Author: Jared Burt

Salibonani!

Posted on by Jared Burt

Salibonani my friends and family.

Bulawayo has been great so far! I was sick all week though so we weren’t able to go to the area much, but we did get to visit the creepy hospital a couple times, so that was an experience..
Our area is called Mzilikazi and the branch is great. They hold sacrament meeting in a big tent, which is kind of cool haha and the other sisters had a baptism that we got to go see. Yesterday at the branch, a return missionary who served here a couple years ago was visiting with his wife and family from the states, so it was cool to see them and the happy reunions with the people he had taught.
Sister MpiyakeSister Mpiyake and I had a cool experience yesterday while we were in the area.. While we were walking to an appointment, there was an older woman walking by us holding a heavy bag, so we asked if we could help her carry it and we walked with her to where she was going and helped her find it and everything. She was visiting for a couple days from the UK and had seen missionaries before, so she recognized us. She was so happy and told us how much we had helped her when we got to where she was going. It felt so good to make someone’s day so much better just by doing such a small act of service. I love Mosiah 2:17.. Look for opportunities to serve every day. None of us have an excuse not to serve. Even the smallest-seeming thinks like a smile can make a whole day, month, or year.
Love you all! Thanks for all the emails, I love hearing from all of you.
Have a great week!
Sister Burt
Creepy Hospital

New apartment in Bulawayo.

Bulawayo Arrival

Posted on by Jared Burt

Am in Bulawayo now! The bus ride was long, but good! I mostly slept. Sister Mpiyakhe live alone in our apartment and it’s a cute little place! District meeting today was fun seeing Elder Scoresby and Silotile. It will be fun with them. Tomorrow I think we will have to stay in the house because of riots… I guess there are a lot of riots that happen here and there are right near/in our area. Pretty exciting! Am feeling a bit better today… I think I am just super dehydrated now… I miss Kuwadzana and being in Harare, but I’m excited to get to know the area and the people! Looking forward to loving it here just as much.

Love you guys! Have a great week.
Sister Burt

Bye bye Shona, Hello Bulawayo

Posted on by Jared Burt

Hello everyone! Don’t have much time, but this week was a good one! Starting a new transfer now and I am taking a 6 hour bus to Bulawayo today to be with Sister Mpiyake! I’m super sad to say goodbye to Harare and everyone here after 6 great months in  Kuwadzana… but excited to see new places and people! And now I’ll have to start learning Ndebele… just when I was starting to get good at Shona… haha oh well!

Gwande and Vidah were baptized on Saturday and Effort baptized Gwande! It was so cool.
Have a great week!
Sister Burt
Gwande and Vidah Baptism

Nakiranai’s Baptism /3 Nephite’s Priesthood Ordination

Posted on by Jared Burt

This week was such a great week! We were able to see a lot of people and the work has been very fruitful!

We had a baptism on Saturday for Nakiranai! Teaching her has been quite a unique experience. She doesn’t speak any English whatsoever, so we have to have someone there who can translate everything we say, which takes a lot of patience. And she is super quiet and doesn’t say much anyways. But as we continued teaching her, we saw her testimony develop and grow as she prepared to be baptized. I wish we could communicate better so we could learn more about her, but the little we know is that she doesn’t know how to write or even what year she was born in. But you can see how much she has come to love the gospel and know of it’s truthfulness.
baptism on Saturday for Nakiranai
The baptism was interesting.. with the combined wards, there were 5 people getting baptized and all of them had a lot of family and friends they brought with was great, but when we got there, the font was not filled and the water was not working properly! They decided to just have everyone wait and they would get it filled, so finally after a couple hours we were able to hold a powerful baptism.
Sunday was pretty special too. Nakiranai was confirmed and Effort, Munashe and Craig received the priesthood! It is so wonderful to watch them grow so strong in the church and now they are preparing and getting so excited to serve missions in a few years!
The branch we are in is so powerful. Being such a new branch, it is so wonderful how untied all the people are and how excited everyone is about missionary work. Especially the branch president, President Gonzo. They all want to do what they can to help us with missionary work and to help the branch grow!
I love Jacob 1:7-8: Wherefore we labored diligently among our people, that we might persuade them to come unto Christ, and partake of the goodness of God, that they might enter into his rest, lest by any means he should swear in his wrath they should not enter in, as in the provocation in the days of temptation while the children of Israel were in the wilderness.
Wherefore, we would to God that we could persuade all men not to rebel against God, to provoke him to anger, but that all men would believe in Christ, and view his death, and suffer his cross and bear the shame of the world; wherefore, I, Jacob, take it upon me to fulfill the commandment of my brother Nephi.
Missionary work is so great and it is wonderful to see the change the gospel brings to people’s lives especially during these times of great hardship.
I love you all.
Have a great week.
Sister Burt

Be Efficient, Smart, and Effective

Posted on by Jared Burt

Ok so this week was great, but I don’t have much time so I’ll try to make this quick!

Tuesday we had Zone Meeting, which was nice, we talked about goal setting and having faith and being efficient, smart, and effective missionaries.
July 2016 Zone Conference.JPGWednesday we got to have interviews with President. I love President Mkhabela.
Thursday we saw as many people as we could in the area before we left for exchanges in Chitunguiza.
Friday I got to go to the area with Sister Ziqubu and Sister Bergen! It was so fun to be with Sister Bergen again! I missed her tons and learned a lot from the exchanges.
Sister Bergen feeding the bunnies.JPGSaturday night, my companion made mphogoqo, maize meal, sadsa type stuff, but not sadsa, with sour milk… tried eating more than 3 bites… but I like trying new things!
Sister Shekede's son, Kyle.JPGOther than that, nothing too exciting. Things are well! Just trying to get people to come to church, which can be hard sometimes, but we are working with the branch and planning new things to get people at church!
"Our package"-Elder Gundani.JPGWish I had more time, but I’ve got to run!
Hope you all have a great week.
The church is true! Love you all
Sister Burt

Have Faith to Open Your Mouth

Posted on by Jared Burt

This week was a great week!
We had Zone Conference on Wednesday, which was so powerful! President Mkhabela asked the question “Do we have faith to open our mouth and preach the gospel?” We then discussed Doctrine and Covenants 33:7-10. I learned from these scriptures that we just need to open our mouths and preach the gospel with all our hearts. Even someone like me who is not very mighty in speaking will be able to say the things that need to be said if you just have faith that the Lord will put in your mouth the things to say. And why wouldn’t He especially when we are engaged in such a great cause? Having faith to just open my mouth and not be afraid of knowing what to say is something that I have been working on and it has been amazing to recognize the spirit with every person I talk to. I love 2 Nephi 1:27 “And it must needs be that the power of God must be with him, even unto his commanding you that ye must obey. But behold, it was not he, but it was the Spirit of the Lord which was in him, which opened his mouth to utterance that he could not shut it.”
Missionary work is great.
We were able to find lots of people this week and we are excited for our baptisms at the end of the month!
One of our recent converts, Lovemore, just got a job and it was cool to see his testimony grow as he connected getting the job with a blessing from being baptized. The Lord truly blesses His children.
Nothing much else to say except that the week was blessed! I love you all! Have a great week.

Sister Burt

Good Works

Posted on by Jared Burt

Hello all!

This week was good and we were able to give some exciting baptismal dates. We were finally able to go back out with President Gonzo so he could take us to his mothers house. He said he thinks she is ready to baptized now and it is so cool to see her become more and more ready. She has a baptism date now, the only thing we have to do is marry her and her husband legally. So hopefully we can work things out so they can get married and baptized asap!

A lot of good things have come from our three recent converts, Effort, Craig and Munashe! They have a lot of friends and neighbors who have become interested and want to be baptized, so we always love visiting them because there always seems to be a new person!

I have seen that the Lord rewards us for our good works. It’s amazing what can come if you are working hard and doing what you should! I love the quote, “Simple obedience bring the spirit into our hearts.” How true I have seen that is!

Love you all and hope you have a good week!

Sister Burt

Once in a Lifetime

Posted on by Jared Burt

This week was the last week of the transfer and I was exhausted! But I’m energetic and ready for a new transfer!
I’m trying to think back on the week and recall special events that happened.. it was a long week because we had a lot of fall through appointments and our teaching pool has gone way down, so this week we will be working hard on bringing it back up and hopefully will start baptizing again in a few weeks!
On Tuesday we had a very long, but very good zone meeting. This time on mission is a once in a lifetime opportunity and we are engaged in such an amazing work. It is the Lord’s work and as long as we always have our purpose in mind and do what we are supposed to do, we will be so blessed. This is not our time, it is the Lord’s time.

So funny story of the week:Tuesday evening at one of our appointments in our very far area, I went to the car to get a Book of Mormon out of the boot for the lesson and I accidentally shut the boot with the keys inside of it. Luckily the doors were unlocked so I went to open the door but right before I grabbed the handle, the doors locked. Don’t ask who’s smart idea it was to make a car that automatically locks itself, or who’s smart idea it was to give Sister Burt such a car. So here we are stranded in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but our scriptures. I had left my bag in the car with all my money, the phone, and everything in it. So we ended up having to walk down the small mountain we were on to go to the main road and luckily my comp had a $50 bill so we were able to find a kombi that had $48 change, mostly in $5’s and $1’s and we went to Edna’s house where we were able to buy airtime and use her sister’s phone to call the zone leaders who’s number we were able to get through a funny but very fortunate connection Edna had. So they came with a spare key and we were able to get our car! At first they had us convinced that they didn’t have the spare key and that they were either going to have to use a wire hanger or break the window. Thankfully that didn’t happen and we made it home by the end of the night!

Yesterday Effort, Munashe and Craig were able to be confirmed! So excited for those ones, and now they can start preparing for missions!
Other than that and besides the mourning of Sister Bergen and elder Mhlungu leaving the district, I’m excited for a new week and a new transfer!
I love you all. Keep up the great work and have a wonderful week!

The Gospel of Jesus Christ Changes Lives!

Posted on by Jared Burt

Hello everyone!

This week was very eventful. I got pulled over for the first time on Tuesday. I’m surprised it didn’t happen earlier.. These cops pull you over for no reason.. and that’s exactly what happened haha. Not actually that funny… Also there is also a money crisis happening here in Zimbabwe. there is no cash in any of the banks so nobody has money. So come allotment this week, we decided to go to the bank early in the morning so we’d have a better chance of getting cash. Luckily the second bank we tried had cash. Come to find out later on in the day that we were the only ones in Harare who got cash. So we loaned some money to a few missionaries and slowly over the course of the next few days, most people got most of their money.
Wednesday, we worked with our branch president, President Gonzo, which was super great! He is really excited about missionary work right now and helping the branch turn into a ward. He took us to White Cliff, where he stays, and showed us around and brought us to his mom’s house where we taught 7 referrals! It was a powerful lesson. We are the first missionaries to proselyte in that area though and people seem interested so hopefully things keep going well there! And if things keep going well, we are going to baptize the 3 boys we’ve been teaching there on Saturday! Effort, Manashe and Craig. They are powerful! We are just praying for approval from the parents!
Lovemore was baptized on Saturday which was awesome! When we got to the chapel though, the font wasn’t filled and water pressure is a problem here, so we were all bringing buckets of water back and forth to help fill the font quicker haha. Then later that day we had a branch activity for the member and investigators and they put us in charge of coming up with games to play, which was like totally stressing me out because I had no idea what kind of games to play, but everything went so much better than I thought and everyone had a lot of fun!
Lovemore's baptism
Yesterday we had a powerful testimony meeting. A lot of people talked about how much the gospel has changed their lives and the way they live and the blessings that have come and the spirit was so strong. And it was amazing because we had so many investigators at church! Our investigators class was packed!
Anyways, I hope you all have a great week! Thanks for everything. I love you all.
Sister Burt