July 2, 2014

Speaking of learning, the learning curve here is incredibly steep! We have learned so much, and have so much left to learn. It turns out that the past-tense form of German that I learned is high school was the “narrative’ form. They also have a “conversational” past tense, with completely different grammar and sentence structure! Between these, modal verbs, accusative and dative case, it’s no wonder it takes most missionaries in the field 6 months to fluently speak German.

We also learn so much everyday about “das Evangelism Jesu Christi,” or the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Did I mention that some names have possessive forms? The Spirit here allows/helps us to learn so fast I almost can’t believe it.

I think it’s awesome that you’re going to the temple so much. I’m not surprised that there are a lot of missionaries there. When I reported to the MTC there were roughly 1,200 missionaries, by the time we leave in July 30^th there are going to be roughly 3,400.  There are also supposed to be 90,000 missionaries soon, and almost 400 just in the Berlin, Germany mission, which is growing quickly.

I know almost all the Germans very well. We actually refer to each group of missionaries by the country/language they are learning. So, we are the Germans. The Romanians have their bedrooms right next to ours, and the Italian classrooms are next to ours. The Russians are also around us a lot, but only my friend Elder Mike Graff really interacts with us. We are probably just too much for them.

While I’ve been here I’ve also met people from all over the world, and people going all over the world. Probably about 1/3 of the missionaries here are from Northern/Central Utah as well, with many high school classmates. I’ve actually run into 4 or 5 people from St. George I know too.

Right now one of my favorite parts of the week is letters. Every email I receive is great, but I can always, always, always receive more snail letters. It’s also much easier for me to answer letters by hand, no time limit.

I love you all! I’ll write again next week. Let me know if you have any questions for me!

Love you!

Elder Burton