September 9. 2013

Family,

This week was a good one except that somehow I caught another cold. It sucks but everything else was pretty awesome.

Last Monday Elder Dalton and I went to a Crocodile ranch for a tour. And since we were the only two people there the tour guide took us right down to the crocodiles to feed them. It was awesome. The tour guide was pretty crazy too. At one point he found a piece of PVC pipe and started poking the biggest crocodile they had in the face with it trying to make it mad. The whole time taunting it. It reminded me of that scene in Joe Dirt where he's doing the alligator show smoking a cigarette. It was just like that except with a black guy instead of a redneck.

We also had a zone meeting this week which was pretty lame, but afterward I went on an exchange with Elder Ouma. The same Elder Ouma that I lived with in Molepolole. It was pretty fun. He got to rant a little bit about how crazy his companion is. I already knew that though. I like him a lot. He's a good guy.

One night also as I was climbing into our truck to go to another appointment, I noticed that as I turned our headlights on there was an old woman standing up and peeing in front of the truck and she was so close that I could tell that she was well hydrated. It's a horrific image that is impossible to erase from your mind. 

Something really cool that happened, however, was an experience that we had with one of the families that we are teaching. The mother of the mother in the Kashira family lives in the UK and is a member of the church. One of the members of her ward from the UK is named Janet Taylor and is currently serving as a senior missionary in the genealogy center in the Johannesburg area office. Janet is good friends with the mother in the UK and has sponsored the family at times in their life but has never met them and we arranged to help them meet this last Saturday. It was pretty cool to see how excited they were. I think it helped with our teaching relationship as well.

Over all it was an interesting week. I love and miss you all. Have a good week.

Elder Balmforth