Week 74 - November 16, 2015 - Hyderabad, India

This week was a little bit tougher than the rest because it seemed really hard to get any appointments throughout the course of the week.  But even though we may get discouraged, I haven't lost any hope.  

Elder Krishnavelu and I will be staying companions up until Christmas in Hyderabad so that is gonna be fun.  He's 25 from Bangalore, he came on his mission just like a month after me.  His brother served in Delhi mission.  But yea, unfortunatley, only the missionaries serving in Bangalore got to be there when the Stake was formed.  I think India still has a looooooong way to go before a temple comes but the faith of the members is definitely growing and when President Nelson talked to us he said, right down the stats of what the church is like now in India and when your children go on mission then you can see how much it has grown in that time.  

We had Diwalli on Wednesday and for that the missionaries all had to be back inside by 6 pm that night.  It was crazy though from like 7-9 that night.  Just in our little slum there were kids lighting bombs and rockets everywhere.  They were super loud and these people that live in the same apartment complex as us went hard and probably cashed out about 15,000 rupees on the festival.  

Our investigator, Sathyawathi, is overcoming her word of wisdom problem and hasn't had any coffee or tea in 5 days, I think, she is also understanding more of what we teach her so hopefully she will be ready to be baptized before the end of the month.  I also have been wearing the shoes that were sent to me so that has been really awesome.

Today we went to this place called MTR Gardens in the middle of the city and they have like kind of this mini water slide where you sit on a flat raft and go down with some water propelling you.  So me and this other Elder go check it out and we go to the top and start going down and about halfway through the raft just stops so we start yelling for some help, then all this water starts building up behind us and this other Elder gets soaked.  I was in kind of a crouch position so only my shoes got wet but yea eventually this guy just walked up from the bottom and road the rest of the way down.  It was pretty funny because there were a bunch of people at the bottom waiting for us to come when we finally made it.

Well thats all for this week,

Elder Wakefield