Back in Raj - January 21, 2009

Dear family and friends,

Wow the pictures of the kitchen look amazing. I feel like I'm missing so much but I guess I'll just have a lot to look forward to when I come home. Anyways everything is going great out here. We are finding a lot of families and having much success. We just had zone conference and now I'm pumped and ready to go, especially because I had my monthly dose of pizza hut pizza. I know that sounds gross but one pizza is a delicacy among elders and two pizza here makes a pretty dang good pizza. We talked a lot about the years goals and changes we are going to make so as to accomplish. One change that I find interesting is that we're going to double the amount of exchanges. District leaders are being told to go on exchange with each companion twice every transfer and even the assistants are going to spend as much of their time as possible out exchanges. It's suppose to help spread the experience of the missionaries because as of now more than 50% of the missionaries have been out for less than six months and very few have been out for more than a year. So hopefully the exchanges will give the older elders more opportunities to share their experience with the rest of us greenies.

But the Lord does make up for our weaknesses so even though we are inexperienced we can still do something. Last week we got permission to baptized Chaitenya and Indu from the mission president. When we went to go tell them their smiles were so big. It was such a spiritual seeing a husband and his wife get excited for their baptism. But we have to review everything with Indu and that means a lot of Telegu. We made some time for her last Sunday and reviewed the first lesson. When we finished explaining she said something along the lines of "I've always had my doubts about Joseph Smith but now that I understand about dispensations of prophets and the gospel I see it makes it sense". Of course she didn't say that exactly but she did get the picture, which many fluent English speakers never get.

After that appointment we went to go visit another family, Adams and Jaylatha. Jaylatha's cousin, Sushma Penegula, is a member of the church and her and her family live right next door to us. The week before we brought them on exchange with us but it seemed like although Jaylatha was interested, her husband had many doubts...or at that's what the Penegula's told us. We were getting ready for a big question and answer fest but when we arrived Adams simply said "I've been studying the Book of Mormon for the past week. This is a great book". We were once again shocked (just goes to show that you can't listen to hearsay, even if you think the source is reliable). So we talked to them about the church and they both love it. So we invited them to baptized and they accepted. By the time we left we weren't sure what had happened. One of the Penegula boys who had come with us told us later that was promised at the time of his joining the church that the rest of his family would follow. That was many years back and almost all of the other family members rejected the church. He said he was sad but put his hope in God. He served a mission and returned only about three months back and already that promise and the blessings from his mission and faithfulness are coming. It's really great to see families united in their efforts to build the church.

Sorry for the short letter, I promise to write more next week. But I love you all so much.

I love you a million chicken and pineapple pizzas,

Elder Mackay

P.S. For Dad: My favorite General Conference talk was Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin. It's called "Come what may and love it". He spoke on a similar topic in 2006 General Conference and that talk was called "Sunday Will Come". Both talk about what to do during times of grief, sorrow, or depression. It also leads to a more stress free life so you may want to talk about that to the High Priest. Sorry I don't have any deeper things but if you want any of that just talk to LeGrand.