Emily Burnham: Week 13: A God of Miracles

Hey y'all!

This past week has been full of so many miracles... yesterday in particular! We taught Brady about tithing and fasting in preparation for his interview, and he tried on baptism jump-suits! We also got a referral of a guy named Daniel who requested to meet with the missionaries, so we scheduled a time to meet with him on Sunday after Brady's lesson. We planned to teach him the Restoration, but when we showed up, he told us he had already received all the lessons and was going to get baptized in Louisiana, but had to move 5 days before his baptism. Then he asked when he could be baptized! We set a date right then and read the Book of Mormon with him and his sister, after he explained to her what the Book of Mormon was about :).

Then soon afterwards, as we drove to the church, we received a text from Bishop that Kennedie had a baptismal date of September 2! She is 10 and has wanted to be baptized for a long time by her dad, who was less active, so the bishop has been working with him and finally we have a date for Kennedie! She was so excited to tell us that night at her house when we came for a lesson. She didn't know we already knew, so she said, "Guess what's on September 2?" We guessed random things like her birthday, a party, vacation, her re-birth, etc., which was so funny. Two baptismal dates set in one day? God is full of miracles!

Other highlights of the week:

On Wednesday, we met up with Sister Akins to teach Jack about the Word of Wisdom. Afterwards, the family played some Beauty and the Beast songs on the piano and sang to us. It was so cool and I felt the Spirit very strongly that day through music.

Later that night, we had a lesson with Brady about eternal marriage and... the law of chastity. It was supposed to be an awkward lesson, but at the very beginning, Sister Hearn sent her young kids out of the room because it was an "adult" discussion. That definitely set an awkward tone... Then when we were talking about being sealed in the Celestial Kingdom, Brother Hearn said, "Yeah, you'll be shacked up with them forever." His wife started laughing and said, "I don't think that word means what you think it does." We went to mutual with the young women, too, and the funniest moment was when we were talking with Robyn, one of the youth, and she was telling us about how her younger sibling was obsessed with food dye and made blue-colored blueberry waffles. Sister Wall said she could actually have green eggs and ham now! She said, "Eww, I wouldn't eat them if they were green!" Automatically, the leader who was driving us, a pre-k teacher, replied, "Could you, would you, in the car?"

This week we also helped Sister Akins set up for her daughter's birthday party, Beauty and the Beast themed! Then we were able to attend part of it on Saturday and meet a lot of her family. It was a blast and I took a lot of pictures!

The work truly is moving forward here! We have been working with less actives who now want to come back to church and go through the temple! We also have four baptisms set for the next four or five weeks. Mission life is good! I know God lives and loves us individually. He is my support and strength. This week I studied about charity and love in Preach My Gospel. We are commanded to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. This got me thinking, how do we measure the love we have for ourselves? And how does this affect how we love others? I thought about it and realized the times when I am closest to God and feel the most confident are the times when I see the potential of others as children of God and love them. I have more patience and am more caring. The times I feel insecure or unconfident, I'm not as aware of others and not as caring as I should be. This is true in reverse. When others are not treating us with much love, maybe it is because they are in need of a lot of love and kindness. Hope y'all have a great week full of charity!

Much love,

Sister Burnham

Funny moments/Quotes from the week:

-I'm as old as dirt and proud of it!

-Hear that thunder in the sky? It's actually God bowling in Heaven!

-God's feeding us tonight. (An elderly man who took us out to dinner)

-In testimony meeting: "I know I'm half the man she deserves, but I'm twice the man I'd be without her."

-If I couldn't get ahold of her, she's the kind of person that if I prayed and asked Heavenly Father to call me on the phone, I know my phone will start ringing. She would receive the prompting and act on it right away.

-Brady asked regarding tithing, "Do I pay on my gross or net income?" Brother Hearn responded, "Well, do you want gross blessings or net blessings?"

-An old man/recent convert doing family history said he kept getting emails from family search of people he was related to. He said, "I didn't know I was related to so many Muslims. Wait, that's not the word... I'll think of it in a minute... ... ... Oh! Mormons!"

-She's got places to be, people to see, and no TIWI (the driving device that constantly tells us to check our speed when we drive too fast...)