Hey family, I'm in India. It was
more apparent than ever this week. So many crazy things to tell you.
So this week I was transferred to a
place called Noida, the hardest area to serve in the Delhi mission. Noida is
just across the Yamuna River, which is just
like the difference of Baltimore and Washington D.C. So I'm technically out of Delhi and I was called to be the
District Leader. My new companions are Elder Sigamani and Elder Sirimisetti,
they are 21 and 26 years old and between the two of them they speak 12
languages. They are both pretty cool and I am the only American in our
apartment with 6 Indian missionaries. We serve in a tri-companionship when we go out. Everyone in the apartment combined speaks
19 different languages. The bathroom is gross, the kitchen is worse, but I have
no choice I guess. The water here is extremely bad. It's so bad that one of my
responsibilities is to order clean water each week that a kid on a mo-ped brings
to our door. The mission had to change the filters on our purifiers too many
times and this is the cheaper option. But we still get the wonderful experience
of showering in that dirty water. But it doesn't look dirty, it looks pretty
clean. The thing that gets me is the smell...the water smells bad...I don't
know where it's coming from...but it's not a happy place.
Noida is a tough place to serve
though mostly because of the missionary work here being slightly impossible.
Everyone we talk to on the streets yells at us or rejects us and it's been that
way for a long time. They haven't had a baptism in months and even when
President Hodges came on an exchange here they went "finding" and when he
invited a guy to learn more, he put his finger in President Hodges face and was threatening
him. The crime rate here is higher because it's not as protected as Delhi
because Delhi is the capital city. I don't wear a nametag when I'm out proselyting
in the streets and the Indians take theirs off at night time. They even made me
throw on one of their sweaters my first day here because they said, "Hey macha, your white
American skin is going to get us in trouble, put this on rah." Apparently
my farmer tan arms draw too much bad attention. Some elders got robbed at 11:00am
in the morning...and they were Indian.
The branch here had 18 members show
up on Sunday and we also had some Americans here for the weekend on business.
To be an actual branch you need to have 15 Melchizidek Priesthood holders. So
we have that, but we are only able to contact 8 of them and only 5 of those 8
are active members. Each week one missionary speaks in sacrament. I spoke yesterday. I teach
Sunday school and once a month I will teach Elders Quorum. There are no young
men so we do the entire sacrament and basically we do everything, but the
people who are active work hard to help and they have amazing faith. I would
have never wanted to come to church if it only had 10 other people and I had no
friends there, so to stay active in a branch this small is a testimony builder to
me and a reminder that I have it so lucky back in Idaho. I am the District Leader of the seven Elders in my apartment and the branch...if anything
goes bad at the branch I'm the acting leader...if one week no one shows
up to sacrament...i have to conduct the meeting. About 3 months ago a
missionary was the first counselor in the branch presidency...so we're
trying to make sure that doesn't happen again.
One experience that I would like to
share with you. My first night here we went to get chicken and after walking to
the shop and asking for 2 kg's of chicken we sat there watching a Tamil movie
on a small little 8 inch TV. The guy grabbed a chicken out of a large 55 gallon
burn barrel type of thing and slit its throat and dropped it back in to bleed
out. Then we watched him strip the feathers off and cut it up and I got blood
everywhere on my clothes because he was chopping it like some kind of ninja.
Then as we took the steaming fresh chicken home to eat, I grabbed myself a fresh
apple from the market and a bottle of Thums Up (Indian Pepsi) we witnessed a lady get robbed and before we could do anything the guy was gone into
the crowd of people.
Sorry for the crazy email...I hope
you like it. Life here is crazy and everyday I think it can't get any
crazier...and then it does. My right hand is my fork and my left hand is my
toilet paper. It's gross but it's true. BUT the craziest thing ever, I love it
here. I absolutely love it AND I think I'll always be surprised by that feeling,
because that's not regular Preston. The Lord definitely has helped me so much! I don't feel like a good enough missionary to be here, but the Lord doesn't
call the qualified, he qualifies the called. For the next 16 months this is my
home, and it's going to kill me to leave.
All I have to share for today is
that I've learned to not be selfish more than anything on my mission. I
remember my first week here I was Skype teaching a Nepali family with the
assistants and all I could do was look at the small picture of me in the bottom
corner of the screen to check my hair. It's seven months later and all I can say is that
it's bigger than me. It's bigger than any one of us. We can't be selfish when
others need help, that's not how the gospel works.
I love you all and would send some
pictures but these computers have so many viruses I have to find another way to
send them or else I'll lose them all.
Elder Armstrong
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