...at home in Hyderabad

Hey Family,

Another week gone in Hyderabad. Time is starting to pass by pretty quickly. I am becoming more adjusted to missionary life and life in India as well. It is beginning to feel more like home. It’s an interesting transition but it is certainly taking place. This transfer comes to a close this week and Elder Doss-Johnson and I are safe. We'll be together at least for another six weeks and that is great. We are working with a lot of families here and I hope we can see success with them together.

This past week was great. We had our missionary fireside on saturday evening and it went very well for an Indian fireside. It was scheduled to start at seven but in India nothing starts on time. We were lucky to get started before seven thirty. It was quite a good turn out, at least compared to firesides in the past here. The last one had about 20 people in attendance and this one had about 50. So it is improvement. Everyone who was there was uplifted and edified by the spirit. We are planning for another function at the end of this transfer and hope to really have a great turn out. We sang a few songs as our district. Next week we have a multi-zone conference and a counselor from the asia area presidency is coming to visit. He loves musical numbers and our district was selected to perform, so we are excited about that.

I think I have talked about one Brother named Mahender before, but this week was really good with him. He came to church on sunday and after the meeting he got to watch a baptism take place. He is very excited to take baptism and it has been such a cool experience to see him grow over the past few months. I have been working with him since my second week out. We will continue to work with him, making sure he understands exactly what he is doing before we baptize him. But, I feel that he will be a great member. He is so concerned with helping other people and has such a big heart. The priesthood will be a really big blessing for him, because it is all about blessing the lives of others.

We are working our hardest and having success. It is amazing to see how many people the Lord will put in our paths. One brother called us randomly last week and began to ask about the book of mormon. He owns a chinese restaurant and we visited him yesterday and gave him a book. He is very interested to read it; he says he has been searching for the truth in all different places. He has read the bible and Quran and many other books. I gave him a book and listened to his philosophy for a while and then I bore a strong testimony I could about the book of mormon and left. We invited him to read and pray, I am pretty sure he will read because he is searching for the truth but he needs to understand that the only place to find real truth is directly from God, not the philosophy of men. That’s all for this week.

Love,
Elder Tuscano

(below are excerpts from letters to individual family members)

Thank you for including that story about the concert violinist Joshua Bell in the DC Metro station. I have never heard it before but it has a wonderful principle attached to it. It made me think about how many people we talk to about this message of salvation but they disregard it in light of their business. Everyone has somewhere to go and is in such a hurry to get there that they miss so many important things along the way. Even the most important message they will ever hear. President Monson was right when he encouraged us to find joy in the journey.

I miss jazz music. I'm sad I waited so long to develop a taste for it.

To answer your question, I eat every meal with my hands. Even at the nicest restaurants we eat with our hands. It is a wonderful experience and makes the food taste better I think.