This week wasn't productive or exciting at all really. We only taught like 6 or seven lessons. We did have to drop 2 families though, which is really sad. The first was the Wiesners who are an older Afrikaans couple. I have never met a more stubborn or prideful people than Afrikaaners. Donnie Wiesner, the husband, has been reading the Book of Mormon from the beginning and is now nearing the end of 3 Nephi, but he pretty much wont accept an answer as anything short of seeing a vision like Joseph Smith. He also told us pretty flat out that even if he comes to know that Joseph Smith was a prophet, and that the Book of Mormon is true, he is never going to leave his Afrikaans church. No matter what we teach him, he thinks he'll still be saved and not have to do anything for it because he believes that God has a special love for Afrikaaners.
The second couple are a young couple named Candice and Andre. It was really strange because all of our lessons were going so well when all of a sudden they stopped returning our calls, and wouldn't answer their door or anything. One day we dropped by and kind of caught Candice by surprise, and she gave us the excuse that she's been really busy at work and that her phone was broken. That would all be understandable except that her boyfriend Andre pulled up then and asked her why she hadn't answered her phone. Even after all of this they wouldn't tell us anything straight up. So we don't know exactly what is going on, other than whatever it is, it's a little sketchy.
There were a couple of good things that happened this week though. Both Markus and Jessica had their interviews and passed this weekend and they will both be baptized this next Sunday. And Jessica asked me to baptize her. Since we've been meeting with her, her mother Yvonne has changed a lot and has become very motivated to bring her life in line with the gospel. She's more than a week cigarette free now and we are planning for her to be baptized on February 26 in just a few weeks.
There were, I think, only 2 other families that we met with this week.The Ntshonyanas, and the Jennnings. The Jennings came to church last week and seemed to like it a lot, and we tried challenging them to be baptized, but the mother Samantha was hesitant because her family is Catholic, so we are just going to keep being patient but persistent in our future lessons. They didn't come to church this week because it was stake conference at a far away chapel. The Ntshonyanas were hard this week though. We didn't really teach them a lesson, we basically just had to convince them that we are not a cult. They come across more anti-mormon stuff than I thought possible for such sheltered people. They did commit to read the Book of Mormon everyday until we meet them again, no matter what people tell them about it.
Other than that this week was pretty uneventful. We went to Broken Wings which is an activity center for adults with disabilities, which was actually pretty interesting and very humbling. I liked it except we had to sing in front of them even though they didn't want us to. They made us sing the U.S. national anthem of all things. We also forgot the pin to disarm the alarm system to the church so the alarm company was dispatched just to find a couple of missionaries in the chapel.
This weekend was also Stake Conference. Elder Carl B. Cook of the Seventy and his wife, along with President Omer and his wife gave talks. It was nice but not terribly interesting. They all pretty much just told stories and bore their testimonies. It was good, just not as interesting as I thought it was going to be having an authority present.
That is pretty much all that happened this week. Thanks again for all of the emails and letters. They really make it a lot easier to be so far away. I love and miss you all and I hope everyone has an awesome week.
-Elder Balmforth
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