Schools out for summer - June 24, 2009

Dear Family and Friends,

First family business: Paige, I am so glad you are having a great time at BYU. Make the most of it because it does go by fast. And Matt, at the start of your letter I thought it was Dad writing and I scrolled down really fast to see it was you...so I guess you fill Dad's shoes pretty nicely. I almost got tears in my eyes when you told me about Reese being sick. I don't know what it will be like when it's one of my children having to go through that. And as for you Dad, losing weight, huh? Well if you can't do it this summer than definitely the next because you might be my only workout partner when I get home. Sorry I haven't sent pictures in a while. I am sending home a CD that should get there by next weekend. But tomorrow I will be going to the Mission Home for our interviews and they said they will have two computers there for us to email on if we haven't emailed yet so I'll send some pics that way.

Well we had an amazing Zone Conference. The theme was recognizing the Spirit. We talked about the difference between revelation and inspiration and how we can receive and recognize the spirit. President Nichols made an interesting point: The speed at which prayers are answered varies with the importance of the request. He said we have to be more patient, and the reason why we are not patient is because we are simply unexperienced and childish. He compared it to how a young child is always looking forward to their birthday. The child will always ask their parent "is it my birthday yet?" a the mom or dad will usually respond "no we just had your birthday you have to wait nine more months". The mom won't give in and celebrate her child's birthday again just because he's begging for it. Instead she makes the child wait until the proper timing. Basically we too often request certain things and think that they are important enough that we get the answer right away but God in His wisdom prolongs and waits for the proper time to answer our prayers. Simple fact but interesting.

This past week was pretty wonderful. We found two new families at odd times of the day, one in the morning and the other in the afternoon. But for some reason the families were home and both are great. One, George Anthony and Agnus Rose are CSI (Church of South India) members and they soaked up the message pretty well...well George did, Agnus doesn't speak English. George is retired from the Air Force and is now a lecturer for Aeronautical Engineering at a local College. He speaks great English and on our last visit he said he was really interested in the Book of Mormon and wanted to read it for himself. This was before we told him of the promise in Moroni, and after we told that he said he would definitely pray about it.

The second family was a pretty miraculous find, not for the manner of finding them but for their present situation. It was a young couple Lukas and Nivedhana. We were walking down some dirt roads in a poorer area and we hear a woman's voice "hello who are you?" We look over and see Nivedhana. We tell her we are from the Church and she said "great, get in". We were taken aback by her accent, it was almost british, and you don't argue with someone with that good of English. So in we went a we met her Husband. Ironically both are Hindu by birth, despite Lukas' name but them and Lukas' family was looking to convert into Christianity. Lukas and Nivedhana are two month old newly weds, they just moved into Coimbatore after their marriage, Lukas speaks great English and Nivedhana's first language it English, followed by Hindi then Tamil. What a perfect family to bring the gospel to!

Elder Smith and I were amazed at the findings and we remembered the prayer we offered on Monday during our weekly planning session. We picked out three areas where we wanted to go finding and we submitted our decision in prayer to Heavenly Father and requested His help in finding the families we needed to find. Well, Byron I have to throw my hat off for you, you told me there was a big difference between doing something, and praying and doing something. I have a sure testimony of that.

The new area is pretty beautiful but I don't have very many pictures of it yet except for the church building. It's a massive building! It will be the future stake center when India gets stakes but it looks more like a mini temple. Unfortunately we get some pretty nasty rumors about what goes on inside the church. Many people in the area call it Satan's church and other say we worship the devil inside. It's ironic because the first thing you see when you go inside is a picture of Christ inviting the Rich Man to follow him. I guess it's reminder that you have to swallow your pride if you want to come into the church. The Branch President wants to really change the public appeal of the church. Right now he's working on getting his friend to publish a newspaper article about the church.

At church this Sunday we had Renald, Deepa and Daphne come. Renald is a medical transcript worker and Deepa is a brand new mother with their three month child Daphne. Daphne was a steal after Sacrament meeting as the whole relief society piled in rows around the baby. We also had Binny, a young man doing his studies, come along with his friend Godwin. Both of them are a little immature and the texting craze is just as strong in India as it is in America so they were just texting during church. I wanted to scold them but they were far away from me and I decided to do it later. We were also surprised by a visit from Nathan and Jyothi. They only stayed for forty minutes but they are an old Roman Catholic couple. I never thought in a thousand years they would ever set foot in the church but I guess I was wrong. They really enjoyed Sacrament and found they had plenty of old neighbors and distant relatives in the branch. So it seems we have them interested. Nathan even said he would come to church every other week, which was music to my ears.

Had a little bit of a scary experience the other day. Elder Smith was mergin lanes on his cycle and as he was going a lady tried to dash by him on his right side. He didn't see her, she didn't honk her horn, nor did she brake so they locked up and fell over. They skidded a few feet and kicked up the dust pretty good. To me it looked like a slow motion action shot from a movie. I quickly pulled off to the side and got to the crash site but already a mob of tamilians beat me to it. Suddenly the mob was surrounding us yelling every which way in Tamil. Finally an English speaker came to translate for us and explained that the lady wanted us to pay for the damages. Her bike was fine and all she had was a few scrapes but I was worried that we would get tied in some legal situation. I called Sister Nichols to see what I should do but as I was talking to her I guess the lady decided it wasn't worth her time because she drove off. So we got off pretty good. Elder Smith's pants were a little chewed up but other than that he and his cycle amazingly enough were completely fine.

There is only one more thing I need to talk about. I wasn't able to talk about him much because the day I wrote about him the computer crashed. I had an investigator in Rajahmundry who we were teaching for about five weeks. The week before I left Elder Loomis and I challenged to set a baptism date for June 28th and then to pray about it and ask God if he should be baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints on that day. He was hesistant to take a baptism date before but this time he agreed. I wasn't sure how committed he was but we left him for a week making small visits but nothing major. On my last Monday we went back to his house and asked him if he had received an answer. He cracked a small smile and said "yes brothers, I will be baptized!". Hallelujah! Both Elder Loomis and my mouths dropped and soon enough he brought out chicken curry and chapati for us to eat. It was one of the cooler experiences on my mission, but sadly I had to leave before his baptism. But I just got an email from Elder Loomis confirming that Efraim was baptized and is now a strong celestial member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Now they're just working on his wife Mary:)

I have to get going and Sri Lanka is in the Bangalore mission, it used to be Singapore but changed about a year ago. But no missionary is in Sri Lanka except for a set of couple missionaries (we're having visa problems but we're trying to get missionaries back in right now). The couple is doing an awesome job. They are baptizing more converts than two of the zones in the mission. That's pretty impressive. The Church is true, what more can I say.

Love you a million spiritually confirmed testimonies,

Elder Mackay