Week 102 - May 29th, 2016 - Bengaluru, India

I swear every week I am doing good and then I come to mailing and realize how soon my service is coming to an end.  India is a really an awesome place and I can't believe the time is almost ready to come to a close.  

We had Gowtham's Baptism yesterday and his mom and dad came to the service which was really cool.  His uncle performed the baptism and it was cool because they are already talking about his brother, Sunil, getting baptized soon and Gowtham's plan to serve a mission in like 4 years when he turns 18.  Then Gregory also stayed after church to watch and he was pumped about his baptism this coming Sunday.  I don't think I could even ask for a better way to finish up the mission.  

What I noticed about Bangalore:  There are way more North Indians and people that are not from Karnataka living here.  We can find a lot more traffic because of the increased amount of cars and signals.  There are malls everywhere as well as foreigners.  People are a lot more westernized here when it comes to clothing, media and speaking. 

We went to this grocery store and I saw a box of Honey Bunches of Oats and I couldn't believe my mind.  We also bought some salami, so now we are making sandwiches in the afternoon.  Also they don't have the Book of Mormon translated into Kannada, so we have to hand out tamil or hindi language copies.  We have another investigator named Ayshawarya and she doesn't speak much English, so we use her recent convert brother to translate and he doesn't know how to read much because he only studied until 3rd class but he learned all of his English from playing tennis.  

Can't wait to see you all soon,

Elder Wakefield

Week 101 - May 22nd, 2016 - Bengaluru, India

Hey everyone!  Cant believe that I only have one month left in India but it has been a great privilege to be serving in the Convent Road area.  So we are still in a tri-companionship and no word about any changes so we have just been enjoying it like anything.  

This week was really awesome because we saw 6 individuals accept an invitation to be baptized and it is weird because basically none of them have any sort of concern  but they just really like this Gospel.  So we have this guy named Gowtham and he has been coming to church with his Uncle and Cousins the last few months continuously and we found out that his mom was the one that was not giving him permission.  So we decided to just got to his home and talk to her directly.  It turns out that she had never met missionaries before and she is from a non christian background and when we told her how this church would help her son, she came to understand.  She was really nice and invited us back over to her home the next day for her other son's birthday who she said we can also start teaching.  Definitely a huge miracle because so many people had tried but I know that Heavenly Father opened her heart to receive us.  

We had some really good food this week including: Taco Bell, butter chicken curry, seekh rolls and rajma.  

It was also kind of weird at Church yesterday because there were like 3 separate foreign families there and I told the local members that these foreign families were my relatives!

All is well - Miss you all and see you soon,

Elder Wakefield

Week 100 - May 15th, 2016 - Bengaluru (Bangalore), India

What an awesome week in Bengaluru!!  I've only been here like a week but I love this place.  The weather is so cool, so many people speak English, it's really clean and there are so many restaurants to eat good food at.  Our apartment is really nice too.  It's a duplex just like 1 km from the church and only 3 km from our main area.  We have cycles and usually travel by bus to our area.  

Yesterday, we had stake conference at the Whitefield Building and it was crazy to see how many people I already knew even though I haven't officially served here before.  It was the first stake conference they had since they created the new Stake so members and leaders were really happy to see how much they have improved.  It was also President Berrett's last Stake Conference here so he gave like a goodbye sort of talk.  

Now we have this investigator named Gregory.  I would call this guy a golden investigator but that is kind of down grading him.  He's like a goldmine that you find at the end of the rainbow sort of thing.  I guess he had been coming to church for the last 3 weeks and no one had taught him yet so on Tuesday, the day after I came, we called him and he came to meet us at church.  It turns out that his sister, brother-in-law, mom and dad are all living in (our home town of) San Jose, CA.  I couldn't believe it!  Then he started talking about how he works for this company that recently joined with this company based in Salt Lake City. And that some of his colleagues came to Banglaore like a month or 2 ago and shared with him their beliefs.  He said that he was shocked because he had a totally different perception of Americans but when he met these guys, he was totally impressed.  So we start teaching him and he starts telling us about the restoration.  This guy already knows everything! Then he says he's already on 1 Nephi 11, I couldn't believe it.  So we invited him to pray and ask God if this church was true.  

      Then on Thursday, we meet him again, we followed up and asked him if he prayed he not only says yes but he says that he fasted and prayed to know if this church was true and that God answered his prayers for sure.  I don't think that I have ever heard these words out of anyone's mouth before in my whole life.  Then, he starts asking how he can prepare to enter the temple when he goes to the US in a few months and I was shocked haha.

Just goes to show that you can share the Gospel with anyone, anywhere you go.  Other than that everything else is awesome.  I dont think I can even feel trunky because I'm going to miss these people so much and right now there's a lot of work so its really awesome.  And one of the elders in our ward got transferred so now its me Elder Sunny, and Elder Tuscano rolling around as a tri-companionship basically covering half of Bangalore.  Here goes nothing.

Love you guys,

Elder Wakefield

Week 99 - May 8, 2016 - Bangalore (Bengaluru), India

You guys won't believe this but I'm now officially in Bangalore!  I got a call on Saturday Night that I would be serving in Convent Road Ward with Elder Sunny.  I guess these are my last 6 weeks, so we need to go out strong.

So on Sunday, we raced around and tried to say bye to as many members as possible.  It was sad to leave everyone because I felt like that is the Ward I've been apart of my whole life.  They let me give a short talk on Sunday and I really hope that this ward continues to grow into the future.  

This morning we woke up early and took a cab to the airport and arrived in Bangalore and got dropped off at our apartment.  Elder Sunny is about 9 months into his mission and is from New Delhi.  He served in Hyderabad when I was their and our companionships used to hangout on Mondays.  It sounds like our area is huge and the Ward has a large majority of sign language speakers (see what i did:).  The weather in Bangalore is a little more humid here but the sun is definitely way less powerful than Hyderabad.

I dont know a whole lot else but Elders Madda and Larson are staying In Hyderabad so hopefully they can put in more good work there.  Once again Happy Belated Mothers Day.  Calling home on Sunday helped me realized that my communication skills are totally junk.  All is well!

Elder Wakefield

1.,2. Seven Tombs in Towli Chowki

Week 98 - May 1, 2016 - Hyderabad, India

Happy May eveyone!  I dont want to make you guys too excited or anything but now I can say that I'm coming home next month.  Hyderabad has had some crazy weather this week with some extreme heat, wind storms, and rain.

One cool experience from last night.  We have this family that is cousins with a family in our ward and they speak pretty good English and they've come to church the last 2 weeks so we went over there last night and we start talking to them about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and come to the point of Baptism....well this sister talks like anything and so she starts telling about how she has been going to church since she was young but she never really cared much for God.  She has one son and tried for another about 8 years ago but it didn't work out and she started talking about how she had been searching for a job but now only is the time that everything is working out for her.

Anyway she is super happy that we invited her to be baptized and at the end of the lesson.   She says a closing prayer and halfway through, she starts crying about how happy she was that she had this opportunity to qualify for God's Kingdom.  It was one of the most spiritual prayers I have ever heard on my mission.

This week, I also got to drive an auto.  All of a sudden, I'm sitting in the front and the auto guy gives me the steering handles, so I take over and start driving all over the place.  It was really funny but yeah, I need to bring one back home.  Sorry for the short email all of the other missionaries need to go on too.

Have a great week,

Elder W

akefield

Week 97 - April 25, 2016 - Hyderabad, India

I still remember this day one year back and I said how I would spare my mom until this year so here we go. well Putina Roju Subha Konkshaloo.  That means happy birthday in telegu, but i cant Believe that you are XX (censured :-) YEARS OLD, LIKE OH MY GOSH THAT IS SOOOOOOOOOO OLD.  Like you can almost say that you have been on earth longer than most of the quarters that are in circulation today.  But as I look back I'm just amazed at how you've survived this long with 4 kids.  Just think about it you only have like 7 more years with children in your home and then you'll be a loner after that so enjoy the time while you have kids left.  I love you!

Anyway this week our P-day is on Tuesday due to our mission tour with Elder Funk yesterday.  It was a really cool meeting and they talked a lot about our duty to teach Repentance and Baptize converts.  They talked about how a lot of converts don't really learn how to repent so we need to teach them so they can stay active and always retain a remission of their sins.  We also taught a brand new family of 4 last night and they understood English really well so I was almost shocked and how rare of an experience this was.  

Sunday, we had an interesting church where there were very few members coming because it was so hot outside but we had some investigators come for the first time and some that have been coming for a while so it was cool to see them exercising their faith.  I think a lot of the investigators that we have now will be ready to take the baptism in May so we are praying for them.  

Also the other good news is that it's now officially mango season and even though they are more expensive in Hyderabad, they are super good.  That's going to be the thing I miss the most.  Also marriage season has commenced and I think we've already had a couple of members get married and some more coming up soon so its nice to see some families starting to take shape.

Everyone have a great week,

Elder Wakefield

Week 96 - April 18, 2016 - Hyderabad, India

What up everyone! I guess this week it was pretty hot but we had this random rain storm last night that was crazy.  We are like waiting at this bus stop at around 7pm and all of a sudden it starts sprinkling a little so we go under this shade structure and a couple drops start hitting us so we are like no big deal then it starts coming down and I look at my shirt and there is like dirt and mud everywhere.  I got out of there quick.  I guess all of the dirt had been built up on top of this structure for the last couple of months and this was the first rain in a while so we got wrecked.  I made up this cool story that Ii fell off the bus and rolled into this mud pile and some people believed me so it was pretty funny.

We had this really good lesson with this Brother Named Naveen and actually Elder Madda just met this guy on the bus and he's really awesome.  He is basically from a Hindu background but he had some childhood friends that he used to go to church with.  Actually, he is really humble and his hobbies are reading and learning new things which is like unheard of here so he actually reads the Book of Mormon and he loves it so much.  He also came to Stake Conference and President Funk, the Asia Area President, came and he gave a really awesome talk about the importance of attending the temple and keeping the commandments.

Anyway this week should be fun and we will have some appointments lined up.

Love you guys,

Elder Wakefield