15 Feb. 2016

Well, this week was pretty epic, just like last week, in a lot of the same ways. It's getting hotter and hotter over here, and I'm ready for winter to start. In other news, I hit my 13 month mark yesterday, and that also means that I am under 3 months away from heading out of the country...again. I'm still not sure where I will go; to the Philippines, where missionaries have been going, or to the states, which would make much more sense. When I head out, I will have 6 months left on my mission, which less time than the missionaries who are currently waiting in the Philippines have been there. We'll see what happens.

Anyway, a lot of fun stuff happened this week. On Sunday, we had District Conference, where Pres. Berrett and his wife spoke. On Saturday, we had no water. Well, we had no running water: our water filter holds a couple liters. But, you can't shower with a water filter. That was fun enough- until the power cut too. That removed the possibility of getting water until the power came back on. Fortunately, power was restored soon, and we got water back at night. On Friday, we had a LONG district meeting. President and Sister Berrett were there too, and held interviews with all the missionaries- which took 4 hours after district meeting. Add in 2 hours of travel to get there and back, and the 2 hour district meeting, and that pretty much killed our whole day. It was fun though. Sister Berrett checked our medicine packets, and gave out brownies. She also showed us some hilarious pictures that she'd found on the internet, that perfectly describe the Indian attitude toward some things. I'll forward them, with explanations. On Thursday, we had weekly planning, but Tuesday was the really exciting day. I got a new companion, and we split the area. Elder Maddikonda and Elder Singh, his new companion, took the north half, and Elder Kommalapati and I took the south. Splitting an area is always and adventure: one companionship can only work with so many people, so when you split that, both sides have to do a lot of finding to build up their teaching pools again. Elder Kommalapati is from Bangalore, and knows a whole bunch of languages, which comes in handy frequently. With four elders in the apartment, we've starting preparing a lot of our own food, which is a lot cheaper, too. I've made fajitas and stew, and they've made lots of curries and biryani. 

Here's a couple pictures from the week:

Here, the leaves are just starting to fall.