Week #9 - The last week of my first transfer!

Hey Champs!
I'm officially in my last week of my first transfer! I don't know if I'll get transferred or not next week- we'll find out like two days before. I'll be able to let everyone know in my next email if I'm going. I've got mixed feelings about it. It would be really cool to stay here with my companion. I really like the area though and the people are great, so I don't know. I've got a really cool zone here too. We'll see I suppose.
As for awesome news, we had two investigators at church!! Last Wednesday we had an incredible lesson with Kara and she kept talking about how good she felt about everything. She said everything seems leading her toward the church (even though people are giving her a hard time about it) and now she's finally accepting that it's probably what she needs to do. So, she agreed to come to church and really enjoyed it- all the talks ended up being perfect for what she needed to hear so the Lord was definitely helping us out. She got really excited and said for our lesson this Wednesday she's cooking us brunch.
We also had that girl Emily (I think I mentioned her last week) call us and ask where the singles branch was so she could go. She ended up knowing ten people there so it went really well too- she's planning on coming next week and we're going to teach her a little bit. I don't know if I ever said anything about this- my companion and I cover the fourth ward and also the singles branch. So, it was nice to have someone attend each one and make both sides happy.
The Relief Society President at BYU Summer term while I was Elders Quorum President's name is Annie. It turns out her family lives in my ward, and she was home for this week and leaves for BYU in a couple of days. So, we had a little catch-up talk and that was kinda cool. Can't say I expected to run into many people I knew on my mission.
That's about all I've got over here. It was a crazy busy week. We had to make up for the slowness of last week, and I think we did alright. Thankfully, I still haven't caught any sickness, but I'm knocking on wood as we speak.
Much love to all you peeps! Marshmallow Peeps are so gross.
Elder Al

Week #8 - Slow Week

Good day, loved ones!

Not a whole lot to report this week. My comp got pretty sick so we couldn't do too much in the middle of the week. He looked terrible. He's much better now and just has a bad cold. I'm hoping I dodged the illness. So far I'm good to go, but who knows.

I gave a talk in church yesterday over "opening our hearts to the Holy Spirit." I was introducted as "fresh out of the MTC" (as I am every time my name is mentioned in the ward...) but thankfully, I had a lot of people tell me afterward that I don't seem new at all, so that was good to hear. Hopefully they weren't just trying to boost my confidence. Anyway, it was a cool topic so it was fun to expand on.

I got a lot of mail this week. Thanks to errbody. Lee Barwick sent me an awesome package, make sure on the blog he knows that he's way cool. [LEE- ALEX SAYS YOU'RE WAY COOL]

We tried out our music presentation dealy for a few members this week and it went really well. We've got a few different songs that we do and we have some tie-ins to missionary work that we explain from the lyrics as well as a lesson that goes with it. So, that's working out quite nicely, and the bishop even gave a little plug for us at church, so we've got more appointments. It's pretty nice to see the members warming up to us and they're becoming a lot more willing to suggest friends who might want to talk. We can tell the Spirit is helping.

Two new investigators this week! Anthony, a huge black guy in his twenties who likes to play volleyball with the singles branch on Wednesdays agreed to start taking lessons. We taught him once already and he set up another time for us to teach on Wednesday. He's a really cool guy so I hope things continue to progress.

We also got a media referral from a girl named Emily who's 18. She had called in and asked for missionaries to deliver her a Book of Mormon and a Bible and to teach her about them. We were pretty excited about that, and when we got there, Elder Singleton said he was pretty sure he'd been there. Sure enough, a few months prior, he had tracted into her before. Apparently she's gone to church a ton and then went to college. She lost the number for the missionaries so she figured she could get back in touch this way. She's home on weekends, so we'll be teaching her then. Looks pretty promising, so keep that one in your prayers.

Anywho, that's about all there is over here. Happy Earth Day!

Amicably,
Elder Balagna

Week #7 - Working Hard!

Welp, here's another update. It's high time you got one I s'pose. It's certainly high time.

Hello there! Not a whole lot to report this week. It's been crazy busy and I did exchanges with the zone leader and the district leader so that took up about three days of the week. It was nice and we had some really good lessons. I got to teach a lot which was a major plus.

Kara Valentino agreed to come to church this week and was really looking forward to it, but sadly her son told her the night before that he was in charge of some program that they were doing and he wanted her to see it. It started at nine am, which as luck would have it is exactly when our ward starts church. Crazy Satan and his wacky antics.

I got a massive bug bite on the back of my foot. It's huge and I almost took a picture until I remembered the time I got the white sock bite on my forehead in Alaska that was almost the size of Canada. I tried to take a picture of that one and it came nowhere NEAR doing it justice. So, take my word for it. It's humongous. Probably bigger than the ol' Jonny's head when he was a kid. Oh, Jonny I'm just playing with you! Don't give me that look! You lil goof.

We taught a guy named Rob all about the restoration and it was a REALLY good discussion. He's having a lot of problems in his life but he's way cool. He was picking up his kids from a member's house where we were eating and then we all started talking and it got pretty deep. He cried a wee bit and the spirit was stronger than Chief looked in that one picture where he's doing the hurdles.

Anywho, that's about all I've got for this week. Bruce C. Hafen's talking to us tomorrow which is way exciting. We're all pretty pumped. Merry Christmas and enjoy Honest Abe's birthday.

Elder Al

Pictures, Pictures and more Missionary Pictures

Two great missionaries!

Alex in front of the Provo Utah Temple.

MISSIONARY TALK: "Elder Balagna...you have a banana in your ear." Elder Balagna says: "I can't hear you - I have a banana in my ear."

Alex and the members of his district at the MTC

Successful training at the MTC - it's time to move on!

Where in the world will Elder Balagna and Elder Norton go?

First stop - the Golden Gate Bridge!

Next...the intersection of Lehi Ct. and Kolob Drive. :-)

Physical and Spiritual Strength - an Alex Video

Alex is "famous" for his videos on his Facebook web page. Here's a fun clip of him "exercising" his strength in the MTC.

Week #6: Frank Sinatra is alive and well!

Hey there friends, colleagues, and distinguished governors. What a day!

"Gee wiz, why such a day, Alex?" Because today I woke up and had a nice tall glass of Tropicana Orange Juice to celebrate P-Day.

Thanks for all of the emails/letters this week. They were fantastic. The stories/homemade comics were delightful and the tetracycline and nadalol were delicious as always.

This week was pretty spectacular. I got to meet Gary, who had me sing about five Sinatra songs for him. His equipment's WAY cool. He gave me a lot of really good tips for singing more "Frank-like" as well which was pretty neat. He definitely knows his stuff. He sounds JUST like Frank Sinatra, and his whole style of singing is just like his too. So anywho, we're going back there this week. We got to talk a little gospel with him too which went really well.

Our lesson with Kara got cancelled which was disappointing, but we're still meeting with her on Wednesday. Last time we talked to her she had some questions about what her pastor had taught about what Mormons believe. One thing I'll never understand: If someone hears something from their pastor/priest/anything that they know is just flat out wrong about our church, wouldn't you think that they'd be a little incredulous when it comes to asking more questions? I know there are a lot of really respectable and knowledgeable religious leaders out there, but honestly, when are you ever going to hear a pastor say "I don't really know of any reason why you shouldn't join that church. Go right ahead"? Anywho, Kara is pretty strong willed, and after talking to her we saw that she was actually pretty annoyed with some of the false things that she'd been taught (i.e. Mormons don't believe in the Bible) so she's even more set on learning more and a lot more open minded.

President Stoddard "heard a rumor that I was quite the piano player" and asked me to play a prepared musical number a week from tomorrow. Bruce C. Hafen from the seventy is coming to speak to the entire mission and everyone's way excited. We read a couple of his talks and they're pretty amazing. One's called The Restored Doctrine of the Atonement and it's excellent. But yeah- I'm working on learning the Jon Schmidt version of A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief. Hopefully I can.

I was talking to the coolest guy of all time with most amazing conversion story ever, the other day. His life story's pretty amazing in itself, but I don't have time to go through it all. Basically, he's awesome. He had some problems with his wife and they were divorced. Soon after, she and her current boyfriend (now husband) were set on ruining him. During all this, he found a Book of Mormon, and the first scripture he opened it up to was in Alma...I don't remember where but it is where he talks about how sweet was the joy after his pain or something like that. Well, he loved the Book of Mormon, but also realized how his wife had pretty well ruined his life. He hit rock bottom and found himself sitting in his house with every light off contemplating death. He just said a prayer where he basically told God that he was going to do it and asked to please stop him. As soon as he finished praying, two missionaries knocked on his door (all the lights were out in his house and it was eight at night) and said that they had a message from Jesus Christ. Way long story short, he was baptized.

We did a thing called "grafting the vineyard" with a bunch of missionaries and President Stoddard. The new missionaries did this activity where we were asked a question about our church, and while standing on a chair, we had to 'soap box preach' about it and clear up confusion and everyone else posed as nonmembers asking questions. Well, my topic was about the priesthood, and one of the sister missionaries threw a bunch of questions at me. I don't want to brag, but President Stoddard said that he was really impressed at how "calmly but boldly" I dealt with the situation. :-)

Anywho- gotta go- love, peace and cherries,
Al

Week #5 - July 28, 2008 - Tales of a Brand New Missionary

Hey there friends and foes!

My first week is out of the way. It's crazy nice weather here. My companion's really cool (Elder Singleton...he's from Canada) and things are going well. The only thing that I'm really trying to get used to is tracting. (Going door to door) Not a whole lot of success here, so tracting is pretty common. I can't say I'm too fond of it yet. However, I have a much greater appreciation for nice people. It's pretty surprising how rude people feel they need to be. They could just as easily say something like "I really appreciate what you do, but we're not really interested. Have a nice day though!" Which some people do say, but very very few. Most will either tell us to quit wasting time, that we're going to hell, or to stay away from their house. We came up to one girl's house who looked mid-thirties/early forties who as soon as we got there said "Um...NO THANK YOU" (in the most annoyed-teenage girl persona she could muster) and then she said "And we will be getting a 'no soliciting' sign for our door to keep people like you away from our house. We're not afraid to call the cops."

We did get to teach a couple of people though, and the lessons were amazing. One girl in her early forties named Kara talked to us for about an hour. She's a hairdresser. She was pretty friendly and open with anything I had to say, which made me feel very at ease. I guess my companion had talked to her a few times before, so she's familiar with everything and is keeping commitments so she's doing well. We did a lot of Q&A this time and it was awesome. Lots of really good questions, and if I do say so myself, lots of really good answers. The Spirit was definitely helping out a lot. It's pretty cool when you finally understand what they mean when they constantly tell you in the MTC to let the Spirit work through you and not rely on your own knowledge.

I played the piano a few times. One elder took a video of me playing "All of Me" when he found out I could play and showed everyone.

One thing that's way nice though is I was eating at an Italian family's house (They love me - Balagna is a pretty good last name to have around here) called the Muzzio's, who said to tell Mom and Chief that they'd take care of me. The meal was pretty amazing. Anyway, I was talking to them and we got on the topic of hobbies, then singing, then Michael Buble, then a five year investigator two doors down who was WAY into Michael Buble and Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin etc who apparently sings exactly like all of them. He's almost sixty and he has all of this karaoke type stuff and he sings for a lot of gathering dealies. Anyway, the Muzzio's think I'm the one who'll have that magic touch when it comes to finally getting him to join the church, and they said anything's allowed when it means a potential baptism (meaning singing some Frank songs with him). Haha, so who knows. Either way it'll be fun to talk to him, but as for getting him baptized, who knows. It would be really cool though.

I did have two baptisms on Saturday- a guy named Robert and girl named Bianca. Given that I did nothing to get them to that point, it was still pretty cool and Robert asked me to talk on the Holy Ghost at his baptism. I got to know him two days before and he was really cool. I think he's 26. So, that was really neat. I saved a couple of programs from it. The one even has my name in it! It's been a while since I'd actually seen a baptism, so it was a way cool experience.

I got a free tie from an elder who's going home in a few months. He said that I was way cool and he wanted to be my godfather, so he let me pick one of his ties and then he wrote his and my name inside the back. What a nice fella. Kind of an ugly tie though. I didn't want to take a nice one.

We tracted into a man named Michelon. He was awesome. We kinda felt like just asking if he needed help with anything rather than introduce the church right off hand, and it turned out he and his wife were moving a ton of stuff and needed help. So, we helped and then sat down and touched a bit on the restoration and then Alma 32 about faith- and he said that the night before he had been praying for help and praying to have his faith strengthened and basically said that we were sent from God. Kinda nice to hear that after you've been told you're going to hell. So that was really cool and we're meeting with him again on Wednesday.
Anywho, gotta wrap things up but thanks for all the email and what not- the pictures are always nice!
Love- Elder Al