Dear Family and Friends,
Well we had emergency transfers because we have a batch going home mid transfer and Elder Smith will be leaving me after such a short time. I was just barely getting to know him too. My new companion will be Elder Korraya and he will be my first native companion. I know Elder Korraya because we were in the same zone in Hyderabad. He came in one batch after me and he is a really sweet guy. His English is not very good though and he has a clubbed foot but he is so humble that those challenges don't stop him. I haven't seen him in a long time so it will be cool to see how much he has progressed since we both started our missions together.
On Sunday I was really sad because we didn't get anyone to church and for someone reason everyone gave the same excuse that they were out of town. It just seemed to be a series of unfortunate events. After church all of our appointments canceled on us and we were scrambling to find something to do. We did a little bit of tracting but didn't find anyone than we went back to the church to meet a last minute appointment we made. The guy was told us he would meet us at the church at 5:30 but when we got there he said 6:00. We took the opportunity to meet and talk with the Branch President and receive some assignments from him. After that we called the guy back and he again postponed to 6:30. We waited for a little bit, tried calling him back and he didn't answer so we just left. We were both really frustrated at this point and we didn't know what to do or where to go because the places where we wanted to go were too far out and it was too late. I said a prayer at the bustand and asked what we should do. Immediately after I said my prayer and man about 24 years old came up to us and asked us what we were doing. We quickly explained and he introduced himself as Charles and asked us if we wanted to meet his family. We jumped on it like a child jumps on a trampoline. We caught the next bus and took a 15 minute busride to his home. We met his Father, Mother and Sister and we shared with them the restoration. Interestingly enough the Father seemed more interested than the son, usually from what I've seen the younger people accept the restored gospel much faster than the older generation. But we got a return appointment (which people here are reluctant to give for some reason. In Rajahmundry it was easy) and then we were on our way.
Monday was a little bit better. I first finished my registration and mailed off my passport and regristration papers to Bangalore. I didn't want to say earlier in case it wasn't such a big deal but I had some problem registering into Coimbatore and they were giving me a lot of grief over not having a paper. Unfortunately the India Foreign Registration Office is not very organized and the city which I came from did things differently from Coimbatore and Coimbatore didn't like that and tried to put the blame on me. But one letter to the comissioner solved that so now I'm on my way.
That night we met Renald and Deepa. We had a great lesson where we taught the ten commandments. It's funny how the ten commandments is one of the most universal beliefs among most religions and yet people do not understand or even know what they are or how to follow them. We focused on the Sabbath Day and the Sacrament and Renald (who missed church the last Sunday) said "Well I told you I can't make it next Sunday because my work is having a huge anniversary that I'm in charge of but I have to come and take the sacrament". What a star! His wife Deepa is much more amazing. If it were up to her, they would have both been baptized by now. But slowly and surely they're making progress.
I had a pretty cool finding experience yesterday. Elder Smith and I were tracting all afternoon and we were running thin on time and we hadn't found anyone yet. Our legs were very tired but we were trying to pump each other up and keep a good attitude. As we were walking down our last street we noticed a Christian home and we knocked on it. Inside we found 6 people that made up parts three individual families. Actually they were all family techinically. A Sister and two brothers were all meeting together with some of the their kids and they were just having a good time playing games (can someone say family home evening). We came to the door and they told us to get in--that seems to be happening more and more frequently. We got to know them and we met Stanley, Punitha, and Poopathi (hehe). Each had their own families. We also met three of the kids: Alexander, Francis and Rahul. It was a strange situation but we made the best of it. We taught them the restoration and it seemed to click pretty well. The amazing part is that we got return appointments with the individual families at their homes on different times. It was quite a feat to organize. But I can just see this whole family come into the church and be one of those power house LDS families. The hard part is now we have to meet their spouses, that's always a bother because usually one will accept and the other will be hesistant makes a strong influence on the other. But we will bring our spiritual blow torch on them and give them the spirit.
Well I better get going and read your letters. I'm trying my best to get the pictures on here but for some reason the computer is being really stupid and not reading my SD card. I'll keep trying though.
Love you a million moments when the computer works the first time,
Elder Mackay
This one of us glowing is a cool trick we found in Golconda fort in one of the dungeons. The light coming down from the ceiling makes you look like an alien in the camera
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