This week I had a lot of fun experiences!
On Saturday morning we went and visited an Australian member in our branch named DM. His company put him up in some ritzy hotel, so it was cool getting to visit his in his temporary home. For me though, it is always really weird teaching people that speak English, because I don't know what to say! Most of the time I spend the entire lesson desperately trying to help someone understand the most basic of basic doctrines, but with someone that speaks English already.... it's too easy! I teach for 5 minutes, he understands everything, and then.... I don't know what else to say! It's the opposite of what I was 2 years ago; all I would search for was "Deep Doctrine". But now I don't know how to learn or teach any doctrines above what a primary student should know! Oh the changes you have on your mission.
Another fun thing is that whenever I see Elder B (he is serving here in Bangalore) I always see him wearing the shoes I left behind In Hyderabad. I was just going to throw them away, but he took them and now uses them every day. I always think it's cute to see my missionary son LITERALLY walking in his dad's shoes... haha.
So, there is a YSA girl in our branch named S. She's a pretty fun gal, and her family are all members. Well, one day as we were walking home we saw S on the back of a motorcycle with an unknown YSA guy. She was laughing and smiling until she saw us, and then she immediately got quite and put her head down... we didn't say hello to her, because it was very apparent she didn't want us to be there... haha I love awkward situations like that! Almost guaranteed her parents don't know she has a boyfriend (that TOTALLY goes against traditional Indian culture, and her family is very traditional), so I'm debating whether or not to bring up this situation next time we visited their family... we'll see!
Also, I had another instance with a motorcycle this week. One day we were waiting a really long time for a bus, and this bus stop had no bench or anything so I decided to just sit down on a close by motorcycle that someone had parked. Well, I sat there for a good 15-20 minutes before a man and his wife came out of a near by building, and by the way they awkwardly looked at me sitting on the bike it was clear he must have been the owner of it. So I quickly got up and apologized to the guy for sitting on his bike, and as I started to walk away the man smiled at me and said, "Would you like me to drop you somewhere?" Wow. Pretty different from a typical American who most likely would have said something along the lines of "WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING SITTING ON MY MOTORCYCLE!" Sometimes I forget just how kind and awesome Indians are, but then they go ahead and do awesome things for me and I remember they are amazing amazing people.
Do you remember KS? I shared a couple of stories about him from last time I served in C. Road, and now I have another about him. As you might recall, K has a lot of faith, but also a lot of doctrinal confusions. Now, because of those confusions, he is going less active... Here is the problem. He believes the bible is true. He believes the Book of Mormon is true. AND he believes Joseph Smith is a prophet. But he doesn't accept the rest of the modern prophets as prophets... including Ezra Taft Benson. Because of this, he is offended that we spend an hour of church studying Ezra Taft Benson. He claims we should be studying the Bible or Book of Mormon, not just some random "good person". So every week he comes to Sacrament meeting (because he knows how important the Sacrament is), but then he leaves right after that... how can we help someone like that?? Yes yes, I know the answer to his confusion SEEMS obvious, but to him it's not obvious... maybe time will help? I only hope God enlightens him, because he doesn't want to hear what we have to say about it. :-(
One last experience: So we had a couple good appointments set up for the evening, but as a missionary I have become quite accustomed to plans falling through. So as we left our apartment I prayed that all the people we had scheduled to visit would actually be there (a true miracle to ask for!) Everything went smoothly until our last family. When we knocked on the Lawrence family's door, the daughters and mom told us they were the only people home. Their older brother had gone outside with friends, and the dad was who-knows-where. Sigh... so, we said goodbye and were just about to head off because we can't teach without a brother being there, but to our delight the older brother George came walking down the street! Hooray! And then 2 minutes after we sat down, the dad also walked in! Amazing! God brought us 2 brothers, and one complete family to teach. I was very happy to see them all there.
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