Elder Kent Thompson, India Bengaluru Mission: Six Months Complete!

Hello,

This week marked 6 months on the mission for me. It's crazy to think that I have been out that long. I'm loving Rajahmundry and Elder Ball and I have been tearing it up. It's a great place. Another fun thing is that my MTC companion Elder Harris just moved into our apartment so it's so fun to be reunited. Also, Elder D'vaz and Linsay live just downstairs. It's so fun to have all the elders from our MTC back together. For our six month mark, we went to the nicest restaurant in Rajahmundry. It's called Dolphins. The food was great and the entire restaurant was A/C so that's living the high life. Also, we all went on the roof and burned one of our ties. It's a missionary tradition to burn a tie once you finish 6 months.

Rajahmundry is really great. I seriously think that the missionaries are the only white people in the entire city. Whenever we ride our cycles anywhere, everybody waves or says hi. Kids will literally run over to us and put themselves in front of our cycles just so they can talk to us. We are celebrities here. Everybody is so nice and always wants to chat wit us. (But they usually don't speak English.) The lack of English is a little tricky, but my companion has been with three Telugu speaking elders before me so he knows enough to get by. We don't really have any investigators right now so we've really been focusing on recent convert and less active members. Last week we taught 17 rc/la lessons which is more than I have ever before had in one week. We're also working on getting new investigators that speak English.

Church was a little crazy. Most of it was in Telugu so it was hard to stay involved. Elder Harris and I were asked to give our testimonies in sacrament meeting so that was nice. This branch actually has their own piano player! She played tons of wrong notes, but she is trying. I'm glad that they have the members doing that on their own. Also, my good friend Elder Dondapati just got home from his mission and now lives in this branch. It was fun to see him not as a missionary. Just a few weeks ago, I went on exchange with him in Bangalore!

That's all for now! Here's a picture of us burning our ties and also a nice sunset. It's so nice to see some open land because I've been in such a huge city for the last six months.

Love,

Elder Thompson