09 MAR 10 letter

Dear Family,

This past week was incredible. Swarna Lata, Mounica, and Suchitra were all baptized! It was a great day for them. Kishore was there and I think he really liked it, he is not ready yet but I think one day he will be. The actual ordinances were pretty tough. They have never spent much time around water, so they were all very nervous. I baptized Suchitra, 19 year old, and when I finished the prayer and tried to baptize her she refused to go down! I tried to speak some words of comfort and we did it again. It worked out the second time and that was a huge relief. But anyway it was very cool. I will send you pictures next week…

We went to Hyderabad, which is why I am e-mailing on Thursday…We had a multi-zone conference and Elder Perkins, the Asia Area President was there with us! It was a great experience for all of us. He conducted a few interviews before the conference began. Elder Ward and I were not part of those but Elder Schmidt and Evans both had a chance to sit down and visit with him. He and his wife are amazing people. His wife was very bold. In the morning we had a few elders give attribute talks. They were supposed to last about 3-4 minutes. All of the elders gave good talks, but none were able to stay within their time limit. Sister Perkins was scheduled to speak right after these missionary talks, but according to the program we had, her time was already finished. She stood up and read about the stripling warriors and how they obeyed with exactness. She stated that she would not give her talk because her time had been eaten up by the elders before her. It was a powerful lesson and I think we all made commitments to stay within the time we are allotted when giving a talk!

It was good that happened in the morning because I gave a talk in the afternoon. The assistants and the zone leaders were to come prepared with a 5 minute talk on how “inviting sacrament attendance blesses families.” There would be 1 assistant and 1 zone leader to give a talk, and I was the lucky zone leader. I was pretty nervous to speak in front of a general authority but luckily I was prepared. I made sure to be punctual and I think it went well. Elder Perkins really liked it, so that made me feel happy.

Have a great week!

Love,
Elder Tuscano