The Return of the Twins

Hello!

What a great week it was for us in the India Bangalore Mission. On Tuesday, we had the Hyderabad zone leaders come into our area for an exchange. They are great missionaries and we had a fun time learning from each other and teaching the gospel. Wednesday was President and Sister Berrett's last MLC! We set some goals for the mission and made some plans to keep up the good work when the new mission president gets here. We're all excited to see what he will do when he comes to take over as mission president. On Thursday, we took a flight out to Rajahmundry so that we could attend their zone training and see how the missionary work is going in the zone. Because of our flight schedule, we had a little bit of time to go into our old area and visit many of our friends from when we were companions there before. 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. Everybody we saw fed us with some kind of foods or snacks and we even had two dinner appointments on Friday. I thought I was going to explode! It was a very tender experience for us to connect with all of our dear friends.

Here I am with the Torlapati family. They were investigating the church for many months but weren't quite able to make it to baptism because of some family concerns. They told us that the elders haven't come in a while so we'll have the missionaries go and visit them again.

This is the Allamanda family! They have a little tiffin (Indian breakfast) shop outside of their home. We stopped there on Friday morning and had some delicious breakfast. When we tried to pay for the food, they wouldn't let us!

Had the chance to see one of my old apartment buddies, Elder Peter at zone meeting!

With one of our favorites, the Podi family! The children are all looking older and they are still as happy as ever.

With Sister Sagarika and Brother Naveen! Sagarika was also baptized during my last transfer there by her fiancé Naveen. They have since been married and are very happy together. They are planning to go and be sealed in the temple as soon as Sagarika has been a member long enough to have a temple recommend.

Dr. Babu and me. His mother Suryakantham was baptized while I was serving my last transfer in Rajahmundry. She was very old and couldn't even stand or sit but she wanted to be baptized during her last days. Right after I was transferred to the Philippines, she passed away. It was sad but also a tender experience for Dr. Babu. We both expressed our appreciation for the plan of salvation.

We went to visit the Polupalli family! When Sister Veni (Elder Ball's right) saw us, she was so excited to see us that she started jumping for joy. She invited us into her home and went and bought us each two different kinds of cake, two different candy bars, two lollipops, a puma wristband, a pen, and some cool drinks. This was the last family that I visited before going to the Philippines so we had a very happy visit. The rest of the family wasn't there at the time but some of the neighbors came to say hello as well. On Sister Veni's right is sister Neeraja who was Elder Ball's convert before I came. Sister Talitha Priya (in front of me) also came to say hello.

Here is one of the best families in all of India, the Ramadi family! Ravi Kishore (right in front of me) used to hop on his bicycle and work with  us almost every single day. He's a good kid and looks even more handsome now than ever!

A trip to Rajahmundry wouldn't be complete without a visit to see Deepak and Sunitha. Deepak was our branch mission leader and later became the Elder's Quorum president. He's helped us so much and they used to feed us every Sunday night to make sure that we wouldn't go to bed on Sundays with an empty stomach. They are such a good couple. Sister Sunitha cooked us some of her famous chicken curry and coconut rice.

We hitched a ride to the airport with our good buddy "Auto" Ramesh! Ramesh is a really good dude and tried to give us a free ride but we made sure he took some payment for his service. He also bought us some breakfast on the way there.