March 30, 2010

G'day Fmaily,

So i guess I'll apologize now for getting an email to you all two days ago, i was busy and so we had to push P-day back a few days in order to acomidate the high demands of our work. What we did is we had taken a priest from our ward Elder Chookoon (Andrew) and he was set apart as a missionary for i guess you could say a mini mission, he hung out with us for a good portion of a week and we showed him the ropes of missionary life so he can have a taste for it and start preparing for his own in a few years. it was a lot of fun seeing him go crazy with out his phone and tv and having to actually get up early and work. it was a fun time for us and i hope we helped him out a little bit in deciding if he wants to serve or not, i kinda wish i did that before my mission it would have been so benificial. another big thing that happened this week was Dolly and Radika's Baptism, these are those super great Fijian mother and daughter, their faith is an example to mine i those these two. there baptism went... uh guess all right there was a small hiccup. so the program went well and Dolly had asked me to baptise her and Radika wanted Elder Zabriskie, and it was Radika who was baptized first. and so we get to the font and the water was really low and the water was pretty cold and i felt really bad for this little girl cause sshe has no meat on her bones but i was worried about the low water for her (the water was a little over our knee). so he did the baptism and the first time her head didn't go down then because we had to do it again she got scarred and her hand popped up the next time but nobody said anything till she got out of the water and she was so scarred and cold and she would not get back in. then i get in and baptise doll i was really scared i wouldn't be able to get her under but i did the first time, so we decided we would come back the next morning with just Radika and dolly and two witnesses and the font was really high and warm so it was done welland she said she was happy now and wantd to do it again. then i confirmed dolly in sacrament (my first confirmation) and that was good and the Radika was confirmed and the funniest thing happened, dolly's two year old sone hopped up on the chair when they were done and put his hands on his head and said "my turn" it was funny. they are such good convert the ward loves them. ok so kind of a funny story is on friday we had ward sports night and this samoan guy got super intense at basketball, so we went up for a rebound but i just way higher and elbowed him in the mouth and he got all bloody, i guess like karl malone always said " in the christmas season it's always better to give gift elbow then recieve gift elbow" he was all mad at me and Z-bo for smashing him at basketbal and he yelled at us outside kind of ridiculous and the ward members said he laways does that. um family thats about it, for me at leats, love you all and be good and take care.


-Elder Ballard