Life is good.

Hello

First of all, thanks to everybody who sent me letters and stuff for my birthday!  Thanks for the candy (Thompson's), thanks for the letter (Auntie Marilyn/Warren) and thanks for the box of goodies parents!  That card was hilarious by the way.  When I opened that package, I was super stoked.  Our room is looking more like home already, what with that ninja and raptor above my desk.  Thanks a zillion billion! 

This week raced by.  It seems like only two seconds ago I was writing a letter home.  Days are starting to meld together here.  I guess with having all the days virtually similar, that's bound to happen. 

Yesterday was fun.  We had Elder Ka...zu...Yamoshito of the 70's speak to us--as well as his wife.  His wife has only lived in America for 4 months so her English was pretty....  Still, she did a great job.  Once and a while she would stop to ask: "you understand?" or "k?"  Elder Yomashito's English was better.  He spoke to us about our relationship as missionaries with our onderzoekers, and how vital that relationship is for eternal salvation.  His message was uplifting and spiritual.

I am starting to appreciate the scriptures more.  It feels like I'm diligently seeking knowledge within their pages, marking things down and whatnot as I read.  I can feel the spirit as I do so.  It's amazing.  I invite everybody back home to do the same--truly pay attention to what your reading as you read.

It sounds like you're having a crazy time with the cat that replaced me.  I tell my district members about all the shenanigans it gets into--including its incessant knack of switching all the settings on Dad's computer.  Dad, maybe if you knew your way around your computer you could fix it!  I'm sure they have classes for that.

Life is still good on this end.  Meals are almost getting to be a chore now.  It's like I've almost given up on them.  I find myself caring less about what I eat, which could be deadly.  Still, I try to eat a salad at least once a day and I am staying away from hot dogs, burgers and pop.  Speaking of food. I've got about a zillion pounds of candy in my room right now.  The Thompson's sent me a package a while back with about 3 dozen chocolate bars.  I think I've eaten two so far.  Many departing elders leave behind a bunch of candy. I appreciate it, but please, no more candy!  I've got enough to last my entire mission.

The language is coming along really well.  I don't feel like we're SYL-ing (speak your language) enough outside of the class, but I'm sure in a week or two we'll be speaking it the majority of the time.  They have some pretty crazy grammar rules, especially concerning past tense.  I guess you could say that about any language though.  What should I say in Dutch?  I houdt von mijn familie.....for suresies.  It's weird, the Dutch people don't really say "I love you" at all.  It's just part of their culture.  The verb to love is liefde, but you can pretty much never use it as a verb.  You could say, "God heeft liefde voor ons" (god has love for us) but not "God liefdt ons" (God loves us).  Just doesn't work.  Instead, you have to say, "Ik houdt von u," Literally translated "I hold of you." 

My district has got to be the best around.  We work so well together.  We try to eat together in the eat-a-torium everyday and pray everyday before personal study time.  My ccompanion has got to be the best in the world.  Ever.  He's mellow about things, yet has a great sense of humour.  Plus, he strives to correct any problems we bring up in ccompanion study. 

Right now, our two onderzoekers (investigators) are David and Kim Swaan.  They are both our teachers role playing, but I treat them just like real investigators.  I think they're making great progress.  David really wants to know Christ because he knows the gospel can help him and his family, and is really interested in what we teach.  His parents are divorced and his little brother died a while back, so family is really important to him.  Right now, though, we have to teach him about the word of wisdom because he smokes and drinks a bunch.  In the Netherlands, everybody you will talk to offers you a drink when you come over.  It is considered rude if you refuse, or ever ask for water instead! (they always have a million litres of juice in their fridges).  So when David offered me something to drink - tea, coffee, beer, I asked for apple juice instead.  He scoffed and said something along the lines of "Bah, my little cousin drinks apple juice!  Have something real to drink!  Beer, tea!"  I settled for water.

Kim Swann might be the perfect investigator though.  Her mother and sister are both member's and she essentially keeps  all the commandments already.  She accepts everything we teach and all commitments we extend without any fuss.  Pssh, we'll have her baptised before the next letter I write.  Well, probably not.

Wow, only 5 minutes left.

I hope things are great on your end!  Don't miss me too, too much.  Just a regular too much will do.

Oh, for my birthday, I make only one request.  I would like a letter from each of my friends, if that's not too much to ask for.  Just a simple "hey, how's it going" and "what are you up to" would be the best present.

Have you ever heard the song "Come thou fount of many blessings, tune my heart to sing it's graaaaace"?

I'm getting a little sick of that song.  It was removed from the hymnbook several years ago because of copyright issues, but it doesn't stop them from singing it every two seconds anyway.  I think in a week we must have sung that song over 5 times.  One of our leaders even played the motab version in a lesson.  It's getting old really fast. The worst part is that it gets stuck in EVERYONE'S head so EVERYONE is constantly humming, singing or whistling it everywhere.   Oh well, the good with the bad, right?

Until next week, totziens, en ik houdt van jullie!

Elder Burgess

Week 3!!

Bam.

Life's still good in the MTC.  It's hard to pay attention sometimes because of the lack of sleep, but I'm making do.  We got a fan in our room -  left over from the other Dutch group which left on Monday.  Last night was my best night.  I went to bed and I swear five minutes later I woke up.  It was great.

Still loving my district.  They're all great guys.  Their names are Elders Mower (my collega), Mathis, Wayman, Burton, McKee, Stoddard, Andrews and Sisters Stout and Palinekova.  Sister...Palinelinaskjova is from Slovakia and speaks like, 5 languages.  How crazy is that?  She speaks better English that some people in our group.  Most of the guys are from Utah--a lot of the time less than an hour away.  Only Elder Burton, Andrews and I are from somewhere else.  Elder Andrews is from Colorado.

So yeah,  some minor, kinda boring details.  There are three bunk beds in our room, but there are only four of us.  I sleep on the bottom bunk, with Elder Mower above me and the other two in our room sleep on bottom bunks too.  The other guys in the district now have six people in their room--with two from a different district altogether.  It's interesting haveing it that way....we only really see those two guys, from a different district, at nighttime.

I mentioned earlier that the other Dutch guys left on Monday.  There were four of them.  They were awesome guys, super inspirational.  When they left, we crammed like 20 people in their room and sang "Till we meet".  It was really powerful.  I'll miss them.

The Danish elders, however, are here for a few more weeks.  There are only three of them.  (One of them has a glass eye).  They're super fun loving and hang with us all the time.  Ha, for the last few days, I've been going into their room and writing stuff like "take off, you hosers!,  Love Elder Burton" and they really believe it's him.  I wonder how long I can get away with it.

Speaking of jokes.  The...second night the new guys in the other Dutch room were here, I ventured into their room while one of the greenies was looking at pictures from home.  One of them was a girl, so I went "Ooo!" over his shoulder, thinking it was his girlfriend or something.  He looked up at me, somewhat solem-faced and said "that's my sister".  Wham, that was embarrassing.  I got my butt back to my room so fast.  How do you look someone in the face after that?  I think he understands I was just joking.

Last night, we had Elder Christofferson of the Quorum of the 12 speak to us.  OF THE 12!  How awesome is that?  Very awesome indeed.  He said some pretty great things, but one thing stuck out in particular.  He said something like "We need to yield our hearts to God."  That phrase goes so perfectly with what I said a few weeks ago, about having a new heart in me.  We gotta change ourselves if we are to be the Missionaries God wants us to be.  I dunno.  I'm not good with the squishy words.  I just feel like God's trying to tell me something, you know?  That I have to surrender myself to him.  Does that make sense?  I explained it better to my district during our mini-testimony meeting afterwards.  It's written somewhere in my journal too.

The language is coming along well  -  as well as the lessons/teaching.  I feel like we're teaching with stronger conviction, and really listening to the needs of our investigators.  Our "onderzoekers" (investigators) are just our teachers acting, but I take the lessons very seriously.  I'm super proud with our (Elder Mower and my) progress.  Before, we'd prepare our lesson and essentially read it off our notepads.  Now we discuss what they need and prepare a basic outline.  Everything we tell them is strung together on the spot--no more memorization or reading. Sweet stuff.  Dutch is way cooler than German.  Het Nederlands is leuk!  Don't tell Mama Jean that.

But man are there some crazy words.  Tegenwoordikijt means presence.  Pretty huge.  Some words just get gigantic, because a lot of the time, they just smoosh a bunch of words together to make it mean something.  In English, we've got a lot of specialized words that mean specific things.  Not so much in Dutch.  Singing hymns is awesome.  The "Spirit of God" has one part that has three "ge"s in a row.  If you remember, g's make a guttural *flem* sound.  Love that song.

Tell Mia happy birthday!  It sounds like you guys are still having fun without me.  That's kinda hard to believe.  Oh, and tell dad to stop moving my stuff around!  I want it to be exactly how I left it when I get back! Kidding, of course. 

Let's see...  Anything else?  We're going to have a big service day tomorrow for Thanksgiving.  We're putting together a billion million relief packages or something.  Should be interesting.  Thursdays are the worst--I'll pick service over Thursdays! 

Want to hear a Dutch sentence?  "Wij danken u ons te zegenen met uw Geest."  We ask thee to bless us with thy spirit.  Fun stuff.

Ooo, want to hear something interesting?

Vaccination is het nederlands is spelt "Vaccinatie"  Guess how it's pronounced--and I kid you NOT--"foxy-nazi."  Whoops.  That led to some interesting conversations for the first week or so! 

Hey, Sam, draw me a picture!

Love you a billion times over!

Till next P-day,

Elder Burgess

I'll get the language. I'll get the lessons. I'll be fine.

Hey, sorry it takes so long to get these.  I only get half an hour once a week. 

Life's great here in the MTC.  Food kinda rocks (mostly sucks) and still wreaks havoc on my guts.  I can't believe how much junk food they serve here!  We've been offered hotdogs twice.  Ker-gross!  What's worse is the number of people who take the hotdogs.  Three or four members of my 10-person district took them. 

The spirit is super strong here--especially Tuesday nights when we get to hear from a General Authority.  Last night we heard a talk from Elder Tad Callister of the Seventy.  It was about the apostacy after Christ's death.  It was super interesting hearing about all of the things that were lost or otherwise changed after Christ and his apostles were killed.  He counted off ten in total.  I don't want to get into detail, but it was an awesome talk.

One thing he said in particular struck me.  Something along the lines of "Satan tries his hardest at the advent of something great"  Apparently, when Joseph Smith was 14 or something, he stepped outside his house and a bullet passed right in front of him.  The never found the killer nor the reason for the attack.  But I figured the same thing applies for missionaries.  I hope Travis realizes this as well.  Reflecting on Elder Callister's talk, I realized that this is where I need to be.  Yes, the language is difficult, yes, teaching is difficult--and the two combined, impossible --but you know what?  I have 7 more weeks here.  I'm not worried.  I'll get the language.  I'll get the lessons.  I'll be fine.

Anyway, that's my spiritual message for the day.

We have an awesome district.  Have I told you that?  Our district leader right now is Elder Burton ~ the other Canadian.  We get a lot of grief from the Americans, but whatever.  I just go along with it all the time.    Oh, and I met Rubon today.  I went to EFY with him.  Great guy, it was good to see him here.  Cassie and Braden should know him well.

20 minutes left. 

My "collega" (co-lay-*flem*-ah) is Elder Mower.  He's a great guy.  We get along really well.  He's a drummer and stuff. You know that obnoxious hand-fart thing I can do?  He can do the same--but drop a beat with it.  So awesome.

The Dutch missionaries that have been here a while are leaving on Monday.  There are only four of them, but they've been a great help--with the language and getting us used to the MTC.  Most of the time they hang out in our area of the dormitories.  They taught us the art of the tie-slap and passive-life-ruining.  You calmly take people's nametags off and mess their shirt and tie around.  The Danish guys next to us are awesome too.  Strangely enough, there are three of them.  I think they leave on Monday as well.  I'll miss them.

Want to hear some Dutch words?  Gehoorzamheid.  (*flem*-eh-hore-zam-height).  That's how Dutch works by the way.  G's are Flem.  It's kinda gross.  The worst is how you say thank you.... "Graag Gedaan".  Flem-flem ker-flem.  Elder McKee lost his voice for a week.  I don't even think he's fully recovered yet.

Oh, tell everyone how grateful I am for all their gifts!  And their letters.  It means a TON to me!  Tell my friends to send me tons of letters!  It's great to know they care.  Sam and Cassie sent me one, but otherwise nobody else.  Tell them to use dearelder.com and that I probably won't directly reply (restrited computer use..  Still, keep em' coming.

As far as writing, I haven't really had time to write--let alone time to think about anything.  Days are so busy here.  You wake up, eat, go to class, eat, go to class, eat, go to class, bed.  Throw in Gym (Spoortzaal), and that's essentially our schedule.  Well, kind of.  Tuesdays and I think Fridays start later because we have gym in the morning.  We don't bothering showering until after gym so we just laze around in our room until 7:10-ish, then grab a bag lunch.  You can't go into the cafeteria (eetzaal) unless you are in proselyting clothes.   I've started writing a little something--a continuation of a book I started back home.  We'll see what happens with that.

Elder Wayman, Mathis, Mower and I (all the guys in my room) are trying to get to bed earlier so that we're not so tired.  When you sit in a classroom for 4+ hours it gets hard to stay awake, let alone pay attention.  We're hoping the extra sleep will help.

Oh, and Dalen, where's that dent your companion made?  We think we found it but aren't too sure.

Volleyball is getting better.  I figured out that being super-enthusiastic makes the experience pretty fun.  I cringe every time somebody scoops the ball or "bumps" it with both palms open and facing upwards, or whenever somebody drowns on the net, but oh well.  Hopefull they're better in Nederland.

Well, I'm running out of time. 

That's all I got for now. 

Love you ALL so much!

Elder Burgess.

Best district

First of all, thanks to everybody who sent me letters and stuff for my birthday!  Thanks for the candy, Thompson's, thanks for the letter Auntie Marilyn and Warren and thanks for the box of goodies parents!  (That card was hilarious by the way).  When I opened that package, I was super stoked.  Our room is looking more like home, what with that ninja and raptor above my desk.  Thanks a zillion billion! 

This week raced by.  It seems like only two seconds ago I was writing a letter home.  Days are starting to meld together here.  I guess with having all the days virtually similar, that's bound to happen. 

Anyway, yesterday was fun.  We had Elder Ka...zu  Yamoshito of the 70's speak to us--as well as his wife.  His wife has only lived in America for 4 months so her english was pretty....  Still, she did a great job all things considering.  Once and a while she'd stop to ask: "you understand?" or "k?"  Elder Yomashito's English was better, so his talk was slightly more...organized.  He spoke to us about our relationship as missionaries with our onderzoekers, and how vital that relationship is for eternal salvation and stuff.  It was uplifting and spiritual.

I'm starting to appreciate the scriptures more.  It feels like I'm diligently seeking knowledge within their pages, marking things down and whatnot as I read.  I can feel the spirit as I do so.  It's amazing.  I invite everybody back home to do the same--truly pay attention to what your reading as you read.

It sounds like you're having a crazy time with that cat that replaced me.  I tell my district members about all the shenanigans it gets into--including its incessant knack of switching all the settings on Dad's computer.  Dad, maybe if you knew your way around, you could fix it!  I'm sure they have classes for that.

Life's still good on this end.  Meals are almost getting to be a chore now.  It's like I've almost given up on them.  I find myself caring less about what I eat, which could be deadly.  Still, I try to eat a salad at least once a day and I am staying away from hot dogs, burgers and pop. 

Speaking of food...I've got about a zillion pounds of candy in my room right now.  The Thompson's (THANK YOU!!) sent me a package a while back with about 3 dozen chocolate bars.  I think I've eaten two so far.  Many elders leave behind a bunch of candy when they leave. I appreciate it, but please, no more candy!  I've got about enough to last my entire mission.

The language is coming along really well.  I don't feel like we're SYL-ing (speak your language) enough outside of the class, but I'm sure in a week or two we'll be speaking it the majority of the time.  They have some pretty crazy grammar rules, especially concerning past tense.  I guess you could say that about any language though.  What should I say in Dutch?  I houdt von mijn familie....for suresies.  It's weird, the Dutch people don't really say "I love you" at all.  It's just part of their culture.  The verb to love is liefde, but you can pretty much never use it as a verb.  You could say, "God heeft liefde voor ons" (god has love for us) but not "God liefdt ons" (God loves us).  Just doesn't work.  Instead, you have to say, "Ik houdt von u," Literally translated "I hold of you."  Craziness, eh?

My district has got to be the best around.  We work so well together.  We try to eat together in the eat-a-torium everyday and pray everyday before personal study time.  My ccompanion has got to be the best in the world.  Ever.  He's mellow about things, yet has a great sense of humour.  Plus, he strives to correct any problems we bring up in ccompanion study. 

Right now, our two onderzoekers (investigators) are David and Kim Swaan.  They are both our teachers role playing, but I treat them just like real investigators.  I think they're making great progress.  David really wants to know Christ because he knows the gospel can help him and his family, and is really interested in what we teach.  His parents are divorced and his little brother died a while back, so family is really important to him.  Right now, though, we have to teach him about the word of wisdom because he smokes and drinks a bunch.  In the Netherlands, everybody you'll talk to offers you a drink when you come over.  It is...considered rude if you refuse, or ever ask for water instead! (they always have a million litres of juice in their fridges).  So when David offered me something to drink -  tea, coffee, beer, I asked for apple juice instead.  He scoffed and said something along the lines of "Bah, my little cousin drinks apple juice!  Have something real to drink!  Beer, tea!"  I settled for water.

Kim Swann might be the perfect investigator though.  Her mother and sister are both members and she essentially keeps  all the commandments already.  She accepts everything we teach and all commitments we extend without any fuss.  Pssh, we'll have her baptised before the next letter I write.  Well, probably not.

I hope things are great on your end!  Don't miss me too, too much.  Just a regular too much will do.

Oh, for my birthday, I make only one request.  I would like a letter from each of my friends, if that's not too much to ask for.  Just a simple "hey, how's it going" and what are you up to would be the best present.

Ever heard the song "come thou fount of many blessings, tune my hear to sing it's graaaaace"? It was removed from the hymnbook several years ago because of copyright issues, but it doesn't stop them from singing it every two seconds.  In a week, we must have sung that song over 5 times.  One of our leaders even played the motab version in a lesson.  The worst part is that it gets stuck in EVERYONE'S head so EVERYONE is constantly humming, singing or whistling it everywhere.  Oh well. 

Until next week, totziens, en ik houdt van jullie!

Elder Burgess

First impressions

First of all, sorry for taking so long to write this.  Our first P-day (day off) is on Wednesday's.  Please bear with me for any mistakes.  I hate this keyboard and Dutch is muddling my brainthoughts.  The MTC is great!  It's excellent to be surrounded by so many missionaries!  You don't have to worry about vulgarities or mean-ness or anything else like that!  Plus the spirit is so strong here.  It's truly amazing. 

I love the letters you're sending me and I hope you write me frequently.  Like I said, we only get to e-mail once a week, but it makes a difference to me receiving all these letters. 

Learning Dutch is difficult, but I feel like I've already learned more in this one short week than all of highschool.  The teachers speak as much Dutch as they can and only speak English when they're: A) teaching us about gospel doctrine or B) we don't understand it. 

Sunday was interesting because it was a fast day.  I'm not sure what Sundays are usually like, but we had a huge devotional (2 hours) and later a 1-hour fireside.  The fireside was super interesting.  The guest speaker explained to us how some missions are still closed and how some have opened up recently.  He was a lawyer and consequently used many big, lawyer-ery terms that only Dad and Jeremy would understand.  Still, very fascinating.

I love my district.  It feels like I've known them forever already.  I'm stuck in a room with three "Utons" (like croutons but...utah?) but I don't mind.  My companion is a cool guy.  After getting to know everybody in my district, I wouldn't want to be with anybody else.  Oh, and our district leader is Canadian (woot woot) from Alberta, somewhere relatively close to Banff.  Fun times.

As for the food?  Meh.  That's really it.  I can't really remember any specific meals, they've all been the same.  They have a salad bar, a wrap line, a 'yellow' line (where they serve fast-food style 'food') and two purple lines, where they serve more traditional style foods.  I try my best to stay away from the yellow line.  It's unfortunate that the serving of vegetatbles with your meal are either minute or non-existant.  You have to go out of your way to get some colour on your plate.  I don't really mind.  I try to eat salad or soup every time.  I hear some nasty rumours of people gaining up to 40 pounds.  (I may have gained 1 or 2 already). 

Oh, here's something fun for you.  Yesterday was "Magic Tuesday".  Apparently only the Dutch missionaries get to participate in "magic Tuesday"....and only once during their stay at the MTC.  The Dutch missionaries who have been here a while kept saying "Oh, I loved Magic tuesday", "We still talk about magic Tuesday", "Magic tuesday is such a spiritual experience, I wish I could do it again" and "Bring your camera."  So I did bring my camera.  I'm not sure what I was expecting--maybe a awesome talk or the opportunity to speak with a General Authority or something--but the experience was far from magical.  We were directed to a small room which had a table.  On the table were bags, adorned with our names with "Biohazard" stickers on them.  Freaky.  A lady came in and directed us to go into the room next door so they could take our blood.  Even more freaky.  After that, the scariest part of all: "In order to travel to and stay in Belgium, we need both a blood sample from you, as well as a stool sample."  Yeah.  That's right.  Stool sample. 

There is nothing magical about Magic Tuesday.

On the plus side, Elder Eduardo Gavarett spoke to us that night.  Every Tuesday, General Authorities come and give talks.  His wife spoke as well, with a thick spanish accent.  It was great.  Elder Gavarett's talk was very profound and spiritual.  I was hit with a specific phrase "A new heart in me."  That line struck me so hard...it's hard to describe.  It's like he summed up this mission experience--that I must truly have a new heart to be successful in my purpose here.  I have to become somebody new...  Powerful indeed.

Anyway, it's great to hear from you guys!  Keep writing please!  Oh, and Mom, please tells others about dearelder.com  It is awesome.

Mom, send this to all my friends.

Love yah lots!

Elder Burgess, Zegelin von de kerk von Jezus Christus van de Heiligen der Laaste Dagen (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints)