Week #19 - Happy Novemberween

Happy Birthday you crazy lil Jonny!

This week was fantastic. Although my life is put at risk daily as I get into our car (the Lord is on our side. No one can tell me He doesn't give missionaries a little extra protection and I've never been so serious when I pray for safe travel) and I constantly have to swallow my pride knowing that I was voted best driver in my graduating class and instead I'm putting my life into the hands of someone who has just about demolished our hubcap on every curb we park next to, broken off a huge chunk of curb when he slammed the front of the car into it in the church parking lot this morning (which left many pleasant dings and scrapes), and is still working on understanding traffic lights and stop signs (I've yet to see improvement, but you never know...we've only been at it for six weeks), things are good.

So as for why the week was fantastic, we taught many many lessons, had an EXCELLENT lesson with Kara, who finally decided to come to church (the testimony meeting was incredible...they were all way good and Kara REALLY enjoyed it) and stayed all three hours. We went by her house later that day so we could talk a little more about how she liked it, and we drove up only to see her on her front balcony reading the Book of Mormon. She loved church, she's getting really excited about everything, and it made my month. On top of that, we had another "right place at the right time" experience with Emily - the girl we found for the singles branch. We showed up to her house just to see how she was doing, and it turned out her friend Amanda was there, who was Catholic but wasn't sure she agreed with a lot of Catholicism. So, Amanda was very open and asked us many questions, and Emily wanted to know about the Plan of Salvation because we told her we'd expand on it last time we saw her. Well, Amanda basically taught a huge chunk of the lesson we were going to teach when she explained her view of heaven, and she was also VERY thrilled to hear about our view on the fall of Adam and Eve. She also thought it was amazing that we had "such a better understanding" on all of the concepts and asked for a copy of the Book of Mormon. She told us "I'll read it. I really will." We didn't even ask her to, so we were fine with that. The lesson was probably one of the best I've ever had, and the spirit was crazy strong (and helping us out a ton). Both were at the singles branch today. Fantastic.

Halloween was awesome. Every year the stake president puts on this HUGE dealy where he buys about fifty million pumpkins and has anyone who wants to just go on over to his house and carve them. He's done it every year and then he puts them all over his yard and we light them all up. He likes having missionaries there so they can talk to people as they carve. My pumpkin, just so everyone knows, was absolutely incredible and probably my best work ever. The pumpkin itself was a BEAST so it was insanely difficult to do. But, long story short, it was the best one in the yard and pictures will be sent home shortly.

Other than that, Proposition 8 stuff is insane and I have absolutely no idea how not everyone sees it for what it is. If I hear that not letting gay people call their domestic partnership "marriage" is discrimination one more time I might jump off a cliff.

Anywho, other than that craziness, things are amazing. The gospel's still true so that's really nice. I've gotta head out but have a swell week!

Elder Balaaaaaaaaagna