finding treasures...

Dear Family,

Our week was pretty cool. Sunday was a huge day for us; we had a lot of people come to church that we had been waiting on. Also some new people decided to show up. One family was this guy named Kishore Kumar. Elder Ward and Elder Mehan had actually met them 2 weeks ago when they were on exchange. It was just after zone conference and they didn’t have much time so they went caroling! They ended up caroling at this guy’s home. The family was very surprised to see two americans singing Christmas songs on their doorstep, but they did welcome them in. He is a hospital administrator for all the hospitals in the Visak district. Everyone in the family is well educated and they all speak perfect english! We were so pumped. Elder Ward and I returned to teach them. The lesson went OK, we weren’t sure how interested they were. But on sunday all 4 showed up at church. Elder Ward and I were a little surprised, but so happy. It just showed me that sometimes people are more interested than they let on. So we will see what happens with them.

Last wednesday we met this kid named Bhargav. He is a neighbor of one of the recent converts in our area, who happens to spit out referrals like every other day. They are sweet. Anyway, he is about 16 and loves Jesus Christ. His family is Hindu but they are way chill. We taught him the first lesson and he was just so prepared. At the end of the lesson he said, "So if the book of mormon is true, then everything else is true?" His understanding is perhaps the best I have encountered thus far on my mission. Anyway he came to church and we set a date for his baptism him last night. The only concern his parents had was that they wanted to see some changes in him before he does it. We basically committed him to do everything his parents ask. I remember when I was sixteen and how I would have reacted to that kind of commitment. But he gladly accepted it and I think that speaks volumes of the kind of kid he is.

Another Family is Uma Maheshwar Rao and his wife Kalpana. They are so sweet, they are both "christian" but have never been baptized. Kalpana just decided to start liking Jesus Christ about two months ago. Her english is less, but she has a desire to learn. His is enough to communicate properly. Anyway, as we taught about baptism, Kalpana was a little apprehensive and it was because she didn’t know what baptism was. I thought that was very impressive. The reason being, most hindu's simply view baptism as "conversion," or, changing from Hindu to Christian and giving up your social status and all that is related to it. But she was different, so we made her a nice colorful poster and put Jesus’ baptism photo on it. We wrote simply about what baptism was and she was so happy because she could understand what it really was. I think we might make a few more baptism posters...

Love to all,
Elder Tuscano