Elder Burr- Spreading Hope in the Heat: "In The Service of Your Fellow Beings"

Hey everyone! I Hola! I'm in Bonaire now and man is it crazy! But crazy awesome at the same time!

Yeah we've had a pretty awesome week this last week even though it was super crazy! The transfer was crazy but it all went well. I left on Thursday morning at 4 in the morning (brutal) and made it through fine. There was a super nice guy there since my luggage was 10 pounds overweight, but he didn't charge me anything! Blessings! I was a little worried about that, but the light of Christ truly is there I guess ;) First flight was fine to Curacao, no problem, but they scheduled the two flights right next to each other so I basically came within a minute of missing my flight to Bonaire! But I made it, am here now, and am having a good time! It's not Suriname by any means, but it's a good place. Bonaire is a very desert island and there's not much green besides the cacti here but it's great as well. We don't get to go to any of the beaches or anything and those are the nice areas, but it's a lot more developed here than in Suriname. I'll really like it here I think though. It's a little less humid, but pretty hilly and very windy all the time so that's a little rough. It also rarely rains here which is nice, but my first full day here, we randomly got caught in a rainstorm. I can't escape the rain! Elder Dibb is awesome though and we're going to have a super fun transfer! He's an amazing missionary and just super super humble which is so cool. Also he's a big baseball fan so we have some good talks ;)

After getting into Bonaire it took a bit to get settled in and everything, but we're good now. The majority of the people here on the island speak Spanish and Papiamento and most of the youth speaks, Spanish, Papiamento, English and Dutch. Pretty insane. There's quite a few Dutch people here on the island but it's a little hard finding the ones that aren't tourists and who are interested in the gospel. It's pretty fun though! There's a family that just got baptized two weeks ago (the Mens family) and they're all Dutch and is the first family that was baptized in the Dutch group. There's only about 8 in the Dutch group, but they're all wonderful and it was so good to meet them all. Such nice people! We have gotten to see most of the members that we're able to communicate with (in English or Dutch) and have gotten to see some investigators as well. The highlights were doing service for the Chirino family by painting a fence and digging holes for them to put the fence into (they also made us some SUPER good food) and also doing service for the Albus family. President Albus is the district representative here in Bonaire and he's Arubian and his wife is from the Netherlands. They are AWESOME though! We did some heavy labor moving blocks, wood, iron and cement stuff everywhere and it was intense but super fun! They also made us some stir fry that was just to die for! So tasty! Those were probably the highlights of the week! Church was also cool! We go to the Spanish branch from 9-12 and then also to the Dutch group from 1-3. I'm the translator for the group and it's crazy but super fun. Bonaire is a good place!

The youth here are so incredibly strong, it's insane! The youth are so inspiring and just do the right things and are awesome missionaries! So so cool to see!

I learned a lot about prayer this week and I love a scripture in 3 Nephi 18:19 where it tells us that the Lord will bless us as we pray and that we need to pray often! As we turn to the Lord, the Lord is able to bless us with so many more blessings. Turning always to the Lord is a sign of our humility and our willingness to be molded by him. I hope that we can all make our prayers a little more sincere and turn to the Lord in all that we do!

Have a wonderful week and I love you all! Keep on being awesome ;)

~Elder Burr