June 18. 2012

Hello,
This week was a little warmer which was awesome, but it was really
hard in a lot of ways.
It started off interesting because I kind of had the ultimate black
bottle experience. We were teaching this family, and one of the women
wanted us to give her child a blessing for her athsma problems. And
that is fine, so we agreed. The child was acting kind of crazy, being
loud and hyper. We asked if we should come back when the child was
asleep or something so she would sit still, but they wanted us to do
it right then. So in front of the entire family, the mother of the
child just pulled down her shirt and began to breast feed the child to
calm it down. It was rediculously awkward, but would've been even more
so if we had made a big deal about it since the entire family didn't
seem to be phased in the slightest. This culture is way strange. I
don't know if I will ever understand it completely. So we commenced to
give the blessing, but I never want to do that again.
After our district meeting, our District Leader Elder Fagg (I know, I
know.), put together a district activity where we played soccer for a
couple of hours. I thought I was in relatively good shape from walking
and biking all over the place, but I thought wrong. The activity was
on Friday afternoon, and I'm still in a crazy amount of pain. I've
been limping around our area from appointment to appointment like an
old man. It's rediculous.
After that Elder Rowberry and I, mostly myself, offended a sangoma. A
sangoma is a witch doctor and they're really crazy, and this guy
really made me believe in the actual power that satan and his angels
actually have. He told us some crazy stuff. He's actually not a full
fledged sangoma yet, he is just saving up money to buy the sacrificial
cow and goat, and all of the food and alcohol for his initiation. I'm
not even joking, that is actually what he is doing. I have absolutely
no doubt that africa will probably be one of the first places to be
cleansed by fire at the second coming.
After that lesson I felt so horrible. I was shaking and really very
freaked out after talking to him and his girlfriend. I was scared for
them. They believe so strongly in all of this, and in doing so give
actual power to those beings from the unseen world. It has always
sounded like crazy stories until now to me. That experience combined
with the all of the let downs from our progressing (or were
progressing) investigators pushed me very near to a mental breakdown
this week. I'm a lot better now, but it has been a crazy couple of
days.
On the bright side, it's monday, it's warm, and I don't have do deal
with anything else like that until later tonight.
The mail strike is finally over, so I have been getting a ton of
letters that were hold up in the mail which have been awesome and have
helped me a lot this week. So thank you everyone. I love and miss you
all.
Elder Balmforth