Pray for Lacy

Hey Fam,

I hope you guys are doing well and enjoying life. Life is definitely an interesting thing to me.. it feels like everything is good at one point, then comes a trial. And that tests your faith and obedience and in turn if you suffer it well your faith grows and your happiness grows. And when that trial goes and everything is good again, we start to forget God and grow prideful, This has happened to me many times in my life. And then God has to send another trial in your path to humble you again, and so on and so forth. Its a continual cycle, the reason I share this is because I read Alma chapter 5 yesterday. And that really kind of makes you feel unworthy.. even when you are content in life and you feel like you are not doing anything wrong. I feel like if your not trying to improve something to grow closer to God and if your thinking that your relationship is good enough, THEN IT ISN'T. We need to make sure we have God before anything else. Now, this is a hard task. And we have so many things going on in our lives that we constantly forget. I hate it. Because even for me serving God at this time. I forget that I am his servant at all times.. But the most beautiful part about us being imperfect is Gods Grace. In the church we don't really mention God's Grace too much. But we need to realize that we are not perfect and nor can we be perfect until the resurrection. As long as we are constantly repenting and striving to be better.

Sorry, you just got another Tangent of mine.. But things are going pretty well here. I cannot say that I am really happy being in this area for this long. I need a change but I am still trying to keep my composure. We set up a Baptismal date with Lacy, she is awesome and she is trying to quit smoking right now. We set a date with her for the 10th of September so if she gets baptized then I will not get to be the one to do it so I am trying to get her ready so she can get baptized on the 3rd because she wants to get baptized in the river and that would be sweet for me to do that. Especially because I have been working with her for a long time even like 6 months and I do truly care about her. Which I feel is rare for me. I have a hard time caring about people.... but I am praying for that to change a little. I am on Alma 6 in the book of mormon, I have been re-reading it.. I also wish I had more time to study because I love learning and growing now. I can't wait to get home so I can go to college. It is a weird thing that I used to hate school with a passion and now I am looking forward to it.. I am still unsure of what I would like to do with my life, but I have been thinking that I want to go into psychology or Business, or if I was to go to BYU there is a double masters program for the two. So I might want to try that... I dunno... But I am excited to get home to see you all... So I can catch some "gatas" with Cam and Carsen that video was pretty funny but you got to sneak video them catching them. I need the realism. But very cute non the less.

I love you guys and I hope you have a fantastic week. Pray for me and pray for Lacy and her baptism if you could. I need help. And I will do the same for yall.

Just to add to my email, Our mission had the privilege to have Elder L. Tom Perry of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles come and speak with us on Saturday morning and that was pretty cool we learned some cool things and I got to shake his hand.. so yeah it was pretty cool. Have a good week!

Love,

Elder Ballif