Week Twenty-Eight

Me and Elder Openshaw from Boston

Hey family,

I'm just emailing from Dwarka. It's so weird to think that at this time of year last year I was singing at Temple Square with the Marvals, seeing the lights at Temple Square, going to Utah Jazz games, and then in California for Christmas with my family. Time goes by too quick. Things going on here in India that might be interesting is we are helping create the first branch choir to sing Christmas carols at the Christmas party and it is actually working out well. We are hitting like mid September temperatures, but everyone here thinks they are freezing to death.  Me and Elder Openshaw are walking around with short sleeves loving that the weather isn't 100 degrees. 

Also, me and Elder Openshaw are taking a stand and making sure this Christmas is an American Christmas. We have recently been doing everything possible to make American food and it’s going great. American food items cost a lot here so we have had to improvise a little, but so far our creations are: French fries, pasta, baked potatoes, crepes (grandmas thin hot cakes), pancakes, and we are working on buying beef from a Muslim shop...we just hope it's beef. Elder Openshaw is from Boston and he's the man...we have a good time and he's only a transfer behind me and so we’ll be doing crazy stuff for the next year and a half trying to make India a little more interesting than it already is. If any of you have any ideas of what food to make with rice and pollution email me...thoseare my main two ingredients;)

Our attempt at American food

Enjoying our meal

Pollution has to be good for something!

 Anyways the Christmas spirit is really coming around and I'm not feeling so homesick anymore. The families I have been working with for the last 6 months are pretty much my family now, so I feel at home when I am at their homes. We will be having a baptism next week. His name is Suchat Dhawan and he is from a part member family and is 12 years old. He has a pretty bad home life and lives with like 3 different families all mixed together in a two roomed cement home, he is excited to be baptized though and has a great testimony. He has seen the gospel change his older sister’s life and he really wants that as well. He wants to pass the Sacrament too, so we are excited for him to eventually get the Priesthood. 

This week I was able to learn something that I hadn't ever really thought of before. While me and Elder Openshaw were making a delicious plate of pasta with noodles that had weevil and a bag of chicken soup for the pasta sauce, he told me to read an article from the December Liahona. It was in the apartment and it was by Jeffery R Holland. So of course I was going to read it. It is titled “The Nature of God”. So, I have always thought, and maybe you have too, that Jesus Christ is the merciful and loving and perfectly understanding older Brother and that Heavenly Father is the more strict one that you are a little afraid of or scared that he is disappointed in you for your mistakes. I have always thought that, I almost thought it was a good cop, bad cop kind of relationship, and to be honest for a long time in high school it made me a little apprehensive to pray and build a relationship with my Heavenly Father. But it is not like that at all. Everything Jesus Christ did while he was here on earth was an exact representation of His Father, he came here to do the will and the works of the Father. Everything he learned, he learned from His Father, our Father. We have a perfectly loving and understanding Heavenly Father. He loves you more than any of us will ever know, so I invite you to build your relationship with Him and pray and ask for help to have him play a bigger role in your life than he already is. I promise He will answer, he won't leave you behind.

I love you all, please stay safe and have a good Christmas season. Those Idaho snowy roads are almost as dangerous as Indian roads with no traffic regulations and 30 million people trying to share the same road. 

Elder Armstrong 

Tired Friend on a Rickshaw

Still Sleeping

Making me tired too!  Ha Ha!