a week of miracles!

  the crew at the birthday gathering

photo from the birthday gathering, before everyone arrived

YO.  The weather here in Vijayawada is not necessarily ideal, it's been rainy and muddy all week, however, the climate for missionary is IDEAL.

WOW.  THIS WEEK WAS NUTS.  Seriously everyday this week something or things happened that were just absolutely miraculous.  I will do my best to relay just a couple of the miracles.  I will also do my best to be concise haha, please bear with me.

For starters we divided the area haha, we cast lots for who gets what side of the city, so that was fun.  Our proselyting area is literally half of the city haha.  Crazy.

Also remember that hill I sent a photo of last week?  We went door-knocking on that hill this past week (which was as awesome as it was tiring because of all the steps we climbed).  While up there, I made eye-contact with a sweet old lady, waved to her, and felt impressed to go talk with her, so we did.  It just so happened that nearly two years ago to that date, her husband had passed away.  We shared the message of the plan of salvation with her and that she would see her husband again.  She was greatly comforted and so thankful that we'd found her.  God really is great, isn't He?

Also both elders in the other companionship had birthdays this past week, so we had a small gathering to celebrate.  Who attended?  NINE INVESTIGATORS, all of which are potential priesthood holders.  And they brought gifts.  One of our investigators came up to me at the said gathering and asked, "Brother, where was I before this life?"  Great question, brother, we actually have a message about that.  This same brother has a baptism date now, we taught him about the plan of salvation.  He's an amazing guy, I'm sure I'll include details at some future date.

We found a peculiar investigator this past week, he's a boss.  His name is Ravi.  Where is he from?  Texas, haha.  His parents are from a nearby village but moved to the US after they got married.  Years later, here Ravi is, by himself in Vijayawada and what is he doing?  He's going to medical school here.  There's randomly a bunch of medical schools in Vijayawada by the way.  We just thought it was funny that we're teaching an Indian-American in India.  He has an overseas citizenship, like me.  Which is cool.

Last of all, remember how in Malachi 3:8-10 the Lord promises so many blessings to the faithful that they wouldn't have enough room in their house to receive it?  We witnessed an literal realization of that on Sunday.  Remember how last week only eleven souls came to sacrament meeting?  Yeah, not the case this week: TWENTY-SEVEN PEOPLE came to sacrament this past week.  There was literally not enough room for everyone in the little house where the meeting was held haha.  There was also no power, so no fan or A/C which made the Spirit burn within us and without us haha.  But it was an incredible experience, so there's a little glimpse of how the work is going on over here.

This isn't even half of the miracles we witnessed so please remind me to tell you all about this week when I get home haha.

I hope everyone has a great week, and enjoy these photos from this week, sorry there's so few.

Keep the faith,

Elder Tuscano