Talked in Church and Transfers Coming

Hey Family!

 

That's great about Shelby's farewell. I'm sure she's going to be a great missionary.   Hmm it will probably just be a lot like here as far as missionary work goes. Non existant. Well not really but The NOM mission is supposedly in the top hardest stateside missions. But I'm surviving. Oh and that sucks Missy Bevan is going to Iowa. That place. Oh my goodness. So backwards but whatevs. A lot of Indians there I'm sure.  We have one Sudanese family in our ward , the Ruans or Rials, and they awesome. Sister Ruan is so nice and humble. She is a single mother of 5 and still finds ways to get us money for food. She's awesome. But yeah they are all as black as or blacker than Tyrone Corbin. It's crazy. 

Well our week went a bit better. We reestablished contact with Juan so that was good. We will be meeting with him hopefully sometime this week. And Daniel said that he quit tabacco a few days ago so we're going to reset him sometime this week. 

And Elder Crozier will probably be getting transferred this week. I don't know but it will likely happen. So yeah Mom if you end up sending a letter don't send it unless you send it to the mission home or until you found out if I'm staying or not. And thanks for the 50 bucks! :)

 And as far as basketballs go we haven't been playing the last couple of weeks since we're not allowed to play at the YMCA anymore so yeah our church's court here sucks so yeah. I dont know I'll play it by ear. I really hope I can serve in Lincoln or Souix City sometime. I would like that a lot and from what I hear I the best places to serve as far as having an enjoyable time. 

Oh and Jenny Gibson is still not coming to church. Her husband has been having some issues but yeah I hope they get cleared up soon cause we already talked to him about it. Yesterday they said they couldn't make it to church because they had no gas but Elder Crozier said we could find them a ride and they said "No thank you" so yeeaaah..... Pretty frustrating. 

Oh and my talk went well. I talked for 15 minutes spot on apparently and talked about Member Missionay Work. Yeah I felt like our ward needs a lot of help in that aspect. Oh and our Ward Mission Leader is awesome. But he can only do so much. He's a convert and used to be a druggy and was on probation and all this stuff but now he's married in the Temple and is awesome. Brother Cantino. Alex Cantino. I'm sure you can look him up on FB and friend him or whatever you do. Oh and our Bishop gave us a refferal today so I'm pretty sure my talk worked because that was one of the things my talked stressed. I've talked about tracting before but yeah we don't hardly ever. We only have twice and our Mission President has said not to so I won't complain haha. 

Oh and that suit I got is a winner. It's black and whitish gray specked with lime green lines (not super prominent) and is a cowboy cut style so it looks awesome. Yeah I'll send a picture next week :) Well anyways I hope you guys have a great time in St. George! I love you guys!

 

Love,

Elder Ballif

Tough Week! Investigators still slipping up and Car Accident--Hoping things will improve!

Hey Family.

 

This week was pretty slow again. The less actives aren't progressing, the investigators aren't progressing and the members don't help which is actually the most important part of missionary work. When the members don't help the missionary work goes stagnant. 

We are still working with Daniel. He is just not ready to quit chewing tobacco. He had is baptismal interview and the DL Elder Hawkins (who is awesome) caught him with a can of chew in his pocket and called him out but he made excuses about needing the weight in his pants and some other bs. And then 2 days later me and Elder Crozier stopped by for an unexpected visit and he was chewing and when Elder Crozier asked why he had it in and he said "I didn't know you guys were going to stop by"   So at church Elder Crozier asked him what we needed to do to help him stop chewing and he said "Stop pushing me so hard" and we literally haven't pushed him hard at all. All we have said is you need to quit by this date to get baptized on this date. So yeah. We are not too thrilled with his behavior. 

Oh and I got in a car accident on Saturday. That was fun. It wasn't my fault though so yeah I'm not too worried about it but I still feel bad. Nebraska has a lot of "4 way go's" which is a 4 way intersection with no lights or yields or stop signs. Yeah pretty retarded since the drivers here have a hard enough time handling green means go and red means stop. Or and they don't know what a turn signal is used for I don't think. Yeah sarcasm but there is some truth. Anyways 4 way goes are yield to the rights so this old lady stopped and so yeah I thought she was yielding so yeah by law I wouldn't have to stop anyway and as I was starting to go through the intersection she pulled out and broadsided the car. Yeah she was driving a Buick tank so not really any damage on her car (it was an elderly woman) but the driver's door of the fusion is pretty messed up. So yeah I'm filling out church paperwork for that so it's just a lot of fun.  But on the brightside no one got hurt.

I hoping this week will improve. I had an individual fast yesterday for some help on some things and I hope it works out. I love you guys! Stay safe!

 

Love,

Elder Ballif

Upcoming Baptisms - Hopefully!

Hey Family!

 

This week was a bit slow--again. I'm sure I'll have a lot of slow weeks out here in Nebraska. Anyway we had to push Daniel's baptism off another week to the 27th. If he stopped chewing yesterday he would be fine for the 20th but we're doing the 27th just to make sure. And we may have another baptism on the 27th also. Her name is Jenny Gibson (she's been in the picture since I got here but I just haven't mentioned her) and yeah so her husband and mother-in-law were baptized back in February and she couldn't get baptized because she was on probation but she get's off probabtion tomorrow so that's nice. We're a little worried about them since they haven't really made an effort to come to church but Jenny came yesterday to sacrament meeting so that was good. 

 I bore my testimony in Sacrament Meeting so that was fun. I have a talk about missionary work on the 28th so I just so excited for that--but not really. I still don't like public speaking but I'm sure I get better as more time passes. 

 We haven't been able to get a hold of Juan for about 2 weeks now so yeah we don't know what's going on. He could be ignoring us or he could be in jail for the marijuana thing I don't know. 

 Oh and about Goodwill. Let's just say I have 5 suits now :) I'm sorry but I can't pass up suits. 2 of which I need to lose some weight to fit into but those are my favorite ones so that's some good motivation. And I get ties there. 

 This week should be good. We're planning on watching Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration with CC and Daniel so that should be fun. And then I don't know haha. We have to play a lot of things by ear and drop in because people here don't like setting up appointments. 

 Well I'm still pushing along in Alma. Oh and we did some service with Habitat for Humanity which was fun. As you guessed we're helping build a house for a family. 

 Anyways I love you guys! I hope you have a great week and stay safe! That's great about Mom's diet! I wish I could lose that much that quickly. Well I probably could I just need the motivation. Well I do but it would suck. Yeah anyways I love you!

 

Love,

Elder Ballif

Conference Was Awesome! Especially Elder Holland's Talk

Hey Family!

 

My week has been pretty decent. I saw every single session of conference and ended up with 13 pages of notes so don't you worry about that ;) I liked pretty much all of the talks but in the priesthood session I really liked Tad R. Callister's (he's a deep doctrine guy too so I already liked him) talk but my favorite talk of the whole thing was Jeffrey R. Holland's talk in the Sunday afternoon. It was awesome! 

Oh and Daniel is set for the 13th but we're going to reset him for the 20th because we want to make sure he's completely off tobacco (which as of Sunday he say's he hasn't had any). 

 Austin, Austin, Austin.... those are 80 dollar headphones man... And I don't do cheap shiz with headphones... But I would glady buy some on Amazon but definitely not 80 dollar ones. Not going to lie that chaps my ***.... I loved those headphones....  Either Austin lost them or they are still in one of the drawers of my dresser...  And I'm assuming you don't want to pay for shipping on a basketball? 

Juan is doing, well I don't know. We haven't heard from him since last Tuesday, so that worries me a little but we'll see what happens. I don't really know what else to talk about. That message from Brynlee was so darn cute! It just about made me cry. 

This week should be decent. I hope we can see Juan at least twice this week and we'll probably see Daniel and CC a few times as well. I read the scriptures about an hour a day. And yeah I'm still in the first part of Alma. Alma 5 was awesome! 

I love you guys so very much and I hope you guys have a great week! 

 

Love,

Elder Ballif 

Going Well

What up Family!!!

 

I hope your guys' week has been great! My week was alright. We had a pretty decent week number wise and then we did some service for a recent convert family (landscaping) who are super cool. John and Charlotte Schrock if you want to look them up on the book of faces. 

And yeah we're feeling better now but I still have that unfortunate thing. My favorite part of Mosiah was probably 2-4 because King Benjamin is a boss. And I'm about 15 chapters into Alma now so that pretty sweet. I finally know what the "reign of the judges" is because when I was younger I had no clue what it was talking about. 

I forgot to include Happy Birthday though so I'll do that via email. Yeah Daniel is still working on the tobacco. CC is starting to bug me though. Daniel gets grumpy when he tries to stop chewing and she gives him chew and says "You need this" so yeah she's not helping. And she smokes too and just found out she was pregnant and still does so yeah that's not cool. And all I'm going to say is NEVER do meth... But yeah I still think he'll be able to since he's progressing fairly well testimony wise. 

As for as investigators go my favorite is definitely Juan. I don't know if I've talking about him, but he's super awesome. But he could have a felony marijuana charge that I don't think he really deserves (long story) but yeah that could possibly put him on probation for 5 years which would suck but we'll still see him and be good influences to him. We have a lot of fun when we see him. We kind of tone down the missionary status and just be his friend but we also stay gospel related for a lot of the time. He's awesome. Oh yeah he's 21 years old so yeah. And he owns his own house and a BMW (He's a welder) but he found out he has a child so he's now paying child support and paying for a lawyer so yeah he isn't in the best situation. 

That's great about the Jazz and BYU. I hope I can maybe see some stuff at least with BYU... I'll make it happen. Maybe. :)

And yeah we did not get invited over to a members house yesterday. But whatever we're not upset or anything. Our ward isn't very missionary minded even though we have lessons and stuff on it. And the whole welfare system is a little broken (this is mom's question) so yeah get just as much or more money on welfare as you do for a minimum wage job so there's not any motivation to do anything. Like people say "We don't have any money" and then I think "Oh then how did you afford that PS3 and HDTV?" Yeah it's pretty weird. 

And yes Mom I got the package and the soundtrack was awesome :) Thank you.   Thank you so much for everything you do for me! I love you guys so much! Have a great week!

 

Love,

Elder Ballif