Nov 23, 2009 Teaching Dora and her family-Time is going at light speed

Mom and Dad-

Thank you for those adresses. I am pretty sure that i sent letters to both Chad and Shawna about a month ago that went to the wrong adresses. Oops. So you guys had a dull week huh? Im sorry to hear that. Why did you end up taking the house off the market? I really hope you didnt do it for me! That will be nice though, to come back to a place that i am actually familiar with. That will be fun to have Katey and Keegan home for Thanksgiving. Is the ward doing any kind of turkey bowl or anything? That really stinks that Katey has Mono. I hated that so bad! Yeah hopefully nobody else catches it.

We have a couple Dinners lined up for Thanksgiving, so that we be nice. At 12pm, we are going over to an investigators house to eat with this huge family of like 10 people that we found last week. Its a pretty cool story. We knocked into this lady named Dora, and we taught her for about 5 minutes. She told us that she wanted us to come back in a few days, but we werent really sure how sincere she was beacause she seemed like she was pretty set in her ways. We went back a few days later for our appointment, and when we pulled up, we saw that there were a ton of people at her house, and a bunch of them were dressed pretty nicely. There door was opened so we could see inside that there was alot of people there. We figured that they had forgotten about our appoinment and were haveing some kind of party or something, but as we walked up to the house, Dora came outside and said that She had been waiting for us. When we went inside, there were about 12 people sitting down on the couches and on the floor and they were all waiting for us to come teach them! I guess Dora has a bunch of extended family, and she called them all up and told them to come over to listen to us. So as we taught, every single person there was participating and asnwering questions. It was so awsome. The lesson was really good and the Spirit filled the room. After the lesson, they asked us if we went home on the holidays to be with our families; when we told them we didnt, they told us that we were going to go to their place for Thanksgiving. And they are white! whoo whoo! So that was a cool experience that we had this week.

For a while there, we were having a really hard time finding anyone to teach, but recently, all of the knocking on doors has paid off. We recently were able to find a guy who is about our age named jared. We ran into him a couple weeks ago and he told us to just give him a call because he would be really busy that week. We left him with a Chapter to read from the Book of Mormon, but we figured that would be the last we heard from him because that is what most people say when they just want to get rid of us. So we ended up calling him this last tuesday, and he had read the chapter we left him, and had prayed about it, and wants to continue taking the lessons. He is a really smart guy who is a business major here at Troy University. He came to church yesterday and really enjoyed it, so we are very excited about the things that have been going on lately. We really have been so blessed here in Troy.

Lately, i have been thinking alot about how scarey it is to be going home in less than 5 months. I feel like i still have so much more to learn, and not even close to enough time to learn it. I dont think i am going to be ready to go home in April! I have been studying alot lately out of the Christ like attributes chapter out of Preach my Gospel, and i have come to the conclusion that i dont have any of them! Who is going to want to marry me?! I have been in a week long study of Charity and have been trying to apply it everyday. I am going to do that with every attribute in Ch. 6 of Preach my Gospel and hopefully it will help. As you can tell, i am starting to get stressed out because it seems like time is all of a sudden going light speed and i dont have anough time to do anything. Do you guys have any advise for me?

I think i want to get started with School as soon as possible when i get back, but i also dont want to overload myself, because i want to have some time with the family over the summer as well. That is pretty crazy that Alison is getting married, and Kevin too! What the heck? What is the guys name that Megan Groch is dating again? You said he was an AP in this mission?

Sorry that this letter was so scattered. I have alot on my mind lately. It is going to be so refreshing to be able to talk to you guys next month about everything. I am having the time of my life right now. Sometimes it is hard for me to put in words the feelings i have about my mission, so it will be nice to talk to you on the phone about it all.

I cant really think of anything that i need for Christmas. I think i am just going to try to make everything last until the end. My pants, shirts, and shoes are all starting to fall apart, but i think they will make it. I am sorry again that my letters arent better, i can never express how i feel very well. JUst know that i love you guys so much. Thank you for everything!

Love, Elder Josh Burnham