September 26 Letter

Hey Family,

Como le va? This week was long and a lot of our appointments fell through which stinks but we had some amazing things happen. Our investigator Alex is FIRE,HOT, GOLD. hahah Yeah Elder Edwards from the 5th Ward came up with this one. Alex said he has been praying and has been reading a little and that he will prepare himself for baptism!! He also came to church and loved every moment. During sacrament he was looking up the scripture that the speakers had and marking his BOM up it was  so awesome. He is our focus for this week. We had a great English class yesterday it was small but I think they all enjoyed it. Alex came and his cousin Marcela who is another investgator so that was great. We got to travel to chañaral on Friday to get my visa it was fun and so beautiful there besides waking up at 3 in the morning ah!! no fun.  We have been doing a lot of service which is great because I know the Lord blesses us more when we do service through out the week.  I haven´t spoke English all week and I can see The Lord working in my life cause I am starting really understand the investigators more and don´t have the desire to speak English which is awesome. The pictures that I sent last week were of our mujeres jovens( YW) which we teach every week they are so sweet . They are really strong but i think one rebelled this week and got a tongue ring and her parents are fighting all the time. But our other girls are doing great and loving personal progress. Our elders had a baptism this week and we meet the boy´s sister and she is atheist but loves us to death and wants us to teach her but we can´t cause the elders. awkward moment for us we don´t want to take her from the elders but we know she really likes us and we know we could help her. So will see how that works out. Today we headed on a little adventure through this mountain and got to hike up a waterfall literally it was crazy but so worth it. The elders in our zone are all nice and four are from Utah valley which is fun. This week was good and we had a lot of good lessons. The only thing tough this week is Sunday which is sad to say but I just get so lost with so many people speaking Spanish fast and I become overwhelm which I know I should but I do.  But I fight through it and pray for strength which the Lord gives me daily.  This area has so many great members they are all just less active and need friends and visit from the ward which the members don't do. These moments make me really grateful for our wards in the States cause we have home teachers and visiting teachers which the people need here badly.


And can you send me peanut butter please I am craving it but its super expensive ;) not much time for a testimony i´ll  try in another email.

Love you all and thanks for the updates. Good luck with work dad and roland . Nice job with your grades Hayden your a star!! and Dallen keep working hard in school!! You are all awesome and I love  you very much!!!!!

Love Hermana Burnett.

September 18th Letter

Hola Familia y Amigos!!

 Ah so this week was very hectic because its Chile´s Independence day the 18th but here they celebrate not only one day the celebrate Friday through Monday so no one has been home or has been very busy. However we have TWO new great investigators named Louisa and Alex. Louisa is older and very receipted towards everything we have shared and kept her promise of reading the pamphlet we left her which was great!!  During our second visit her sister had a friend over that was evangelic and she told us that  ¨she doesn´t like Mormons and doesn't like that we don´t read the bible and says that the book of Mormon is lame and she didn´t like the hymn we sang or how we prayed¨. I didn´t understand any of this so I just sat their smiling and then I noticed my comp started to cry. Louisa finally said¨well I liked that song and I like listening to them¨which  I could only understand a little bit. I then  just turned to Louisa and asked her what part of the pamphlet did she like and why and what part didn't she understand. My comp then was able to talk again which then the other old mean lady decided to leave which was perfect for us. The Lord is amazing how he works he brought the spirit in so strong that the lady felt uncomfortable enough to leave. As we were leaving Louisa told us that she can feel a difference when we visit and she likes us a lot. So I am super excited to meet with her again cause I know she will want to come to church and gain a testimony quickly.  Our other investigator  Alex is a a nephew of a member  who´s 13 but so smart and receptive towards everything we shard. I can´t wait for this holiday celebration to be over its like Christmas here, its super pretty though with the red, white and blue everywhere!!  I'm doing great and loving my branch more everyday, we had a great 18th BBQ on Sat. with tons of games like  tug of war (which we pulled so hard at the end and it broke sending us all to the ground), and jump roped and danced the Chilean coyqui( don´t know how to spell sorry) but it was so pretty .Our young women are awesome and have been going on splits with us which is very helpful so that we can spend time with all those that need it!!  We head to a fair ground the morning it was like a big swap meet I loved it except they have to many State clothing and items, not a lot of authentic things.A man came up to me and asked me what part of Brazil I was from.. I was like um what is he saying.  I love torreblanca so much. The only problem here I am not able to have a conversation by myself yet, which stinks or understand everything they say. However. I am trying super hard to talk back as much as possible with out help. The lord has been helping to understand our investigators and members really well which is an answer to my prayers. And the members say they can understand me which is the best compliment ever!!
a great week and I'm ready for another great week.

con amor todos!! Thanks for all the emails it was the best surprise ever!! I´m sad i missed the state fair, but glad you all  had fun!!  the address on my envelope is the correct one.


thanks and correct any spelling errors before you post it on my blog ;)

Keep up the great diet mom!! Love you all

Hermana Burnett

September 12th Letter

Where we live

Mujeres joven

P-day wearing Elder Hewstone's tag

P-day with our area

P-day by the beach

Hola familia,

Ah I completed my first full week and wow I am exhausted everyday which is good right. I finally had my first warm water shower today and ah I loved it so much. Our gas has been retard and not working so I have been taking 3 pitcher of warm water baths . Anyways two of our investistgators have been flaking about attending church and not being home for our lessons so we had to say good bye to them which is sad. We have a new girl though named Fransica she is the one I gave my first BOM too so its been exciting to watch her understand and be excited about the lessons we have been teaching. I am LOVING the food tons here and actually lost 5 lbs but think I will gain it back because I crave their chocolate and bread all the time. They have this drink here called ecco which is coffee with out the caffine and they give it to us all the time especially at night during their late dinner once and its so gross. Um I have been eating some tomatoes and gaucmole you´d be so proud of me mom. The weather has been so crazy here today was super hot and I was sweating so bad and then two days later I am wearing a scarf, longsleeve, jacket and panties(leggings) hahaha and am still cold!! I feel like I am in Utah with this weather. Its really nice here though I love how big the sky is and how the moon comes out at 5:30 every evening and is so solid. In one of the photos I sent is of my cute yellow casa!! One is of the muerjas joven and another of my zone in huasco which is an hour south by the coast and so lovely!! Another picture I sent is with Hermana Idle who is 90 years old who was born,raised,married,widowed in Torreblanca. She is so cute and sweet and has been the only Hermana to as been the only one that has asked me if I like tomatoes or other foods before cooking which is so cool!! I love our muerjas joven they are so solid in their testimonies and all want to serve a mission and they are only 15 years old how amazing!! They have been helping us so much with our investigators lessons and activities, which is awesome cause all investigators need friends. We had an activities of baking state chocolate chip cookies which they all loved.
We had an ingles class of 15 kids and two were horrible which ruined the class time. I felt so useless cause I couldn't really discipline them which one of them needed badly. On Thurs we walked to the other side of vallenar ( which is a valley ) to help out our elders find less active people that need help so that was fun seeing all the elders and the other side of the valley. we have one investigator right now committed to baptism her name is Anita and she is 9yrs old of a less active. She is way smart and has the cutest personality so I am excited to see here be baptized. Did I tell you that Elder Jordan Edwards from the 5th ward is my District LEader. crazy huh!! So P.G. is being represented in Vallenar Chile!! I am loving the city right now, everyone is super excited for their Independence day which is the 18th of this month so the flag is everywhere . Our street is covered with those little flag banners. I was so tired the other night I passed out as I was writing in my diary, I can´t wait for my body to adjust to how my work days are here. We had four investigators attend church yesterday it was amazing . It is Fransica, her amiga Daniela, her cousin Dafne and Fernada. These three girls call us a Tia(aunt) which is so cute. It caught me off gaurd the first time I thought they where saying Tela or Te and then I noticed it more that it was Tia which is fun to hear besides Hermana all the time. Today for P-day we met with the elders and headed to Huasco where he played ulimate frisbee on a sand court and had a small lunch. MacIver keeps telling me that our elders are the golden elders of the mission and I agree so much. They are always making sure that our house is okay the Chileans mentioned we need bars for our windows cause they were nervous for us. Which we don't cause we are living in a richer area.
Sorry its scattered I just have so many thougths and no time so I hope you can understand!!
I love you all tons

Con Amor
Hermana Burnett

September 5th Letter

Janae and me at the MTC

My District at the MTC

Finally in Chile

With my mission president and his wife

With my first companion and the mission president

ALO FAMILIA,
I am OFFICIALLY a MISSIONARY!! My companion is Hermana MacIver from Arizona she has been out for a year this Thursday. I am so glad I was paired with here because she pushes me to speak Spanish all day but allows me at night to speak English. And she will translate during the lessons when I am lost which is very nice. She very bubbly and has a great personality so we are working well together. So wow what a hard, but amazing first week first off I am in Vallenar the southern part of my mission in this town called Torreblanca. This area is on a hill, yep a HILL I am literally climbing straight up roads to get to members, investigators and less actives homes. It is hard but I know that my classroom in the MTC on the 5th floor has prepared me for these hills. The neighborhood I live in is very nice I have a cute 3bed/2 bath little armarillo casa which only us two live in which is way nice. The area is HUGE!!! And we live on the other side of the town so we are running to lessons and at night to make it home at time. Our closes house is 20 mins and thats walking at a pretty good pace. Its all good though case I love the pan, and chocolate here so I dont feel to guilty if I eat to much. :)
President Bruce has us focusing on in actives so we do a lot of visiting teaching and aren´t tracking on doors which is way different then I thought. I love it though I haven´t had people shut the door on my face or yelled at me . This area has poor and middle class homes, their homes are all really close together and all have fences so we have to yell ALO to get them to come to the door. It really weird that we can´t just open the gate and go knock like we would in the states. There are million dogs everywhere and it sad to see the ones that have a nasty disease or that are really skinny. There is one dog in particular that tries to bite at me through the fence and came so close it scared me bad. One bit MacIver skirt the other day that was no bueno.
We work from 11:30am till 10 pm so we aren´t out in the middle of the day in the sun so that is nice. We have what ever for breakfast lately cereal cause we have no time to buy groceries and then for lunch we go to our mamacita a less actives home for food she feeds us tues-fri and does our laundry which is nice. The food here is pretty American they just give us a ton of food and like to put sunny side eggs on top of the food of mashed potato or pasta it was so funny the first time I was given it but then I thought I like eggs and potatoes so why not together. They drink juice all the time and at lesson have their kids go get us glasses of juice which is nice.
I´m doing good I havent freaked out yet but I know its because my companion is gringa which helps a lot. Im running out of time so sorry. You can still do dearelders.com They take just as long as letters though but are free so thats nice. I hope everyone is doing well !! Can´t wait to hear back from you all. I´m glad Mindy and Netta are still close to you I bet thats been fun :) I´m trying to add pictures so meg add them to my blog. thanks and yes mom you were caught thanks for telling the truth :) I trust you just wanted you to be careful.

Con amor

Hermana Burnett