Tamilian Bengaluru

companions Elder Alaguretnam on the left, Elder Raju on the right

Hello y'all, how is everyone doing?

This week, again, just flew by.  A lot of things happened, a few of which I will elaborate on:

ELEVEN new missionaries came to our mission this past week.  ELEVEN. This NEVER happens haha, at least this many missionaries have not collectively come to the field since my group nearly eighteen months ago.  Among the eleven are four American elders, three Indian elders, and four Indian sisters.  The Lord's work is definitely hastening in south India.

Speaking of hastening the work, this past Sunday, the Bengaluru stake fasted for the purpose of bringing those who "know not God" to a knowledge of the truth--simply put: they fasted for missionary work to increase.  It worked.  Yesterday we had two brothers come in and tell us very plainly that they want to join our church.  One of the brothers was so moved by the Spirit he felt in fast and testimony meeting that he got up and bore his testimony about how he's been searching for the truth and he strongly feels he's found it.  Isn't that so cool?  God really does know each of His children--and fasting brings blessings fast.

In other news, I now have not just one new companion, but two!  My companion that is the new assistant is Elder Raju from Coimbatore.  He is an athlete through and through and his specialty is a not-so-common sport, kabbadi.  It's like tag combined with rugby?  It's hard to explain but it's cool.  Our other companion is Elder Alaguretnam from Sri Lanka/Thailand/Salt Lake City.  I say Sri Lanka/Thailand/Salt Lake City because he was born in and lived in Sri Lanka for a few years, then moved with his family to Thailand (where his family found the Church and was baptized), then moved to south Salt Lake and has been there for a while.  He is with us temporarily because once he gets proof of his Sri Lankan citizenship he will be off to Sri Lanka to serve there!  Side note: currently, you can only serve in Sri Lanka if you have citizenship there.  Both of my companions speak Tamil so that's been a nice addition to our teaching.  So my goal is to pick up on Tamil while I serve with these elders.

I hope everyone has a great week, happy Holi next week!!  The festival of colors!!

Keep the faith,
Elder Tuscano

Happy Mahashivaratri!

 us with an  investigator family, the Charles family

 "All India Parmit."  (They mean to say permit.  E. Poleboina and I had a good laugh about that haha, there's a good number of funny spelling errors here in India, but they do their best)

 OH MY GOSH.  I don't know if I've mentioned this but there's been this mega-rat living in our apartment and we had a guy come destroy his kingdom in our kitchen (he lives under/behind the cabinets in our kitchen).  The guy removed the baseboards and there was a pile of trash built up over the years so this is the pile of trash that was the make-up of the mega-rat's nest

 we stopped and played cricket with some cute little kids the other day, it was a lot of fun.

  one of my favorite things about India: the beautiful, brightly colored buildings!

 one of our primary children LOVES Spiderman.  He wanted to take a selfie so we did haha.

a cricket ground in our area

HAPPY MAHASHIVARATRI EVERYONE (pronounced: maha-sheeva-rah-tree)!  Shivaratri was this past weekend and it was pretty crazy.  There were drums and dancing and people marching all day and through the night.  I took some videos so I will try to send those.

We had some good experiences this past week, I will just talk about a couple:

You may recall a couple weeks ago I shared an experience about helping a sister in a situation where we had no idea what to say or do.  We met with her again this past week and, she's been doing so much better.  As we were discussing faith in Jesus Christ, she cuts us off and says, "I really want to be baptized, I just want my two children to be baptized with me."  We were stoked.  So later in the week we met with her and her two sons, ages fourteen and sixteen, and they are just as faithful as their mother.  Updates on this family's progress will come shortly!

To determine the progress of our investigators, we often ask, "What is the evidence that their faith in Christ is increasing?" and "What is the evidence the investigator is repenting?"  So, again, you may recall that last week or the week before, I mentioned a story about a mother who was very concerned about her son's spiritual welfare and future, who came running when she heard the missionaries were helping her son.  This past week we met with this family and what do we see when we arrive at the appointment?  Sachin, the young man, was washing the dishes outside his home.  For a teenage boy, that was a pretty big sign to us that his faith in Christ is increasing: he's helping his mom around the house!  We were so happy.

That's really all for this week but I will attach some photos and videos I took!  I'm getting better at this documenting my mission through photos thing.

I hope you all have a great week!  Don't do anything too crazy for Shivaratri.

Keep the faith,

Elder Tuscano 

FEB 2017

What is up everyone?

This week flew by like nobody's business haha, seriously I have no idea how it's already Monday again.  Crazy.  I don't have a lot of time today because it is Elder Poleboina's last Preparation Day on his mission, so we're going to do some fun stuff pretty soon here.

One cool experience we had: on Saturday we had a couple appointments in the evening so Elder Poleboina taught an investigator at the church and Elder Barry and I went on exchange with two young men in our ward who are preparing to serve missions.  One of the young men, Sam, was pretty dejected for some reason as we were walking to the appointment that evening.  We tried to engage him in conversation and he would just give one or two word answers, put his head down, and keep walking.  We arrived at the appointment and once we started teaching, the mother of the investigator family would just not let the question go of why exactly we use bread for the sacrament and not something else.  Before we could give an answer, something happened to Sam, it was like he suddenly came to life.  He said, "Elder, we need to show her from the Book of Mormon where Jesus says to use bread for sacrament," we were all for it.  Sam then showed the sister those verses from the Book of Mormon and she was very much satisfied with the answer.  Sam was ecstatic.  After the appointment Sam was just filled with excitement and could not stop talking about how wonderful he felt.  We told him how great of a job he'd done and how he would be a great missionary.  He told us, "Elder, before the appointment I was sad because I didn't feel confident about going on a mission, I was feeling I am not ready.  But now I know I'm ready and I'm so excited to serve mission."  Again, it is just so cool to see how perfectly well Heavenly Father knows each one of us and each of our needs.  He hears our prayers and knows our hearts and always answers right on time.

I hope everyone has a good week.

Keep the faith,

Elder Tuscano

Swachh Bharath (Clean India) - a worthy slogan for all countries! :)

Hello!!

This past week was pretty solid with finding and teaching a bunch of new families.  I love teaching families haha.  But on Saturday we went to an area where we just knocked on doors and asked people if we could say a prayer with them and their family.  Literally everyone but like two people let us in.  The faith of these people is amazing, I am so grateful for the privilege I have to serve and learn with them.

One cool experience we had this week: so we've been teaching this investigator family: Naresh, who is thirteen years old, and his mom, who is a single mom and an incredible human being.  Sometimes when we meet with Naresh, he invites his close family friend, Sachin, who's around the same age, to join us.  It's pretty cool because these two are typically kinda rowdy/out of control, but when they meet with us they are reverent and engaged and eager to learn about Christ.  This past week we had the opportunity to meet with Sachin and his family and I thought it was pretty cool: other than traveling to and from her home to her workplace, Sachin's mother, who is also a single mother and incredible person, has not left her house for any reason for the past two years.  But when she heard that there were some young men who were trying to help her son become a better, more responsible young man, she came running to Naresh's home (where we normally teach the group) to see what was going on.  She expressed to us that she has been concerned about her son's conduct for some time now and that we were an answer to her prayers.  We shared a lesson about the young men's program and how it will help him become a better young man and disciple of Christ.  She was stoked!!  She was all for it!  She told us she would send her son to church from now on.  How cool is that?  Heavenly Father truly does know the needs of all His children and He really does hear and answer our prayers.

Just took one photo this week, we found this cool mural while walking one day and snapped a pic.  "Swachh Bharath," literally translates to "Clean India" in Hindi haha.  Enjoy.

Keep the faith,

Elder Tuscano

Happy February!

 herding sheep in the middle of a main road

with our investigator Naresh at his birthday party, it was super fun.

Hello hello everyone, Happy February!

This week was crazy for us, at least this weekend was haha.  We had an experience this week that was pretty moving for us:

On Saturday we met with a sister who has been struggling with a variety of challenges over the past five or six months.  She is a single mom with two children, she tried to start a small business which recently went under, her little house is about to be repossessed because she's struggling to secure a loan, her debt is nearly crushing, she's barely making enough to feed her family--anyway, she's going through a lot.  She is a woman of bright faith, but sometimes life hits us with things that try our trust in God.  She said that she'd been praying every day and fasting for God to help her in some way and He hasn't.  She decided that she was done with God.  She would listen to what we had to say but she was done with God--and here's where it gets interesting: we had no idea what to say.  As teenage boys having but little life experience as it stands, we had no idea what to say that would be of comfort to her.  But we knew that there was someone who did know and does know, someone who knows her perfectly well what she'd been going through.  In our hearts, Elder Poleboina, Elder Barry, and I prayed with all the fervency we could muster that the Lord might speak through us and help this sister in whatever way He would.  Elder Poleboina and Elder Barry shared powerful personal experiences about when God helped them when they saw no way out.  Then it was my turn.  I was still at a loss for words when suddenly the words of my former young men's leader (Tim Nowatzke) came into my mind: "If you don't know what to say, bear testimony of Christ."  So that's what I did.  Never in my life have I felt the Spirit move through me with such power as I bore my testimony that as surely as this sister saw the sun shining, I know that Jesus is the Christ.  I don't know always know why He asks us to pass through seemingly insurmountable trials, but I know He'll never leave us and He'll carry us through them if we have faith in Him.  I told her that He is pleading with her told hold on just a little longer because help and hope are on the way.  When I looked in her eyes, I saw hope.  It was incredible.  At the beginning of the lesson, she told us that she wasn't going to come to church because God wasn't helping her, but after the lesson she committed to come--and she did!  She had an amazing experience at church and has a renewed hope in the Savior.  There are a few life changing experiences in your life and this was one of those for me.

Also, yesterday was fast Sunday and Sunil (yes, recent convert Sunil Kumar) got up and bore his testimony, it was awesome!  At one point he said, "The Book of Mormon....is a good book."  It was so funny, we gave him a big hug after.  He's a boss.

I hope everyone has a great week, keep the faith!

Elder Tuscano

Happy Republic Day!

Happy Republic Day this past week, everyone!  It was kinda disappointing, Bangalore didn't really do anything crazy for this Republic Day, but it was nice that everyone had a holiday, we were able to find and teach more people that day!

This week was pretty solid for us.  Early on in the week we had a cool little miracle.  On P Day, Elder Barry and I were talking about the growth and progress of the church in India.  We both concurred that India would definitely benefit from an increase in strong priesthood holders who will help establish the church here.  We then resolved to pray that night and the next morning to find and teach more potential priesthood holders.  The next morning, after we'd finished our administrative tasks in the office, Antonett walked in.  Antonett is in his mid-20s or so.  Just by looking at him, we could tell that he'd been going through a lot in his life.  He said that he was just walking along the road, saw the name Jesus Christ on the sign outside our building and felt impressed to come in.  As we met with him, he opened up to us about everything he's been struggling with.  Among these things he told us that his father's leg had been amputated and it was now up to him to provide for his family.  He was desperate for peace and direction and, now more than ever, was searching for God in his life.  We taught him about the nature of God, his relationship with God, and how much the Savior loves him.  It was one of the most peaceful lessons I have as yet been a part of on my mission.  The Spirit was abounding and Antonett was touched.  We look forward to meeting with him again this week and in the coming weeks.  It's cool to see how quickly God hears and answers prayers.

In other news, we set two amazing families with baptism dates this past week and we are STOKED for them.  We have a lot of work to do haha.

We also went to a lunch buffet at this super nice hotel with our good family friend, Brother Loren Krieger, who is here for work.  He is a boss.  It was fun getting to spend time with him.

I do have my camera this week so I will be sending some pictures your way!  Hope you'll enjoy them.  

Keep the faith,

Elder Tuscano

pic 1 - Mom and Dad with Loren Krieger in St. George before his visit to India

 

pic 1 - me playing the piano at the wedding last week haha

pic 2 - Elder Barry carrying one of the youth in our ward haha

pic 3 - me with a cute little boy in one of the areas we work

pic 4 - a cool view of one of the streets at a local bazaar we were walking through.  Or at least I feel like it's a cool view haha 

Back in Bangalore

Hello everyone!!

This week was pretty normal here in Bangalore, it's good to be back though, I missed these people.

Transfers were this past week and Elder Poleboina and I are training a new missionary!  His name is Elder Barry, he's from London.  He is a boss.  He's been on his mission a little over a month now and he's already a powerful teacher.  He's loving the people (but not quite the food yet haha).  He played rugby and soccer back home which is rad.  And important tidbit is that he's an OCI missionary, meaning that he has a lifetime visa--like me!  His grandfather emigrated to the UK from Kerala (a state on the southwestern coast here in India) a long time ago, that's his connection to the motherland.

Not any super cool experiences this week but just a funny one: on Saturday morning at like 10AM, during companionship study, we got a sudden call from the bishop.  He asked me if I could play the piano for a marriage function at 11:30AM.  I was like "WHAT?  Sure."  So I was the accompanist at a wedding for one of our ward members on Saturday.  Who knew I would be playing the piano this much on my mission, it's awesome!  I had my companions take some pictures so I will send those soon.

I hope everyone has a good week, keep the faith!

Elder Tuscano