This week the craziest thing happened. One morning a bunch of our appointments ditched, so we were just walking around tracting and I saw this house with a broken window, and instead of fixing the window, someone had just put a picture of Jesus in front of the hole. I thought that it would be a good opportunity to start a conversation with someone on some common ground, so we knocked on the door. It turned out that there was a 19 year old kid that lived there on his own, but he was willing to listen to us, so he let us in and we just started to talk with him and teach him about the restoration.
We hadn't gotten far at all into the lesson when a drunk guy who lived in the shack behind the house turned up his music so loud that we could barely hear ourselves think. It was so loud that my companion lost his train of thought as he was talking, so he mentioned to the kid that the music was a little distracting. The kid then got up to go and talk to the guy, even though we told him that it was ok and he didn't have to, he went anyway. As we were waiting inside the kid went outside and we heard the music get turned down. Not long after the kid came inside again though, the music turned up louder than at first. The kid we were talking to, his name is Lucky, just went to the power box and flipped off the electricity to the drunk guy's shack. Next thing we know the drunk man is in the house. One thing led to another and Lucky and the man were brawling and Elder Rowberry and I were in the middle of them trying to pull them apart, but before we could get them separated and calmed down, Lucky grabbed a metal coffee pot thing and bashed the man over the head with it and split this guy's scalp wide open. We got them separated, and the drunk man left, but came back in with a hammer, and lucky had grabbed the wooden handle of a sledge hammer like they were going to fight to the death. We ended up forcing the man out of the house and convincing Lucky that it wasn't worth it to kill the guy, and we had to stand and barracade them from eachother until the police showed up. It was pretty crazy. The police came and separated them and basically sent them to their corners. We didn't stay, but just set a time to come back and talk to Lucky again when things had calmed down.
Then yesterday when we went back to speak with him, we ended up talking to him for a while about his life, his family and what he does all day. He's a really cool kid and is going to school for engineering right now, and fixes computer chips in his spare time to earn money. He's one of the first township african kids who isn't completely self centered. It was so cool. Anyway, we ended up teaching him almost the entire restoration and we could see that it made a lot of sense to him and that he seemed to be prepared. He even got really excited, agreed to be baptized, and says the most honest prayers that the spirit totally witnesses to him of the truth of what we are telling him. He even seemed sad when we left. There's even a ton of stuff that I don't have time to write about him that has made him to be prepared.
That was the crazy thing that happend this week, and Lucky and another man we're teaching named Langton are a couple of the only real rays of sunlight in my life this week, other than getting to come and read all of your emails.
Thank you all so much for writing. It helps me feel a lot better. I love and miss you all and hope you have an awesome week.
Elder Balmforth
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