Week #14 - Pants!

Hellooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Kind of an unexpected finish to the week. Yesterday afternoon, Elder Singleton got a phone call from president asking if he could do an emergency transfer today at noon. Apparently, one of the Elders who shared my room at the MTC- is going home. He was struggling a lot and decided to go home. So, that was a little unexpected and kinda depressing. Today I'll be getting a new companion named Elder Wheeler.

Aside from that, it was a pretty good week. We ended up teaching about sixteen lessons this week which was pretty exciting.

We move into the Benning's house tomorrow and that should be really fun. They have a really nice house and an incredible piano on the second floor. I did get everyone's mail last week though in case you were wondering - the Bennings gave me what was sent to their house and we're still in our old apartment so I got what was mailed there. I don't really have too much else to write home about. I had the greasiest...most garlicy and most disgusting meal I've had yet last week. Even the salad was garlicy and terrible. Oh and to top it off, there was again only an option of milk to drink. Milk is not a good thirst quencher. It also tastes gross without cereal, cookies, or chocolate.

Sorry it's a bit of a short update this week. Not too much to catch everyone up on. But, all is well and I'll let everyone know how the new comp is.

Bye!
Elder Al

Week #13: Hop Scotchin' It!

Good day!

As of September 25th, my new address will be:

Elder Balagna
2114 Mecca Ct
Fairfield, CA 94534

However, we're not actually moving into that house until a week from today. We were first told that we'd move the 25th, so that may be the end of our contract in the apartment. Today the family we're moving in with said they wouldn't quite be ready until Monday, so we may end up living with a couple other elders for a few days (who knows though- we might stay in our apartment). To be safe, don't mail anything to the apartment that would get there Friday or later.

Anywho, The Jelly Belly Factory was nice. Not the most exciting tour, but it was good. They had a sample Jelly Belly Bar which was absolutely fantastic. You could sample as many as you wanted. They also had a gigantic Jelly Belly Man out front which really brightened my day (to say the least). (See pictures below)

As for other exciting news, we were fed Chinese food Friday night, Saturday afternoon, and Saturday night. It felt like home except I really thought I might vomit after the third helping. Members had yet to feed us Chinese once since I'd gotten here, and then three different families fed it to us in a row (including lunch, which members rarely rarely rarely ask us out to lunch).

On top of that, Kara had quite the story for us. We taught her a lot about fasting and what it does for us and committed her to try it with us on Sunday. We told her it could really help her find more direction and figure out what she wanted to do. I guess that day, she opened the news paper and saw a huge article on some new machine that's basically trying to simulate the big bang theory. She was a little annoyed with it and turned a few pages to finish the article. Then, she turned back a couple of pages and a quarter (this was a brand new news paper that she just opened up) was laying face up displaying the "In God We Trust." This made her pretty happy, and then upon moving the quarter, she realized it had been sitting over a tiny box under a "this day in history" section (that apparently she NEVER reads) and it said something about the Mormon Pioneers. Needless to say, she was pretty excited and she said she went out and bought another skirt. I don't know if I mentioned this before, but one of her "big things" is that she HATES skirts/dresses and doesn't ever buy them. She even said the only fight she ever got in with her husband was over a dress, and she said she didn't think she could ever be a member of our church because she'd feel awkward not wearing one. Well, a couple of weeks ago she said she bought one "just in case," and then after this experience she went out and bought another in preparation for attending church often. :-D

I don't know if you've heard much about Proposition 8, but it's huge out here. It's about the gay marriage issue. Basically, the entire fight is over NOTHING but the word marriage. Apparently, because we don't say that a guy/guy or girl/girl couple with ALL THE SAME RIGHTS as a guy/girl couple is marriage, we don't practice "equality for all." If Proposition 8 fails to pass, public schools have to teach that gay marriage is the same as marriage and we can't preach in church that it's wrong or we could be sued, etc etc. The First Presidency got really involved and is having all the members in California work to make sure it passes, The church has joined a huge coalition of Christian and Non-Christian denominations to go out and do a bunch of stuff to help make sure that it does. Crazy stuff.

I'm out of time- but thanks for all the emails and mail.

Mucho (fancy word for "much") love,
Elder Al

Two Super Missionaries!

A few photos!

Two busy missionaries! Elder Singleton and Elder Balagna in sunny Fairfield CA!

Always time for fun - guess where these guys spent their Preparation Day?

The Jelly Belly Factory - Elder Balagna has been looking forward to this for quite some time!

A peak inside:

Week #12 - More Powerful than a Locomotive

Good day, errbody!
This will probably be a quick update- I don't have a whole lot of time. But, things are excellent. Our investigator Anthony came to church and he brought his friend Rob, who also wants to start taking lessons. So, a new investigator! We were pretty excited. Seems like we've been blessed a whole lot more than usual lately as far as investigators go, so I'd like to throw a shoutout to the man upstairs for helping us out so much in the past few weeks.

I'm sorry to inform everyone that we never made it to the Jelly Belly Factory last week, so I'm holding off on sending pictures home because we're supposedly going today. I'm pretty excited- mostly because we get free Jelly Bellies. I may have mentioned that last week but I just can't stop thinking about it. It's almost too awesome for words.

On the 25th we'll be moving in with a family in our ward named the Benning's. They're way cool. I'll have more information on that next week with an address and hoohaw. The weather's been much more tolerable lately. Just a wee bit cooler and it'll be perfect for wearing a white shirt and tie. There's also a bunch of fruit everywhere, and a bunch of people are giving us free homegrown fruit. It tastes pretty amazing. Plums, pears, apples, etc. Delicious. Peach season I guess is over which is terrible news. The peaches out here are amazing. One family gave us some of their homegrown peaches all the time and it always made my week.

Anywho, that about wraps it up for this week. Thanks again to everyone who sent mail- mail makes my day. I'll try and respond to all of them soon!

Elder Al

Week #11 - It's Turtle Time!

Hi there everyone!

What a week it has been. What a week. It was insanely hot again which was great because I was really hoping that the temperatures wouldn't drop below freezing.

Other than that, we had transfers and had some really cool people leave us. That's the way the cookie crumbles, I suppose. I don't really have a whole lot to report this week but things are going extremely well. We taught a lot of lessons this week and there's one new investigator that seems pretty solid. We tracted into her and it turns out she's also really good friends with an awesome family in our ward. We taught her the first lesson and we're also teaching her again next week. She had some good questions which was nice. It's always a plus when you know they're actually taking stuff in and thinking about it.

I had a pretty neat experience when I tried to send in my reading for my defibrillator.
(Alex has an internal defibrillator that paces his heart and has the ability to restart his heart if it should stop...he also has a transmitter that he connects to a land phone line which sends a monthly report of the defibillator's activity to his physician.)
For some reason, I tried it in three different homes of members (one of them I had sent it from last month) and none of them would work. It wouldn't send in my reading and I tried about fifty times and I was getting a little frustrated. So, we ended up visiting a VERY less active member who never answers the door and we decided we'd ask to try it at her house just to see if it worked. Well, she answered the door, and she was more that willing to let us try sending the reading. She has a pretty serious heart problem as well and was very interested in mine. Her phone worked on the first try when I sent in the reading. We were able to talk with her for about forty minutes and it was a REALLY good discussion- first about heart problems and then about the gospel. I don't really know why she stopped going to church- she still seems like a strong member and she still knows it's all true, so hopefully she'll come back soon. It's been years. We'll see!

That's really about everything cool for the week. Sorry I don't have much. Today we're going to the Jelly Belly Factory for a free tour (which comes with a free bag of Jelly Bellys) so I'm pretty psyched about it. I still haven't had a chance to meet Carol Shelton but from what I hear she's a total doll. (When Alex opened his mission call and he said "Santa Rosa California", I told him that it was the home of Charles Schulz - the creator of the Peanuts cartoon (and Linus). He thought I said "Carol Shelton" and was puzzled. If you click on the You Tube video of his mission call you can listen to the exchange.)

Love to everyone!
Elder Al

Week #10 - Rice filled Ping Pong with Bacon & Cheese

Best week ever! Almost. Actually best day ever. The week was alright.

First off, I'm safe for transfers as well as Elder Singleton - so we're both pretty happy about that. So, we'll be stickin around the ol' Fairfield for another six weeks. However, they told us a couple weeks back that they're going to move us into a member's home "very soon," but we still haven't heard anything so who knows. Either way, we're still in the area, but we may have a change of address sometime. I'll have over a week's notice though so it's no biggie.

Anywho, yesterday was crazy amazing. It was pretty incredible the way Elder Singleton and I would both feel impressed to go to a certain place and had perfect luck with each one. The Spirit had a full agenda and was sure to let us know. I've never had an experience quite like it, so I've been saying many thankful prayers. Basically, we ended up with two new investigators within two hours (kinda rare to pick up even one investigator in a week in our area...or at least it has been) and we finally caught three different people at home that we've been trying to get ahold of since I got here. Everything we did wasn't even written in our plans, but one of us would just throw out a name and each one sounded perfect. The last girl we saw (a new investigator) we've been trying to see for about four weeks. She works all the time and we can never catch her. We both decided to go over at about eight thirty pm, and there was one light on. We debated on whether or not it was too late, and Elder Singleton kinda laughed and said "I'm wondering if this is just Satan trying to trip us up." So, that's when I told him we were going in, and it turned out she was home for the first time. She'd read a little out of the Book of Mormon, wants to come to church, and was really excited about volleyball (we play every Wednesday with the singles) and is going to come with her friend this week. Amazing.

We also decided to see if a guy named Anthony (we're seeing 2 "Anthonys" right now) was home. He apparently went to one of the other wards one Sunday and had a lot of good comments about it. He's in his mid twenties and we've been trying to catch him at home for a long time. We went there and he was out front watering his lawn. We'd never met him, but he greeted us with a hearty "What's up my brethren?" and asked if we were hungry or thirsty. He was a pretty awesome guy and we taught him the entire first lesson and bits and pieces of the second out on his lawn. He was definitely following it and was interacting a ton which is always a plus. So, he wants to meet with us next Sunday night and he's going to go to church.

Much more stuff but I'm running out of time. On Saturday we went to a couple's house that lives in Rio Vista for a traditional "end of transfers dinner." It was way fun and eight missionaries from the zone went. They have a bunch of recording equipment and the guy's way good with music (sadly there was no piano). Our zone leader and I decided to write a rap about our zone and record it because he had a bunch of awesome beats. Long story short, it sounds freaking awesome. We're getting the recording on cd today, so you'll probably be getting a copy.

Kara's still doing great. She said now that her friends know she's looking into the church, they're praying for her that she'll find Christ. She kinda laughed and said "all that's resulted from their prayers is me coming closer to joining, so either you have Christ or they're praying to the wrong person."

Welp, that about wraps her up.
Elder Alex