busy busy bangalore

 Raj Kumar's domain where we played cricket #cricketselfie

"Raj Kumar: the Indian Bald Eagle"

HAPPY RAMADAN!!!  Ramadan is a widely celebrated Muslim festival that is basically a forty-day fasting period to show devotion to God.  Today is the last day of Ramadan, it's basically a HUGE party.  And no Muslim party is complete without beef biryani, so we are looking forward to having some beef biryani later today.

This week was crazy over here in Bengaluru haha, so many things happened.  I will just touch on a few of the highlights:

Speaking of Ramadan and Muslims, does anyone remember Zia?  Zia is a Muslim investigator that Elder Jensen and I started teaching about a year ago.  He actually lives in Coorg, a beautiful scenic town about six hours southwest of Bangalore, and meets with us whenever he's in town.  Fun fact, he also owns a large coffee plantation in Coorg.  Zia is one of the kindest and most understanding people I've ever met.  He is very open-minded and loves learning about the gospel.  This week he asked us what the difference between churches and temples is and about the fundamental differences between our church and other Christian churches.  He also gifted me my very own Qu'ran!!!!  Which is sweet.  I just thought that is cool, in light of Ramadan.

So remember Brother Amul Paul from last week?  He is a boss.  He is an incredible member missionary who is not yet a member haha.  He called us on Thursday and said, "Elders do you have time that I can show you some few families to teach?"  YES.  YES of course we do, Brother Amul.  He then took us to the homes of seven new families to teach.  So sweet.  Unfortunately, however, we learned that these families do not live in our area, so we referred them to the Lingarajapuram elders, our neighboring area.

Also this was crazy: we were playing cricket with some young men and less-actives this past week at a dusty lot in our area.  The first crazy thing is that there was a bird that looked exactly like a bald eagle.  By the way, the only difference between an American bald eagle and an Indian bald eagle is that the latter's name is Raj Kumar (; But anyway the other crazy thing is that this same bald eagle kept swooping down trying to snatch something in the same field where we were playing.  We ended the game shortly after we found out that the "something" the Indian bald eagle was trying to snatch were large snakes.  By the way, "snake" in Tamil is "paambu."

We started teaching an investigator yesterday named Praveen.  He is awesome, he is from Hindu background.  We asked him what interests him about the Savior and he said, "I want to be kind, like Jesus Christ."  Same, Praveen.  Same.  More updates to come on Praveen.

Hope everyone has a great week, and HAPPY RAMADAN!!!!  Also shout out to my sister, Anjuli, happy birthday!!!!  Love ya, Anj.

Keep the faith,

Elder Tuscano