1.18.2016

Pongal celebration: we added our humble kites to the skies


Hello hello all!  I hope everyone's week was awesome.

Our week was good!  Our missionary efforts were greatly hindered due to Elder Thambi having a strange foot infection that has put a serious damper on his mobility.  Also Pongal was this week so many of our members and investigators alike went to their "native places" to celebrate with family and whatnot haha.

My sincerest apologies to those who read my blog, I fear that the past couple weeks have failed to bring the excitement of India to the forefront of your minds.  However, I will elaborate on the holiday of Pongal because it is pretty awesome.  Pongal was on the 14th, 15th and 16th of this past week.  Other missionaries had warned me that it was coming but had not informed me quite when. 

 So I woke up bright and early the first day of Pongal, and walked out onto our balcony, as I typically do each morning (we live on the fifth floor so there is a nice view of a portion of Visak).  I looked around and I couldn't see ANYTHING due to a thick cloud of what I determined was smoke.  I was so confused, I looked around as best I could to determine the source of all this smoke to find that many people had lit logs on fire and placed them in front of their homes.  I thought this quite peculiar, but later learned that this is symbolic of a new start to a new year!  Awesome.

The second day was rad, it was a giant kite festival!!!  Everyone takes work and school off to go fly kites!  It was super cool.  As missionaries we even purchased a kite and joined in on the fun for a little bit.

The third day was fairly uneventful, most people, that haven't already left town, go to their native places to visit with relatives.

Honestly it's an awesome holiday filled with excitement and colors and strange sweets haha.  People would not stop feeding us these strange sweets.  Typically some sort of fried dough ball with a sweet inside that had an....interesting texture.

Everyone have a good week this week!  Also please pray for Elder Thambi to heal so that we may return to our normal capacity of work haha.  

Love,
Elder Tuscano

No comments:

Post a Comment