12 December 2016

Well, I'm back in Bangalore. Things are surprisingly similar, just flipped. Last time, after 3 weeks, I was leading the area with no idea of where anything was. Now, my companion, Elder Magnusson, is leading the area, with no idea of where anything is. He's only been here one transfer, where he went on a ton of exchanges and had a lazy companion who didn't show him much. So, we largely spent the week finding new investigators and members' homes.

Tuesday was the transfer. I flew over from Visak fairly uneventfully, and got dropped off at the Lingarajapuram apartment. As soon as I got there, I learned the power was out, so I had to haul my luggage up 6 flights of stairs. That was fun. Right after that, we needed to go to the mission office to pick up some stuff. There, I got to meet up with a lot of old companions and zonemates, including the unforgettable Elders Patten and Jalagam. They were all going home, along with a ton of other elders that I knew. We had one funny moment- Elder Conrad had received a package from home that had something in it. After looking at it, we decided it must be either dog treats or beef jerky, but we weren't sure which. Even after we all ate some, we still weren't sure. I think it was dog treats, but it could have just been cheap jerky. Elder Halvorsen loved them anyway, and ate half a bag! After that, we did lots of finding members' homes, without much success. 

On Wednesday, we did some administrative work- printing a member list, media referrals, and other stuff. Not much happened, but we did do more finding!

Thursday, we tried to have weekly planning, but we didn't quite finish. Then, we tried to make a map of the area, and ran into the usual headaches associated with that. At night, we met with a member, Rajesh Bogati. That was surprisingly fun! On the way back, we met with another, too.

Friday, we had district meeting in the morning. It was a relief to have someone else teach- I'm not the district leader anymore! Then, we had interviews with the mission president. That went pretty quick for me- "How are you doing? Any issues? See you for your exit interview in two weeks!" We met with two less-actives later, Moses and Aaron, from the Congo. Our ward seems to have tons of Africans in it, by the way. Finally, we did more finding! 

Saturday, we finished up our weekly planning, met with an RM (the former Elder Sampson), who showed us the area a bit, and had our first lesson with an investigator all week! Then, we had correlation meeting.

Sunday was interesting. Our church meeting was inverted- sacrament meeting at the end of the block, for some reason. After church, we spent a lot of the rest of the day in various meetings and ITLing on the streets. The highlight was meeting with a part-member family and sharing the Light the World initiative with them. 

That was our week- lots of finding! The 15-day countdown has begun- I'll be home on the 27th. Join me next week as I battle trunkiness and invent a compass to find investigators. See ya!