Enjoy Nathan Burton’s Lifey!
Below is a transcript of Nathan’s life story video.
Nathan’s Childhood
Miracle Baby
So my parents have had four kids. There is Cami the oldest, and then Dan and then me and then Brandon. The gap between me and Dan is about nine years, so my parents waited a really, really long time for me and I just wasn’t coming, and then finally nine years, I came. I weighed eight pounds one ounce. I was born at 8:01 a.m. and I was born on September 18, 1996.
Mom’s Broken Foot
So my Mom- when I was four years old she broke her foot while she was in her walk-in closet. The way it happened was that a shelf fell on her foot- totally destroyed it- just ripped her foot apart. I was there, but I don’t remember it. I was in the family room which is on the opposite side of the house, and so I didn’t really understand what happened and so neighbors came. I thought that was really weird and awkward and then I went to preschool and my Mom went to the hospital and my Mom’s foot is now all right. She can walk on it and everything, but the only thing I can really remember about the experience was that just that there was blood on the carpet for a little while after that night, and I didn’t know why.
Spectrum
So when I was about 10 years old my parents enrolled me in the spectrum program and what that was is it’s basically school for gifted children basically where they’re smart kids go is still a public school but everyone there has to pass a test in order to make it in and so everyone is supposed to be really smart and so I I win then I took the test i passed it I did actually very well on it and we decided that I should join spectrum for the fifth grade and at first it was it was a little harder i didn’t like how hard it was but I did very well that year and i think that it was a very good experience for me however the kids in my class they they weren’t very nice to me sometimes and they were I don’t know just sort of mean meaner than normal kids and I didn’t understand how that happened I mean these are supposed to be the smarter kids right but they were mean and there was a bully who believe me and that was a whole big issue but I overcame that and we’re friends now actually and so spectrum and fifth grade was all good loads of fun is sixth grade came around we decided we do this it do it for sixth grade as well probably not seventh because the junior high school for spectrum was like way out there 30 minutes away so we we were good with what we had just just the two years however the sixth grade teacher was very very difficult she was hard to please and despite my best efforts couldn’t do it just my mom realized i had too much and my on my hands I didn’t have time for fun things I was just in sixth grade and I was already like the workhorse or something and it was just it just didn’t work out and so I went back to normal school and the kids were a lot nicer they’re actually like I said that the kids in spectrum or a very nice but i think that spectrum was a really good experience even though it was hired because it taught me a lot about work and how to think and how to compete with people who are also working on a high the high end.
Tooth Story
When I was 12, we had a mutual activity we were going to go sledding, you know lots of fun, twelve-year-olds love sledding so we’re going sledding it was at night because mutual starts at seven p.m. and it’s winter, obviously, and so very dark. We go out to Happy Hollow, Happy Hollow is in Farmington and it’s owned by this couple they’re really nice and that they just let people onto their hills they’ve got these huge hills they must be like 200 feet very large hills and maybe 200 feet is an exaggeration but that’s what it felt like anyway so we all went and I brought my sled and we were all sledding down and people are making jumps across this little river that ran through it like there’s a little ravine and the river running through, and so people were making jumps over that and I wasn’t really interested in that I just wanted to sled but my sled was slow like I couldn’t get it to go more than three miles an hour probably. I could walk faster and so I wasn’t I wasn’t too impressed with my sled at that moment anyway so nearing the end of the activity I asked one of my friends if I can use his sled. He says sure he has he has a nicer sled than me one of those foam ones, I had a plastic one from the eighties and so I was I was outdated ahead and so I got on his foam sled and I went belly down so headfirst belly down and and just flew I could not believe how fast this sled went and so I just tucked my head in and and waited because I was sort of freaking out and so I come down towards the ravine and I missed the jump they made a jump right next to where I where I went and I hit the ravine headfirst. I blacked out blacked out for a few seconds then I woke up and I just remember like my face really hurting because I just smacked against a really hard wall of ice so I called for help and people came and they realized I was missing teeth these two front teeth right here and so I was just I was in shock I was like crying. I was not happy it was just a bad ordeal and so we couldn’t find the teeth because the snow is white and teeth are white so not going to find teeth very easily and so they took us home took me home take me to my mom told my mom what happened and she was like, “We’re going to find that tooth.” and so I was skeptical I was like how are we going to find a tooth in the snow at night? It just seemed impossible to me but we prayed and we went back to the Happy Hollow which is not a happy place for me by the way and began searching for the tooth and fortunately one of my friends’ dads had been like we need to go back and help them and so he he and his dad showed us where I’d impacted because I was in no mental condition to be telling people things I was in shock still and so I was just a little bit disoriented, disoriented let’s go with that and so we found where I’d head and began looking for the tooth with their super-good flashlights searching searching not finding anything after about 10 minutes Mom sees like this little yellow sliver in the snow and she says she thinks yourself that can’t possibly be it that that can’t be it and but something just felt she felt something say no look there and so she she looked and she touched it and it was my tooth. She found my teeth and so we went to the dentist who is in our stake and he just shoved it back in: that is what you do when you lose a tooth and you you still have it is the shove it back in that was fun yeah and then he took me to his office where he applied some like weird braces like they look like braces sort of but they like were made with ceramic they were stuck on the with ceramics instead of glue around the wire and so they were just sort of like poking out of my mouth and it was really weird feeling on my teeth. And so eventually after a couple dentist visits they decided I needed a root canals on my teeth because they died and when your teeth die you need to get a root canal to prevent them from decaying and so went and the first time I tried to get my root canal I got freaked out so t we ran into the dentist office and sat on the little dentist chair or whatever and he said ok I’m going to poke you with this needle it will hurt as much as a bee sting about and what he didn’t know was that I hate bees I hate bees with passion and so that was possibly the worst thing he could have possibly said so I was having none of it and so we had to go back another day and they had to give me like calming drugs and laughing gas and all that the second time and restrain me he well he poked me and I got my root canals. I was fine for a couple of years and then my teeth started they got wonky again and so they just we decided that we needed to do a more permanent solution and we didn’t want to do a crown or an implant because those can they take a long time and you have to go to that list for a long time and so we were really excited about the possibilities with that so instead we found I hope from cosmetic dentist that we could drill around the tooth and then put porcelain on it and so I still have those teeth today they’re made of porcelain so if you want to look there they are they’re beautiful aren’t they and they fixed my teeth they should last for another 20 or 30 years and you know the part where my mom prayed and found my teeth that was such a spiritual experience looking back it wasn’t then I was in shock that I was not happy but looking back it’s such an amazing experience that we were able to find something light and wet snow that people came to help us it was just so unlikely but it happened and it worked and I really believe that heavenly father was helping me with that.
Nathan’s Teen Life
First Day Of Seventh Grade
So when I was in sixth grade there was this big huge thing about everyone has a water bottle you know it was cool to have a lot and it was supposed to be good for your mind or something and so I was like I want a water bottle and so on set the first day of sounds great i brought a water bottle i was so excited and back in those days junior high started with homeroom and so in homeroom i decided that i was born i just sort of like drink the whole thing and that’s that’s probably not the wisest decision I’ve ever made but I drink the whole water bottle regardless and so first period started it was a science class with mr. Erickson and he gave us these little coupons these cute little coupons and they said you can either use these at the end of the term to get some extra credit or you could use them to do something like go to the bathroom or turn in an assignment lee and i was really determined to keep those I really wanted to keep those things till the end of the term so i can get the extra credit extra credit is always good and so I decided that I would make it i would keep every single one that was my goal however that day I had drink a whole bottle of water and so I started feeling a little queasy and start moving around a little bit and it just sort of didn’t feel very comfortable and for the whole class I was this way is just sort of moving trying to keep myself comfortable trying not to freak out because i really need to go to the bathroom back wasn’t going to use that little piece of possible extra credit and so eventually the class ended thank goodness and I got out and fortunately the first how I walk down there was a bathroom and so I went and relieve myself.
Footloose
So in junior high I was in a lot of musicals in eighth grade the musical was Footloose Footloose takes place in the eighties it’s so fun lots of dancing and so I was a cowboy because it takes place in Texas and so Cowboys we all work cowboy hats and cowboy shirts and cowboy pants cowboy costume and we were just finished our cowboy dance we’d all throw in our hats up in the air and they had just landed like everywhere and so we had to go and pick them up and this kid named Lucas says hey Nate like he’s whispering this to me because this is in front of a real live audience and he says hey Nate can you grab my hat for me and I said oh yeah sure i’ll grab your hat for you and so he’s like okay thanks and he goes over to wherever he’s going and I pick up his hat my hat and I look around because i want to give him his hat back you know and he’s he didn’t see him leave the stage and so I just sort of look around and there is still on stage he’s standing that soul eat because he has some lines or something and so I decide hey I need to get this hat to him and so just throw it but I’m just gonna throw it I just I just threw his hat and it I was across the stage so that went across the entire stage and it hit the hit the lead I felt so embarrassed in front of the line audience and hit the lead with a hat and it was just it was terrible I was so embarrassed but looking out back on its really funny.
Aida
So we also did a play called Aida Aida takes place in Egypt it has a prince and a princess who fall in love with each other in dough not supposed to blog Romeo and Juliet everyone dies and so I got to wear this really cool soldiers outfit it was red it looked Roman and I just felt powerful in it the problem was though it didn’t cover our armpits and so you know they could see our arm pit hair cuz we had to raise our arms a lot to look at you you know masculine and garnish and because it’s a musical and everyone has to go like this some point and so the teacher decided hey all of you guard guys you need to shave your armpits so I was like that that sucks like I don’t want to do that but ok and so we we goes on and I haven’t done it yet and we’re doing dress rehearsals now and she’s like Nate you haven’t shaved your armpits like I’m sorry i haven’t done it yeah I guess you know lame excuse lame excuse and she’s like you know if you don’t shave your armpits we’re going to wax you and for you those of you who don’t know what waxing is it’s basically taking very strong tape putting it on where the hair is and then just ripping it off with all the hair it’s very very painful and I didn’t want to do that I have no interest in being waxed what so ever since but the next dress rehearsal I still haven’t done my armpits and so I decided to just had to find a way to cut my arm pit hair cuz i realized right when I got there and hair and so I was looking around and I found some scissors okay good i got some scissors go into the bathroom i cut my armpit hair with the scissors and fortunately i didn’t get waxed but it was still 30 funny experience not trying trying not to get waxed because my teacher threatened me with waxing.
Subway
In high school I decided I needed a job you know it’s a good thing to do in high school and so I decided to get a job at a local Subway restaurant for those of you who don’t know it’s a sandwich restaurant you make for long sandwiches they’re they’re pretty good i enjoy subway anyway so I win applied I got in i was so excited and you it was an interesting experience it takes a lot of customer service work to be able to talk to so many people and make a sandwich for them because there are so many different ways we could make a sandwich I think that like subway calculated then there were like 4 1,000,000 different kinds of sandwiches you could make your because different combinations of lettuce and tomatoes or no lettuce and provolone cheese maybe Swiss cheese and so there’s just it takes a lot of communication betweenyou and the customer and it was just sometimes a little bit frustratingbecause they wouldn’t understand what was going on or they would say something that didn’t make sense and you just have to sort of keep asking them and that was hard but it was a good experience and I think that subway was a really good experience for that and also for the people i’m at people there are hilarious if you ever if you ever get to work at a restaurant you should do it because it’s it’s just a lot of fun in high school at least I mean if right now I wouldn’t work in a restaurant ok but working out subway really taught me a lot because it was fun it was hard work but it was fun and I just really
enjoyed the experience overall.
My 1992 Camry
In high school my parents had a teenage car and it being camis a bit Danny’s and now it was mine problem was is that it was a 92 and I was going to high school in 2012 so it was a 20-year old car so pretty old and function great I loved it for its functionality but it was cold it was older than the meat it was literally older than me and so and was also originally mahogany colored so sort of like purplish-red more leaning towards red but as time has gone on the redhead washed out and it was just purple so I had a purple car i don’t think many people can say that i think i’m the only one I know who has ever driven a purple car and you know i liked it i loved the camry the camera was the best because it got everywhere fast it was a smooth ride even though it was broken in some respects you know some one of the doors when nope and sometimes one of the doors when block and you know we had to replace the battery and blah blah blah but it was a good car and I’m really glad that I had that car for high school because it was just it was good for having friends I could have passengers easy to keep clean and it was just an overall nice car and I left it.
High School Friends
So I had a good group of friends in high school I really liked them so we were a bit of a strange group we didn’t really fit together in any respect I don’t even know how we all got to know each other or why we were all friends we work and so there is me i was this smart one the the one who knew everything the one you could go to for for just about any information i was in all the AP classes and yeah and then the response ER and he was he was smart like Neil is about as smart as I was that he wasn’t the go-to person for knowledge he was the sports guy this guy loved BYU football he still that’s he loves BYU football and he can’t stop talking about it it’s just crazy yeah he was a really great guy and then there was Dan and Dan was a theater kid straight-up theater kid you know he had hair down to here and hey we used to make fun of him for them all the time anyway so he was a theater kid he just was out there he was extroverted unlike me and Spencer and he was just he was a go-getter i really liked Daniel and then there is Jake and Jake was just your average average don’t he was a little bit quiet but he was actually like really profound when he spoke which made which would explain why is quite with your quiet then people and listen to what you say and so we are a funny group and sometimes you know we’d have some other friends come in and now but us for always SAT together at lunch in this little corner of the school that nobody ever came to hope it was a strange little place but we miss out there every every lunchtime and we just talked and talked and talked to our hearts content and I really enjoyed spending time with them you know we went to prom together we went to homecoming together all the dances we could go to we went to together with our dates obviously we didn’t go with each other that would be word but you know it was we were just a fun group and i’m really glad i was about part of that.
Nathan’s Mission
The MTC
I went to the MTC in Preston England because i went to my mission in London and everyone who goes to London usually goes to Preston especially if they’re American so I went to the Preston MTC it’s a tiny little MTC probably about only 40 people there 40 missionaries it was it was great I loved it that way it was intimate it was closed we knew everyone in the MTC which is awesome and they were also cool and fun even though they weren’t even missionaries yet they were just like training to be missionaries and so we really enjoyed our time at the MTC my okay my companion there was called elder Skinner he was from hi-de-ho great kid super tall great leader in the mission after the MTC and he was just he was the bomb we used to sing together because he could sing and I could sing and so we both would just like seeing little duets and people would complement us and how well we sing and that was fun we had a cool district all of us in our MTC district we’re going to London and so it wasn’t hard to get along with any of them and got to see them throughout the mission see him grow and learn and get better and it was so fun there was a person in my district his name was Elder Salsbury and he was actually from the same city as me from Kaysville we actually knew each other from because we both worked at subway and so you’re like oh this house Barry Elberton you know your we were friends and sell that was a lot of fun to see him come to this we went to the same mission we went to the MTG at the same time went to the same district it was just it was great i really enjoyed that we used to go and play football which means soccer out in the fields by the Preston temple if you haven’t been to the Preston temple it probably has the best grounds of any temple I’ve ever seen it’s just amazing but there’s just this grounds right below it for the missionaries where we get to play soccer and so we played soccer and I just loved it I don’t know why i’ve i’ve never liked the soccer that much like i did like it but not as much as i did in the MTC and that love has stuck with me I still really like to play soccer and the food of the food at the MTC it was so good so what what the food we had their it was cooked by this guy and we called him by his first name but I can’t remember and it’s probably like Joe or something and so Joe cooked the best food and so every day was something amazing like an e traditional English dinner with Yorkshire puddings which for those of you who don’t know if they like little circles with a hole in um well not a whole like a like that they’ve been pushed down like if you put dough round a cupcake slot that’s what it looked like when with like roast beef and chicken oh and he would make Greek dessert because there was also Greek missionaries in our MTC and the Greek desserts was that they were divine and I just really enjoyed my MTC experience I feel like it was it was productive i really i I don’t think anything can really prepare you enough for a mission but the MTC did give it a good shot.
Kettering
My first area i was assigned to was called kettering kettering is sort of close to central England and so it’s really a very small city very compact like there’s look there’s a good amount of people who live there and there’s just sprawls and sprawls and sprawls of farmland and past years and just nature and it was beautiful there i loved the scenery in Kettering and my trainer was called elder Crawley and he was a cool guy and he played soccer a lot and so I enjoyed that and we had our first baptism during my second transfer my second transfer his name was Gary Gary was a great guy he was just on top of it all always reading the Scriptures like he had scriptures that were like the little mini scriptures and the big scriptures and he had him on his phone and he would read them on the train to work and he just had he was just he was golden basically he was a very good convert he was very committed to the gospel he knew it was true and he was very easy to teach so after my first transfer with elder Crawley we got another companion so we became a trio me other Crowley another gone shellfish d’elegance elvish gone salvage it’s really hard to pronounce because it has this weird sea with a little sea under it and I didn’t understand what pronunciation there is for that and neither did any of the English people so love them would just come other gowns always even though he was elder Gonsalves and so elegant college how he was funny he had a lot of medical problems that made it difficult for him but he was just hilarious he just loved to joke around and I he was just a lot of fun bundle of joy after those two transfers I got to stay in kettering my companions moved out and I got a new companion in his name was elder TOA other toes from Vanuatu which if you don’t know that where that is that’s pretty close to New Zealand a lot poorer there but he came from like a little tiny island from Vanuatu like something like two miles across and so he came from very small island now he was in England he’d been out nine months so he was my senior companion and he was just use a lot of fun himself like even though he couldn’t speak very well because he was a very account accustomed to english it wasn’t close to what he’d spoken before and so it was just very difficult for him to to talk but he he was just funny he just loved to make little jokes little asides that just made things made things better no matter what was going on and so I really enjoyed being with other ta’s.
Southend-On-Sea
So southend-on-sea was my next area and southend was it was a pretty nice place i went there during the winter so it’s cold but usually it’s a beach resort it’s on the southern ish coast of Britain like they have to southern coasts like one that comes out and then a big fat one mine was the first one and so it would they had a beach they had a really big town centre so a town centre is like a mall but it’s like public and so we can go talk to people there anyway I’m yeah i really enjoyed it there I i found it it was a little dark like it’s always it’s dark everywhere in England during the winter like that’s that’s just an understatement it’s just everything is grey ish and there I had a companion named elder hilton he was from Finland and he was just use military he people in Finland they have to join the military they’re forced to out of high school and so he had been in the military and heat become a driver for the tanks or for transportation vehicles i can’t remember but he was just he was very to to deduct he’s very straight and strict and I sort of liked that about him but sometimes it was difficult to communicate because we weren’t exactly a very extroverted bunch like I was and i’m not an extravert he wasn’t an extrovert we’re both just sort of silent a lot of the time and even though i’m an introvert I like people talking to me and so that was that was a little difficult but he was a good guy i I really think that he was a very good missionary.
Food
There’s some interesting cuisine in England like some things that you wouldn’t really expect for one thing probably the strangest thing I tried was called black pudding and what putting means in England is very different from the America putting in England means desert and this wasn’t even in the desert but that’s what putting means in England so black pudding was made a pork that oatmeal and imitation pig’s blood you should be made by with real pig’s blood but nowadays it’s just used you know they used just like salty right water or something anyway I tried that and that was interesting there was an African member and wanting my wards and he was just he just loved fufu and for those of you who don’t know what foo is its corn that smashed up until it is very very finely grained and then they add water to it so it sort of looks like mashed potatoes it’s a little bit harder and sticks together more and so I had foo a foo was designing i must tell you that foo foo is a really good food it’s really expensive in the United States but it’s really really good and he had that with these like little sauces from his native country and the sauces were they were so good something else that was a little interesting i tried is called pickled onions and so it was they were like about this big and you just you just pop a whole one in your mouth and chew it and swallow it you know and they were very sour and but they were I sort of like even though they were repulsive to other American missionaries and there was just a lot of different kinds of both the way we eat here is different than the way they eat in England like for example here the dish is we usually eat around the grain the grain is usually what’s the head of the meal or at least that’s what it is in my home but in England they have the meat is the main thing that the thing you’re looking at most of the time and so also they a lot more vegetables than we do here and that there’s a good reason for that they tasted amazing like if i could get vegetables that tasted as good as they did in England here i would totally eat like vegetables all day but they just don’t taste as good here probably cuz they’re not fresh or their their different variety but either way british produce was just amazing it was also an expensive i was just so surprised how inexpensive and just lovely their their food was.