It's hot and still no air conditioning yet, but he's having cool experiences!

Greetings from the east coast of India.

This week was good!  Things were "Shaik"en up here in the Visak 3rd branch this week (pun intended because my new companion's name is Elder Shaik).  He is a good guy!  A very...interesting character haha.  He is cool though.  He is 25 years old, I guess he had to wait FOUR YEARS for his passport to be approved haha.  He is a convert from Islam, how cool is that?  Meaning he was Muslim before haha.  I will see if I can coax his conversion story out of him.

We had a really cool experience this week that strengthened my testimony that the Lord truly is preparing people to hear the Gospel.  This week we were in an auto on the way to one of our areas and we sat next to a twenty-two or twenty-three guy named Srinivas.  He asked us who we are and what we were doing, as is common when we take autos places haha.  He informed us that he has a sister and brother-in-law currently living in Mexico who are recent converts to Christianity!  We saw this as an awesome teaching opportunity so we exchanged phone numbers.  We went to his home two days later and as were talking he said that he'd told his sister about his encounter with us.  He then relayed to us that his sister told him to do all he could to have us in his home and to listen to whatever we said.  How awesome is that?  I've never really known what a "golden investigator" is like until now.  But he's not just a golden investigator, he's a golden soul.  A child of our Father in Heaven.

Another cool experience is that we had a Visak district-wide missionary fireside on Saturday!  As part of opening exercises, we had each person who attended stand, say their name, and give a brief explanation of how they found the Church.  Almost every single one said "the missionaries came to my home and taught my family."  I thought about this and how awesome it is the almost the entirety of the Church in India is composed of converts!  Recent converts!  I then thought of how much of a blessing, privilege, and honor, it is to serve among these people who hold some of the sweetest and most powerful testimonies I have yet heard.  I love this work and I love these people.  So much.

As part of my chain of strange foods I've eaten, this week I had chicken liver curry.  Which isn't actually that weird, but still kind of strange.  

Also, in other news, Purushotham was called as the Young Men's secretary for the Visak 3rd branch yesterday!!!!  How awesome is that?!  He is rad.  I will do my best to send some pictures haha I've not sent any in some time now.

I hope everyone has a good week!  And remember: become converted everyday to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Love,

Elder Tuscano