him and said, "I don't know- Manwell, will you be baptized in January?" and to our astonishment he said that he would once he knew it was true! You know it's a good lesson when your investigators extend the baptismal invitations for you!

We've been able to get in with a lot of people to teach this week- been my best week yet here in the Willamette area. It was sweet! We also are helping a lady we're meeting with build an extension onto her chicken coop- which is really enjoyable. We also helped this other guy dig a small ditch in his front yard and then putting up some plasterboard above a door in his house. That was cool- I got stuck raking leaves out of a dried pond though for that one..

Being in a trio is pretty sweet- Elder Stovall is a good missionary and he's pretty chill when we get back to the apartment at night! He's been our lucky charm in bringing us more work in the area- which is awesome! Knocking doors is probably my least favorite part about it- it's kind of weird with three guys standing around your door.. President Morby promised the mission that if we sang Christmas carols while contacting that we'd be able to get into more doors so we decided to try it (me rather reluctantly) at like 1 o' clock in the afternoon- it was terrible.. Nobody let us even finish a song, it was really awkward, and honestly we were not singing well together..! But, lesson learned- we're going to go caroling with members in the evening so it's less strange (and also with people that can sing decently).

Sorry to hear that Kayleigh's lesson didn't go that well. It really is so much easier and enjoyable to teach when you have an audience that is actually willing to listen and participate. Tell her not to worry too much about it, I'm sure she did a great job teaching. It's good to hear that Ben passed his math finals! While putting together part of the wall for this chicken coop we're building I had to do some long division and it was difficult- I'm definitely going to need help with math when I'm in college because I can't remember, like, any of it at all..

It's weird to think that I've been out for a year- I'm halfway through already! This whole year has gone by so quickly- it's strange how true it is when people say that this time will fly by quickly, because it really does. I've definitely experienced a lot of changes this past year- I don't think I'm quite the same person I was before I left. Still me, but my perspective has changed- and my faith has grown in the savior Jesus Christ. I did not even have a testimony really before I left, but I do now and that's pretty sweet.

Well, I love you all and hope that your week goes well. I love you and thanks again for everything.

-Elder Samuel A. Burge
 

Maybe they’ll see it’s my birthday and we’ll have better luck knocking doors today.

Need a minute? Grab a Snickers bar!  Elders, I think this one is going to take more than a minute.

Hey, what does it mean when you make a wish and your coin bounces back!?

I think I should have brought a thicker coat

If you see the iron rod in this fog, grab it and don’t let go!!!

Some real pool sharks!!!

Elder Stovall thinks that for every Book of Mormon read, we should offer them a free bag of this!!!

No officer this really is sugar for the food bank – honest!!!

It was a long hike in & after the Christmas carol “attempt” an even longer hike out.  You think President Morby was just messing with us?

Tracting in the “ghettos” of West Linn

Elder Stovall’s got bank!!! Should we tell him it’s like monopoly money here in Portlandia?

Some of Stovall’s extra cash

Elder Stovall’s new digs – he doesn’t seem to miss the mosquito net.