Elder Balzer - 6/26/2023

It's been absolutely bonkers this week; I haven't even begun to process it a yet. Seriously what the French Toast even happened. 

After the crazy weekend and dealing with Grashia then came Monday and the lesson set there with the referral. It was about eternal families and sealing cause she wondered what that is about and where the word sealing comes from. It took a lot of background and context to give her the necessary information for what she was asking. I mean you can't just bring up D&C without talking about Joseph Smith. 

Anyway after our member finally got there we wrapped up and left her with all tools possible to answer her questions. 

Then my sanity is only lost from there cause the next day continued the Grashia saga which spanned all the way till yesterday and it will continue on until the sun dies. 🌞 

This will cover the week, but I need to explain it all together. So bear with me here. 

So after she came to church, and had a good time, we continued our contact with her. We'll she got way to deep into social media; she gets paranoid and overreacts on stuff. The biggest thing was her work and just stuff they were doing that was wrong. Anyway long story short, she's facing the negative backlash of social media. 

We've been praying with her constantly, we've given her scriptures to read which she has read, we've now got her to fast from social media for the week by deleting Facebook. She also has been going to the temple constantly cause she feels the spirit and feels safe, which is awesome!

We've gotten her through a lot and the ward has helped so much. It has gotten better, but she could make it easier. 

At least she is being to better understand the gospel and the church authority, cause we explained the prophet again and so she wants to follow him. Good stuff, good stuff all around. We had a lesson on the gospel because she wants to get in the temple so we said you need to be baptized. We put her and her son on date to be baptized July 15th. 

The biggest advice she needs to follow is to avoid the negative(cause shes scared relied society yesterday) and focus on the gospel. So I'll call to repentance, delete her apps, and drink her tears until it is done. It ain't easy work, but it's fun and I revel in it. 

Compared to that the rest is breezy. 

We had zone conference and interviews which focused on putting people on date to be baptized within the first contact. We also got a really amazing message on the ways the Lord answers our questions/prayers. I then used that same lesson with the Ellis's and they loved that on top of Shirley being able to drive home from the doctors beacsue of the sheer promise from Elder Hiner; it really built his testimony. 

Weekly planning is so different now compared to the beginning on my mission and it blew my mind. 47 friends in a month and 4 people on date to be baptized in a week, What! They used to be so stingy, but now we're getting close to baptizing weekly. The mission has progressed a lot, but it finally hit me. 

Well while I'm already dazed from that God throws another curve ball. 

Preach My Gospel version 2 was just released.  Plus areabook undated to be called Preach my Gospel as well with some more updates. So much more stuff to read amd learn and simplify, but the new version is really nice and revamped to be more effective in a sense. 

A lot of walking and I finally got new shoes cause both of the others had died, just died. It's so nice now. 

A member meal with some new members that moved here(theres been a few of them recently) and it was just awesome. They are both return missionaries and so we talked about our missions and they could relate a lot. It was weird though when I found out they were my age, exactly. So when we walked out I just started freaking out cause reality hit hard and what they have, just the while relationship was what I want so bad. It's taunting to missionaries. 

Lastly on Saturday was our service and it was there in the morning that I new summer had finally come. The heat, the humidity you could swim through, and the singing of the Secadas. It's all beautiful, but I've done it once and I'll do it again so bring it on.