April 27, 2015 - Rajahmundry

Hello family!!! Another great week here in Rajahmundry, especially with my awesome new companion Elder Thompson.  Mom, that is crazy that you met her already! (Elder Thompson's mom) Me and Elder Thompson were both very stunned to see this picture haha.  But yeah he is so awesome and we are having a great time together and have really stepped it up in terms of how hard we are working.  We are working really hard together and Heavenly Father is really blessing us.

So this week we taught A TON of RC/LA lessons and really killed it in that category.  As far as our investigators go, we only taught one lesson to an investigator but had great success with the members.  The investigator we taught was a new guy named Praveen and in our first lesson with him, he accepted a baptism date, but then this Sunday didn't come to church so that was frustrating.  But we will try and meet with him a couple times this week and help him out some more and see where we can go from there with him.  We also found some potentials this week so will meet with them this upcoming week.

Many members and rc/las that in the past haven't been interested or haven't really wanted us to come much have actually been inviting us a lot, and so regularly they are wanting us to come over and teach them.  We are very pleased with that.  We have been really working hard and hopefully we continue to find many blessings and success.

So a couple experiences to share this week: One good and one bad.  First the bad to get it out of the way.  We had a meeting with our branch president and he didn't listen to anything we said, and was basically telling us to break mission president's rule and take translators to teach telugu speakers.  We firmly told him we cannot do that and in short, it was just such a frustrating meeting with him, so we were a bit disappointed about that because we have trying so hard to find english speaking investigators by our own efforts but we aren't finding many, so we need to rely more on the members to give us referrals who speak english and we told the branch president this, but he told not to teach english speakers because there are very few and they won't be interested but to teach telugu speakers with a translator.  It was so frustrating that he was telling us to break the rule so we are trying to cope with that.  

The other is the incredible progress i made with my telugu.  Since my comp doesn't know any, sometimes i have to speak a little bit to someone to get an appointment or to communicate or ask where someone is or something.  But more than that my understanding is increasing incredibly.  I had two different experiences where people came up to us and were speaking pure telugu and i actually understood every single thing they said. It was a miracle from God.  I still can't speak or consistently understand it, but every once in a while he gives me the words and understanding when i need it.

So my last name in Telugu is Bunthi.  haha.  And we didn't feel any of the earthquake but it did come to Rajahmundry i guess, just not our part.  Sounds like you guys had a pretty great week! Have another great one this week! Love you guys much!

Love, Elder Ball
PS, This week's temperatures: today 105, tomorrow 104, wed 105, thurs 106 fri 108, sat 110....Yikes  :O