Sweet is the Work (and sweet is zone volleyball in southern India)!

 Bangalore Zone volleyball crew, it was seriously a blast 

 Elder Jensen, myself, "President" Gnanamani, and Elder Shrestha.  We call our good friend Gnanamani (pronounced Yanamani) "President" because he always is dressed like a mission president.  Gnanamani is a returning member, he is awesome.

Elder Thompson and I.  He goes home at the end of this transfer, he's become a good friend of mine.

Hello hello everybody, how goes it?

This week wasn't terribly exciting for us, but it was still a good one.  We traveled all over Bangalore this week, that's for sure haha. 

Mission Leadership Council was this week and it was awesome.  The theme was, "Sweet is the Work," and there were a good many experiences shared that were as inspiring as they were uplifting.  Truly, the work is sweet and I can't explain how blessed I feel to be a part of it.  Thank you all for all your prayers, support, and love, I wish you all could see the miracles they work out here in India.  

Unfortunately, our mission is short one elder: after a lot of thought and prayer, Elder Jensen returned home yesterday.  These past few months have been a challenge for him and I admire him for having stayed out this long.  I have learned a lot from Elder Jensen and hope to see him back out here at some point.  Please keep him in your prayers.

In other news, we played volleyball as a zone this morning for our zone activity, it was seriously so much fun.  Imagine this: two American elders, one Canadian elder, one Nepali elder, one elder from Delhi, and eight elders from various parts of southern India (Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu) getting together to play volleyball.  It was as diverse as it was fun, I will send some photos!  President Mortensen joined us as well, he is a boss and certainly added to the great time we had.

Hope everyone has a good week, stay safe and keep the faith!

Elder Tuscano

celebrated one-year mark with an ethnic rollercoaster party at chili's indiranagar!

Call it an ethnic rollercoaster party at Chili's Indiranagar!

 

with our littlest (and by far cutest) investigators: Krithik is on the right and Joshua is on the left

Hello hello everyone, I hope you had as awesome a week as we had!

This week was, I believe, one of the most productive weeks that Indiranagar has had this year.  We found quite a few new solid investigators and identified even more potential investigators, of whom we have made plans to meet with this week.

All is well out here in Indiranagar, and this past week I passed my year mark!  Officially over the hump now, I guess.  Pretty bittersweet.  BUT, to celebrate, where did we have lunch that day?  You guessed it: CHILI'S!!!  Hahaha.  I'm telling you guys, Indian Tex-Mex will be a hit back home soon enough, just wait (;  I will send some pictures to prove it.

One cool experience we had this week was with one of our little investigators, Yuven.  He is nine years old and seriously a genius--and he speaks better English than I do!  This week we were talking to him about the Book of Mormon.  He said that he's had some trouble reading because of how difficult the words are, but he's doing his best to read every single day.  He told us that even though it's been difficult, he's been blessed for his efforts: last week, in school, his class had an English spelling exam.  He said there were a number of difficult words, one of which was the word: transgression.  He said he was SO happy that he'd read the Book of Mormon because he remembered reading it recently--and he spelled it correctly!  He got one of the highest scores in his class and was one of the only students who spelled "transgression" correctly!  I thought that was a neat little experience.

I hope everyone has a solid week this week and enjoy conference weekend!!  They don't broadcast general conference here until the following week because they have to translate the messages into Tamil, Telugu, and other native languages here.  Pretty cool, but no spoilers please! (;

Keep the faith.

Elder Tuscano

Pizza and Prabhu and Transfers

 our trio along with a couple of our members, as well as one of our investigators,
and a new missionary we hosted for just a day that came on exchange with us that day

one of our members "Kevin" in the red shirt with Elder Jensen and

one of our smallest investigators.  I don't know how to spell his name haha.

What's up what's up all?  Hope all is well back in the US of A.

This week was awesome for us, the work is picking up out here in Indiranagar.  We are finding investigators and potential investigators left and right (sort of), it's crazy!  God is good, that's for sure.

This week was transfer week for us and not a whole lot of change, haha.  Elder Shrestha is back from his "vacation" in Lingarajpuram (a different area in Bangalore) and he is with Elder Jensen and I: we're staying in Indiranagar!  I'm excited about that, I really like this area.  But now our once spacioius apartment isn't so spacious haha.  But it'll be good, I'm pumped.

We had a cool experience with Prabhu this week.  A few weeks ago, Prabhu told us that his favorite food was pizza.  We were kinda surprised, but we rolled with it.  It's important to note here that one of our favorite restaurants in Bangalore is California Pizza Kitchen--yup.  The very same chain back home, complete with the BBQ chicken pizza and all.  It's hilarious because there's not just like one branch here, there's like three of four CPK's spread out across Bangalore alone.  It's hilarious. Indians LOVE CPK haha.  And so do we.  But anyway, we set up a dinner appointment with Prabhu at CPK and he LOVED it haha, it was awesome.  He seriously couldn't get enough, he was even talking to the servers about how much better CPK is than Domino's.  Anyway, afterwards we taught Prabhu one of the most powerful lessons I have as yet taught on my mission.  Prabhu has had a kinda of rough year and is earnestly seeking peace in his life.  If there's anything that can bring peace to our lives, it's faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.  So that's what we taught about!  We shared scriptures like Hebrews 11:1 and passages from Alma 32, and it was like a light switched on behind his eyes.  Prabhu loves swimming, espeically Olympic swimming, so we helped him make a connection between faith and becoming like Michael Phelps (that example was pretty effective haha).  We could readily observe the Spirit working within him and teaching him things that we could only hope to teach.  Near the end of the lesson, we felt inspired to ask him what he felt his next step was.  He paused, then responded with something along the lines of, "I need to pray with faith so that I can find peace in my life."  How rad is that?  It's important to note that up until this point in our meetings with him, Prabhu had been apprehensive about praying in front us and would usually shy away from our requests.  So at the close of our lesson, I offered to say the closing prayer and at first he agreed, then a split second later, he said, "Actually, can I pray?"  We mutually responded, "OF COURSE!"  He then offered one of the most sincere and heartfelt prayers I've ever heard.  It's experiences like these that make it all worth it.

Man, I totally forgot to take a picture of us with Prabhu at CPK, I'm sorry ):  But I hope y'all will enjoy these other pictures!

Have a solid week, and keep the faith!

Elder Tuscano

The Book of Mormon: Plain and Precious

What is up!

This week was solid, though a lot of it was spent inside.  We were on lockdown for three consecutive evenings this week and again for some sort of statewide strike that was happened on Friday.  It was kind of like fall break for our zone haha (;  Just kidding, our zone had one of the most productive weeks thus far this transfer despite all the set backs haha.  But Ganesh festival was crazy!  There were parades, and drums, and all kinds of celebrations (and noise) going on late into the night this past week.  I saw Ganesh statues that were something like fifty feet tall.  I wish I could send pictures, but unfortunately I don't have any as we weren't supposed to take any haha.

One cool experience from this week: one of our investigators is a twelve year old young man named Akash, he is awesome.  He is SUPER inquisitive and eager to learn more about Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ and our relationship with them.  Anyway, we met with Akash a couple times this week and after our first meeting, we challenged him to read 2 Nephi 31 to learn more about the doctrine of Christ, he accepted.  A couple days later, in our follow-up visit, he told us he hadn't read it--we were DEVASTATED (as Elder Holland suggests we should be when investigators fail to read the Book of Mormon)!  He told us he didn't read because he hadn't found time (you'd be surprised to witness how backed up a twelve year old in India can get with all the homework they're assigned).  We then felt prompted to depart from our initial lesson plan and read the chapter with him.  As we read, Akash lit up, we could see the Spirit working within him.  He exclaimed to us something along the lines of, "This is awesome, elder!  I can actually understand!"  He then revealed to us that he had had time to read, but he avoided doing so for fear that he wouldn't understand what he was reading!!  Akash came to know, as do all who read the Book of Mormon, that it is written in plainness and the beauty of the Book of Mormon lies in its simplicity.  The Book of Mormon testifies of Christ in a way that everyone can understand, especially when aided by the power of the Holy Ghost.  This experience was simple yet significant to me.  Cool things happenin' out here in Indiranagar.

Hope everyone has a good week, keep the faith!

Elder Tuscano

Bye Bye Dengue, Hello Ganesh Festival; Basketball and more...

Elder Jensen and I ballin' it up with Prabhu!

 The amazing lady from KGF (and her family) whose baptism interview I had the privilege of conducting! She is awesome and super ready to be baptized.  Fun side note: she only

speaks Kannada so I had to interview her via translator!  Incredible experience

funny photo of our crazy zone from zone training this past week!

HAPPY GANESH CHATURATHI, Y'ALL!  As missionaries, we will be celebrating this huge Hindu holiday by being on lockdown after 6PM for the next three days or so haha.  We aren't allowed to take pictures of all the happenings, unfortunately, but it's NUTS, I have seen some of the BIGGEST Ganesh statues I've ever seen in my life in the past week, and those were just the preparations for this festival.  It's crazy!  But a crazy cool time to be in India right now and I couldn't accurately express my gratitude for this amazing opportunity.

This past week we have been working with one of our SOLID investigators, his name is Prabhu.  Prabhu is something like twenty four years young and fresh out of business school.  He is pretty cool because his grandfather was a pioneer in Bangalore, as in baptized back in the 80's, I believe.  However, Prabhu and his family remained Hindu!  It has been really cool working with him and seeing where he's coming from.  He has a lot of questions that have been answered by the Lord's beautiful Plan of Salvation and he lights up as he learns things, it's awesome.  Something funny is that Prabhu asked Elder Jensen and I to teach him how to play basketball.  Prabhu is pretty tall and once we made a passing comment, and asked if he'd ever played before.  He said no but that he really wanted to learn how!  So we've been teaching him (whilst simultaneously teaching him the gospel)!  I will send a picture, it's pretty funny.

Also this week I had the opportunity to travel to Kolar Gold Fields, or what we call KGF for short, this week for a baptism interview.  KGF is about a three hour bus ride outside of Bangalore so that was quite the experience for me and Elder Jensen.  It was cool to see rural India at its finest.  Funny experience though: the bus we took out to KGF was PACKED, as in I couldn't even move, and I was sitting down!  But in my immobile state, somehow I felt a tap on my shoulder.  I swiveled my head around (to the extent that I could) to see what was up.  A man was trying to ask me something in Tamil.  I responded that I didn't understand (though I certainly tried) and turned my head back around, just minding my own business.  Then, no more than a few seconds later, a young boy (anywhere from five to seven years old) came and sat himself right on my lap, and stayed there!  For an hour!  I guess the man was trying to ask me if it was alright for his young son to sit on my lap!  I thought that was pretty funny, I hope I explained it well enough for you guys to get a laugh out of it as well.

Well, everyone have a happy Ganesh Festival and keep the faith (in Christ of course, not Ganesh.....unless you're Hindu I guess)!

Elder Tuscano

on the mend from dengue fever

 (not) joint director of horticulture

Lalbagh

Hello hello all!

This week was a pretty crazy one.  Not really haha, just kind of.  Not too eventful because Elder Jensen and I were directed to stay inside and on bed rest.  Why?  Well, in short, I've had Dengue fever this past week.  It hasn't been fun, no not one bit, but I've had a lot of time for study and sleeping, that's for sure.  

We were, however, still able to have President Funk and President Mortensen come to our weekly planning session, which was awesome.  They both truly are inspired men and we were able to learn a lot that we can and will apply in our area (as soon as I'm 100% healthy haha).  One thing I liked that they said is that the point of a council is not necessarily to reach a consensus, but to receive revelation.  That made a lot of sense to me.  

That's really all from this week, folks, I'm sorry to say.  I'll do my best to get healthy again so I can finally get back to work and witness some miracles out here in Indiranagar.  God is great, look for miracles in your lives!  I promise you, you'll see them.

Keep the faith and stay away from mosquitoes!

Elder Tuscano

painting, parks and problems with visas for incoming missionaries

 helping sister rajini paint

Lalbaugh Botanical Garden

What's up, y'all?  

This week was pretty crazy, but super rad!  A lot of crazy stuff is happening in our mission, just in the sense that we are losing a lot more missionaries than we are gaining them!  A lot of missionaries are SUPPOSED to be coming, but they're having trouble obtaining visas (what's new, right?).  This imbalance has caused some change ups in our zone.  For example, I'M BACK WITH ELDER JENSEN!!!  At least temporarily haha, until we get things figured out.  He came to Indiranagar with me this past week!  So I'm like half zone leader half trainer now haha.  It's good to be back with him, I'm excited.  He came with me because his previous companion went home to go to school.  Elder Shrestha went to Lingarajpuram (a different area in our zone) to be with Elder Samson because Elder Samson's previous companion went home due to jaundice.  But that's the current state of things for now haha.

Another highlight this week was changing things up from our normal missionary routine!  For at least a couple hours haha.  Elder Jensen and I helped a sister in our ward repaint her home!  She was really appreciative of our help.  That was fun haha, I will send a picture!

I think that's it really.  Oh!  This week we will be having Mission Leadership Council with President Funk!  In addition, President Funk will be sitting in on our weekly planning session this week......pray for us!

Have a solid week everyone, keep the faith!

Elder Tuscano