August 6. 2012

Hello Everyone,
Elder Balmforth here. Thank you all for all of the pre birthday
wishes. I really appreciate it. This week has been really hard, and we
haven't taught as many lessons as we usually do, but we have made a
lot more progress than I usually feel that we do. Our teaching pool is
full of awesome people, but they all have their own unique obstacles
to overcome before accepting the gospel. It's so frustrating
sometimes. I see all of these people, some happy and some not so
happy, but all could be so much happier if they lived the gospel.
Sometimes I get my hopes up and get way excited when there is the
sligtest progress made. I just want to tell everyone the blessings of
the Book of Mormon, and the Church, and the Temple but we have to
start from the beginning so that people understand, and when people
don't let us get to the blessings that they could have it makes me
really sad. We keep going though.
We have been teaching this woman named Charlotte for a couple of weeks
now, going slow because our schedule is so tight and we always need to
arrange for another member to be with us, but we finally got through
the restoration yesterday and it was awesome. Her and her son Treasure
who is like 20 or something were so involved with the lesson. And as
we closed and used some verses from the Book of Mormon as we bore our
testimonies I could tell that the spirit was truly carrying our words
unto the hearts of the children of men. It was awesome and it was
confirmed with their explanation and understanding of how the spirit
works to answer our prayers.
Yesterday our fast and testimony meeting was actually really good.
Usually it is the most stressful day on mission because you just sit
there next to your investigators and pray that no one says anything
stupid, but one of our investigators actually got up and bore an
awesome testimony. It was also really cool because President Omer and
his wife showed up out of nowhere for the meeting. I'm really glad
that we had investigators there.
One thing that I learned this week, which is probably one of the most
valuable things that I think someone could ever learn. I'm still
trying to really learn it. But it is that it is better to light a
candle, that to curse the dark. You may have heard it before, but it
was new to me.
I love and miss you all so much. Thank you for all the birthday
wishes, letters, support and everything.
Elder Balmforth