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