Hello family!
Well, with having only 1.5 week left till I go to Edinburgh and fly home, and after reading all your emails about what goes on at home, I can hardly think of what has happened in mission life this week. But I will try and recall.
Sad news is that the seven baptisms that were meant to happen next Sunday have been postponed for the most part.
One of them is for sure happening, the Chinese guy named Xu.
However, Nicky (our guy) hasn't been to church enough times to be baptised yet. Kayleigh is a bit unsure.
Shaz wants to for sure, but now she has to decide if she wants to get it done this week or wait and get baptised the same day as Nicky, her future husband (the marriage is still on though, and they are excited! That's good news.)
The rest of the Chinese missionaries' investigators have postponed for various reasons. So now there will only be one or two. Oh well, I am still confident that they will get dunked when the time is right.
The past week was filled with zone interviews and training almost all day on Friday, visiting our three people (Nicky Shaz Kayleigh) every other day or so, District Leader Council, weekly planning, exchange with Elder Housley, where we did some "City Centre finding" (street contacting) and some tracting.
Oh yeah, there was an interesting thing that happened!...
We were tracting near an "AUF" (basically a "lost sheep" that the church HQ found and told us to try and contact, and then knock doors on their street.)
Everyone seemed old and uninterested. One guy was really nice, and talked to us for a while, but was a content Catholic.
He told us that his wife died fairly recently. We left his doorstep after a while, and after we knocked the second door I sort of felt urged to go back...when he was talking about his wife dying I had a thought to tell him that he can be sealed to his wife for time and all eternity.
I was with Elder Housley, and I turned to him after the next door and said, "Hey, you know those Ensign-type stories where the missionaries go back and testify to someone after being turned down?" He was like, "Not really...but do you want to?" So I told him I felt the need to go back.
The guy answered, seemed happy to see us, and I said basically "Sorry for disturbing you again, but I felt the need to come back and tell you that you and your wife can be sealed for time and all eternity..."
His response was basically that he believes he can be with her forever through his church, so I left it at that.
He was happy and thankful that we came back though, he appreciated it.
I don't think I really expected to have a miraculous conversion after telling him this, but I just felt the need to do it.
So it was kind of cool just to receive a prompting, maybe from the Spirit, to do something that would naturally be illogical and uncomfortable.
We also had a Thanksgiving dinner at the church--Elder and Sister Browning organized it. It was great!
All the Glasgow missionaries were there, along with a few American members, mostly students, and even some non-American students who just wanted to come. It was nice.
There were two baptisms in our ward on Sunday--one Chinese girl and one 20 year old guy that the sister missionaries found and taught.
Pretty great experience in itself--but then I remembered that the day before was CeCe's baptism, and I am pretty sure Traci's baptism was exactly one year ago yesterday.
It was a good week. Glad I’m going home soon, but glad I’m still here.
Love you all, see you sooner than I can believe!
Elder Spencer Burt
Photo: This guy, Elder Gomez Castillo, has been following me around my whole mission, and every time I see him he makes me so happy.
