What's Up Homies?!!!!

Hope this week was great for you! 

We had an awesome one here! 

It was the last week of the transfer and it went well. 

For transfers we found out that I am....  

🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁

STAYING!! 

I'll still be in the same apartment, but there will be lots of changes. I'll be covering 2 Wards now...going from double covering an English Ward and a Tongan Ward to fully covering an  English Ward and a completely different Tongan Ward. Elder Cook is heading out. He is going up to the Santa Monica YSA. And I'll be training again! So my new companion is still unknown. I'll find out who he is at the trainer meeting. But this transfer should be super awesome! Training will be great and there will be lots of new work for us to do! Let'sss gooooo! 

As far as this week goes it was pretty great! I was down and out for the count early in the week. I was pretty sick, but it gave me lots of time to think. "Count your many blessings, name them one by one, and it will surprise you what the Lord has done." So true!! I just thought about all the ways that I've seen Heavenly Father's hand in my life and it is way too many to count! It never ceases to amaze me how much our Heavenly Father loves all of us. 

"Now have we not reason to rejoice? Yea, I say unto you, there never were men that had so great reason to rejoice as we, since the world began; yea, and my joy is carried away, even unto boasting in my God; for he has all power, all wisdom, and all understanding; he comprehendeth all things, and he is a merciful Being, even unto salvation, to those who will repent and believe on his name. 

 Now if this is boasting, even so will I boast; for this is my life and my light, my joy and my salvation, and my redemption from everlasting wo. Yea, blessed is the name of my God, who has been mindful of this people, who are a branch of the tree of Israel, and has been lost from its body in a strange land; yea, I say, blessed be the name of my God, who has been mindful of us, wanderers in a strange land."   ~Alma 26:35-36:

I also had lots of fun for p day doing some Xrays and an MRI on my wrists. For the MRI they gave me a shot of "contrasting fluid" to help make the MRI pick things up. I was really hoping that the contrasting fluid would be some neon green goo that'd make my veins all glow. But, to my great sadness... no glow.  maybe next time.

Have a great week!

-Elder Burgon

Pix...

The face of missionary who has 2! veins collapse during a very painful blood draw!!!!

All better...

 Being short has it's perks!!!

 The District...

WOWZA

This week was packed with stuff! 

We were running around all week.
 It was pretty entertaining! 

Let me fill ya in.

We started off the week with my physical therapy up in Santa Monica and wowza was it fun! When my wrists started hurting I had no idea it meant a physical therapist would twist, stretch, and crack my neck in so many ways. At one point I didn't know if he was doing physical therapy or putting me out of my misery all together by just breaking my neck right then and there. That man had joints in my body cracking that I didn't even know I had. And you better believe that I was sore the next day. :) Fun times. What was really fun tho was the drive up to Santa Monica and back. On the way there we stopped at a Wendy's and got lunch. We were sitting there staring out the window just watching crazy LA. It can be really entertaining sometimes. Then we saw a sweet Ferrari pull in and just chill at Wendy's. We were like woah, pretty cool pretty cool. Then a few minutes later a big passenger van pulls up. Elder Cook said, "Wow look at that huuuuge van!" Apparently Elder Cook hadn't ever seen a Mormon van before that. I told him it was probably a Mormon family on vacation. Half of me was joking and the other half thought it was totally true. Little to my surprise a family of twelve flooded out of the van and into Wendy's for a pit stop. They came inside and were like, "Hey Elders! How's it going?" I just looked at Elder Cook and said, "what'd I tell ya?" hahaha. We also saw another Ferrari on the way back. I love the souped up civics of Inglewood just as much as the next guy but it was fun to see some Ferraris again.

Ok here is a fun mission story for ya. I was on exchanges with Elder Cox who was in my MTC district and he is now serving in my first area so I was pretty excited! On the exchange we were in his car driving around and then he pulled over and said, "Hey I've got a bad headache and I'm not feeling so great. Do you think you could drive?" I said yeah and hopped in the driver seat and we took off again. We drove for a few more minutes and I thought Elder Cox was falling asleep because out of the corner of my eye I could see his head nodding. Then I looked over and realized that he wasn't falling asleep but he was doing everything possible to hold in an explosive barf. He reached to open the door but too little too late. Blahhhhhhh. All of the sudden the flood gates opened and throw up filled the floor of the car and completely soaked Elder Cox's lap. He looked over and said "well that's embarr- blahhhhhhh"... round 2... he cracked a smile and said, "Well, at least I feel better now!" I was dying! Both from the smell and from Elder Cox joking about it and having a good attitude about the whole thing. We quickly drove to the nearest self serve car wash and sprayed him off with the power washer the best we could. The looks we got were priceless.  

Now on a more serious note. One night we were driving around after our appointment fell through and we felt like we should stop by G__. He is an investigator we have been working with for a few weeks now and it's been awesome. He had a really rough life in the past until he realized that the path he was on wasn't bringing him any happiness. He decided to completely turn his life around and head in a new direction. In our visit this week he talked a lot about the change that has taken place in his life. He can see that the more he focuses on the gospel the more light there is in his life. There is a great Mormon Message called 'Flecks of Gold' that talks about this and it's so cool to see it in action in G__'s life. It's amazing to see how much he has changed and it all happens just one little step at a time. Line upon line precept upon precept. The Gospel really is a gospel of change and it is such a blessing to be able to witness that change in others as a missionary!

Have a great week!

-Elder Burgon

pix:

Aliens...

The best Smoothie ever in front of a German book of mormon...

we found an octopus so we thought we were cool...

 selfie!!!

Mormon Night with the Dodgers

Just a few pics for this week...

Yeah It Feels Like Summer

Hello hello hello! 

Can you believe it's summer!? Geez! 

This week t'was a good one as always! It started off with a killer memorial day bbq with the Tongans. Like I've said before, they know how to party... and eat. They spent the entire day in a park and bbq-ed for breakfast lunch and dinner. We just stopped by and snagged some brunch. If you've never had the Tongan classic of spam sushi before I highly recommend it! So good! Then we had a super solid p day with the Spanish Hombres to the North. We went to the Alameda swap meet and dropped some dough on some Huaraches. They are super comfortable leather shoes that a member makes and sells for super cheap! Plus our mission president loves them so it was a done deal. Then we picked up some dough at Randy's doughnuts. They are soooo good! Plus from what everyone tells me that giant doughnut is pretty famous . 

When we were helping the ward out with some ministering on Tuesday we had a fun surprise lesson. The ward had a couple of people they wanted us to stop by and see so we were out and about tackling the list and we knocked on one door where a member was supposed to live. A lady answered the door and we asked if so and so still lived there and she said, "Nope! But we are doing a Bible study class right now do you want to come in?" Before I even had a chance to process what she said my companion was already in the house sitting on the couch with his Bible open and ready to go. He was excited to say the least. They were really friendly and had lots of questions so it was really cool! It also helped strengthen my testimony in the Book of Mormon and how important it is for clarifying doctrine that is a little more confusing in the Bible. The Book of Mormon and the Bible work so well together. It is the G R E A T E S T!  

Lately we've been doing a good amount of driving because of how big the Tongan ward is. Because of that Elder Cook and I like to listen to long talks as we drive. One day this week the talk of the day was 'Turn off the TV and get a life' by John Bytheway. It basically talks for over an hour about how bad TV and video games are and how we can be a lot more productive with our time. So we listened to that and by the end of the day it had Elder Cook and I both convinced that we will never watch TV or play video games ever again. Then we went to dinner with a member. We sat down and started talking. We asked what he did for work and he said, "I play video games for a living. Yesterday I played video games literally all day and into the night until 5:00 in the morning"... It took every ounce of strength I had to not just keel over dead right then and there. The irony of the situation was too real! I wasnt sure if I should take that as a sign and just hand him a copy of the talk or what I was supposed to do. It was just too funny!

Have a great week! 

-Elder Burgon 

See the shoes...and the spudnuts...and the huge donut?

 Fun pday at the "cave" minus the ocean

🇺🇲🇺🇸

Hey everyone! 

Happy memorial day! 

It's already that time again? Wowza  

This week was packed with some pretty awesome stuff! On p-day I finally hiked the Hollywood sign! The view was pretty cool! We were at the peak of the mountain so you could look south and see all of LA and you could look North and see the San Fernando Valley. One more month and that'll be part of the mish! 

I realize that I haven't said too much about my new companion yet. Elder Cook is awesome! He is from Salem, Oregon and he is SUPER TALL! I think president Haynie has a sense of humor putting the tallest missionary in the mission with the shortest  It's a lot of fun! 

I also got to go to the temple this week! It was so awesome to go to the temple! I love driving up to Santa Monica and see the Temple sticking out in the middle of the city. The peace that comes from going to the temple is just so amazing! LA is a pretty crazy place and it seems like wherever you go you can't get out of the craziness. But the second I'm on temple grounds the spirit is always so strong. I truly do love to see the temple. 

This week our apartment got a much needed carpet cleaning. So I recruited Elder "Pack mule" Dehlin and his companion Elder Albuquerque to come over and help us squeeze all of our furniture into our kitchen to get it off the carpet. While we were moving the furniture someone suggested we take before and after pics because it would make a great object lesson for the atonement and repentance. So we did! 

"Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as [dirty carpet], they shall be as [clean as freshly washed carpets]; though they be red like [juice stains], they shall be as wool." ~Isaiah 1:18

BEFORE...

...AFTER

I am so grateful for the Atonement of Jesus Christ and the opportunity that we have to repent and become better each day. It really is a miracle that when we repent our sins can be washed away and we can learn from our mistakes and move on. To me this shows just how much our Heavenly Father loves us. He wants us to have joy and wants us to become the best we can become and that is all possible because He sent His son to atone for our sins and make it possible for us to change and continually improve. 

Have a great week! 

-Elder Burgon

A few more pics from our Hollywood Sign hike...

HOLA AMIGOS

Hey friends and fam! 

Today is transfer P day and it's been crazy so it'll be a short one this week. 

As far as transfer news goes I'm staying! I'm still district leader here in my area and my new companion is Elder Cook. Elder Cook is a Spanish missionary that it switching over to English for this transfer. I'll have to have him teach me! Elder Lam is heading out tho. He is going to USC and joining the Chinese program!

In other news our mission is no longer going to be split! We will still get some new stakes from the San Fernando Mission but we will keep all the stakes that we were supposed to lose.

Have a great week!

-Elder Burgon 

pics...

PDay fun!!!

Elder Lam caught me nodding off...add it to the exhausted missionary series!

大食會

Hello again! 

It was an AMAZING week! 

We had zone conference on Wednesday and it was the BEST! We got some super fun news! Even though Dodger stadium is out of our mission, President Haynie got first presidency permission for all of us missionaries to go to Mormon Night! So we all get to go to a Dodger game on June 9th! So cool! The rest of zone conference was so incredible. President and Sister Haynie recently had a mission president training and came back with lots of great info and even better stories that got us all super pumped! Normally zone conferences are run by all the zone leaders and the assistants but because President had so much to talk about he spoke for almost all of it. It was soooooooo good! President Haynie is amazing! 

Yesterday was a farewell for Robert, a guy from the Tongan ward, and it was crazy! A lot of family flew out from Tonga! Just for the farewell! And he's going to Tonga! There were so many people in sacrament meeting and they have more kids than Utah Mormons so it was crazy! There were kids running around on the stand as Robert gave his talk. It was really entertaining. They also did what they call a 'big eat' the night before and that was even crazier! I've never seen so much food in my entire life! They had an entire pig and to get some on your plate you literally just used your hand, broke through the skin, dug around inside the pig, and yanked out the meat you wanted. But hey it tasted good so that's what really matters right? 

The Feast Beast!

After the grub club!

Last week I got some news from Elder Dehlin that was pretty sad but really inspiring as well. In the Samoan ward where I was serving last transfer I had an amazing ward mission leader named Brother Lui. While I served there he was fighting cancer and had to go through chemotherapy every week. The treatments were really rough and on top of all of that his house flooded and he had to deal with trying to get that all fixed up. He was extremely tough though and continued to come to church just about every week and continued to help us with our missionary work. All with a smile on his face too! He was an amazing example of how to live the gospel and do what's right even when it's hard. The most incredible part is that just over a week ago, even though he was very weak, he wanted to go out with some members in the ward and visit some people that were in need of a message. He went out and visited some people. Shared a message and helped them with what they were going through and then came home, went to bed, then peacefully passed away the next morning. He was faithfully following the example of our Savior until the very last moments of his life. He used all the energy he had to serve and help others. A talk I recently listened to said that our Christ like actions shouldn't be done to get praise or to get recognition by others but that they should be done with sincerity and with the purpose of pointing others to Christ. That is exactly what Brother Lui did. He humbly did what he knew was right and asked for nothing in return. He is an amazing example to me and always reminded me what it truly means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. 

The Great Brother Lui...
till we meet again my brother! 

3 Nephi 5:13 - "Behold, I am a disciple of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. I have been called of him to declare his word among his people, that they might have everlasting life."

Have a great week! 

-Elder Burgon 

Photo bombed by an airplane!!!

Service: Cleanup trash = find a toilet???!!!!!

Time for another haircut!
Thanks Mom for teaching me! Saves me $$$!!!!

Another Amazing Cali Sunset!!!