transfer to Visak

Dear Family,

Happy Thanksgiving! We actually celebrated Thanksgiving two weeks ago at one of the American families’ homes. So my day tomorrow will be quite the same, but oh wait....I got transferred!

The Chennai chapter has come to a close and I will forever recall my time here with fondness. It was a great place to serve and I am grateful that President allowed me to stay here for this long.

I will be going to Visak; but even better than that...ELDER WARD is my new companion. Do you remember him? I haven't seen him in 8 months and now I will be his companion. When I got the call from Elder Mehan on friday I was overcome with joy. I think I got a taste of what Ammon felt. Elder Ward is my boy and I look forward to doing work up there in Andhra. I am going to be a zone leader. I hope that I can do a good job. I look forward to setting an example of obedience and hard work with Elder Ward. I honestly couldn’t have hoped for a better transfer.

I am excited to go back to Andhra and eat biryani. It is the specialty there and I am pumped. I will miss Chennai very much though. It has been hard to say bye to people though. Especially the people I prepared for baptism. But no problem I will see them down the road I am sure.

This past week was just short of incredible. We have been focusing as a companionship and district on the message of the restoration. A lot of times we will only teach the restoration first to those with a christian background. But recently we changed that. As stated in Preach My Gospel, The Restoration of the Gospel is our unique message to the world. So we are sharing it with everyone we meet, regardless of their background. We have seen some cool things happen.

We met a less-active member, Jonathan, his cousin from Bombay recently moved here. He was Hindu, but we shared the message of the restoration. At the end he told us that for the past few days he had been having these spiritual impressions, but he couldn't figure out what they meant. He then expressed his feeling that this message was the real explanation he was searching for. On saturday we met a brother named Rajesh on the bus. He invited us to his home right then, I was so surprised I almost said no. We went to his home and taught him and his friend the restoration. They were both hindu. At the end of the message, his friend told us that he had received some "divine inspiration" while we shared… sounded a lot like the Holy Ghost to me.

These reactions happened because the restoration is real. Joseph Smith saw God. That experience changed the world and if it did not happen we would not know all the other things we teach. That is why the restoration is lesson one -- I guess I have a hard head. But it does feel good to finally understand this for myself.

Love,
Elder Tuscano