The Burton

August 29, 2011

Hey family,

So I finally made it to my new area. I'm in the Burton Ward in the Grand Blanc Stake. It's a change up. My first two areas were in the Bloomfield Hills Stake and zone, so different zone leaders and stake president and everything. But the two new zone leaders were in my first district and they're sweet. My new companion is Elder Lewis, he's cool. He's sort of quiet but he's pretty funny. Just a normal guy. I'm excited. The area mostly covers the city of Burton and the city of Flint. A couple of other cities too. Flint is a lot like Detroit, so I've still got the ghetto. It's actually the murder capital of the nation, highest homicide rate than any other city. Yikes. But it's fine, the Lord protects his sheep. We'll keep being obedient and wise so we won't get ourselves in trouble. The ward is small like my last two areas, but it seems pretty cool. The bishop seems really solid. There's actually a member in the bishopric who grew up in Mission Viejo and went to El Toro. He said he knew the Stidhams too. Small world, again! He actually said he has a sister who lives in Portola Hills, she's a member but she's not very active. I can't remember her name though. His name is Brother Berger.

So far we've worked mostly with less-actives since I've been here, but we have done some work with investigators too. We contacted a referral yesterday who seems pretty sweet. He was looking for a free Bible on the internet and found a mormon.org link but didn't realize we'd show up along with it. But we talked to him and his mother and had a lesson with them. Her husband past away not too long ago and she's grieving a little bit still, which is why they ordered the Bible. They're religious but just needed something more to help them I guess. We talked to them about the Book of Mormon and how more of God's plan is revealed to us through it, and they said they'd like to have us come back and go over more of that with them.

We're also working with an older guy who's a new investigator. He's in his late 60s, he has a lot of health problems. He actually told us that his doctors have told him he needs to smoke to help his health even though he'd rather quit, we're not so sure about that but we'll look more into it. But he's pretty solid, he was a preacher and knows a lot about the Bible. He also knows a lot about the Book of Mormon because of some relatives of his who are members. He has to use a wheel chair to get around, but he still made it to church yesterday. That's pretty cool, just goes to show that any of our investigators can make it to church if they really wanted to badly enough. "Only a Stone Cutter", need I say more? Have you seen that church movie?

But things are good, I'm looking forward to the rest of the transfer. My foot is feeling better too, really just waiting for the incision to heal up all of the way. I ended up switching over to Burton on Friday morning. We went to a mission fireside and the Hunsakers drove us up with all of my luggage and stuff. After the fireside, President and Sister Holmes took me to stay at the assistants' apartment that night. The assistants took me to Burton the next morning. That was neat, Elder Hoffman my follow-up trainer is one of the assistants and the other assistant was also in that district and he's sweet too. President said that dad called asking about the foot, he said he enjoyed talking to you. So that was pretty cool to hear about.

Well out of time but here's the new address:

3453 Rangeley St., Apt. #6

Flint, MI 48503

love you guys,

elder lamb