Elder Ryan Ball - India Bangalore Mission: June 6, 2016 - Bengaluru, Whitefield & Visit to Rajah w/ Pictures

Hello!
This week was a pretty decent bounce back week for Elder Thompson and I. We were super busy as we had exchanges with Hyderabad Zone Leaders, and we had MLC (last one with Pres/Sis Berrett), and we also were in Rajahmundry from Thursday until Saturday afternoon, and on Sunday we had some busy work with the missions training plan. However, amidst all of this busy work, we still managed to teach a solid amount of lessons and had some pretty good success.

So Sindhu and Swathi were supposed to get baptized this week. We had their interviews this week and they both passed wonderfully, but last minute their father had to go out of town for a couple days so he wasn't going to be able to attend. So we pushed it to next week but we are pretty sure about their baptism this upcoming Sunday so we are excited for that. Raj Kumar is moving in the right direction. We were able to find him some fellowship on Sunday and are getting him involved in the YSA activities and i think he is doing well now. He mentioned to us that has taken two steps forward so that sounds pretty positive doesn't it? But we have him scheduled to be baptized this month which is great.

We also taught Helen this week and had a great lesson with her and she really progressed well this week! She came to church again and we set her with a June 19 baptism date, so things are looking good for this month in terms of baptisms. Looks like we can get 4 this month which is awesome. Babitha came to church this week...miracle. That was good so we will see if we can get her set for a date in early July. So in the near future things are looking wonderful. But we have to start finding some new people so that when these people get baptized we won't be wondering what to do all day haha.

Our trip to Rajahmundry was really fun. We saw a ton of people and our old friends and really enjoyed it. We got fed so much, and the members were super surprised and stoked to see us. We really enjoyed our time there, and one of the sisters there was serving a mission in the philippines while i was serving in her branch and she was back, and so we spoke Tagalog for like 30 minutes straight!! It was awesome. I love speaking Tagalog. But funny thing is, she served with the daughter of my Branch President from DapDap. Meaning, DapDap's branch president's daughter and this sister from Rajahmundry served together in their missions! Small world huh? But anyways i will send some pics to you!:) I got to see one of my converts sister Neeraja and took a pic with her. She is doing well and was happy to see me:) I think i can still get by okay with some Telugu haha but i was a tad rusty:)

Anyways a pretty good week for us and hopefully another to come for us and for you!

Elder Bunthi

PS, Elder Thompson's letter described their visit to Rajah like this....
"We borrowed a few cycles from the elders serving there and went straight to Katheru Village that basically used to be our home. As soon as we got there, little children started waving, chasing us down, and yelling "Hi Ball! Hi Thompson!" It was so crazy to see how everybody still remembers us so well even though we've been gone for so long! It's like we never even left. The two tall white guys will never be forgotten in Rajahmundry. The members and investigators were equally excited to see us. We rolled up to their homes on our cycles totally unexpected and randomly. People's facial expressions were so sweet as they saw us ride up to their home. Some people were smiling, some were laughing or jumping for joy, some were confused as to what in the world we were doing there, and some even started crying a little bit."

Pictures of Elder Ball/Thompson visit to Rajahmundry...