11 Month Mark

Hey family, guess who just hit 11 months in the mission field? This guy did. Also guess who is amazing at cricket and just schooled some Indian missionaries in a zone activity? This guy again. 

Ummmm first off, I was born in 1997. My favorite teams my entire life have been the Dallas Cowboys and the Utah Jazz. I love them more than most people would agree is acceptable. And after 20 years of cheering them on, through every stinking loss, and win, and heartbreak, and ups and downs...mostly downs...Heavenly Father sent me on a mission. And what happens next? They start winning! Both teams! A lot! And then they go to the playoffs and have all star players. What is this? Heavenly Father must have a sense of humor, and I am sure He is laughing with every point Gordon Hayward scores and every touchdown the Cowboys have;)

This week wasn't so hot, we actually had a few rain showers which brought some wind and that was nice, but the rain didn't last very long and so that just made everything humid after it left. I look like a tomato and my hair is getting more blonde by the day in the sunshine. But that's all a part of the Indians "Show Piece" nickname they gave me. Everyone here has black hair so I stick out like crazy, also I got told that I had beautiful eyes this week by members and investigators, blue eyes are only seen in Hollywood movies for these guys. 

Thank you mom so much for the package you sent this week, besides the Utah Utes tie. That will be burned as soon as Elder Openshaw and I meet each other again. Yuck. Go Cougs. Also Grandma I got your letters and they are awesome. Yes it takes a few weeks to get them out to where I am serving, but they mean everything to me and I will gladly accept any letters from anyone!

This week was good and I have no complaints except the nasty water, but everything else is normal and going well! Shiva Ji and our other investigators are progressing well, I love teaching so much and we finally have built our teaching pool to a steady level. It's nice to get inside and teach and not be walking all day knocking doors and getting rejected. 

This week I don't have much to say and I am short on time so I just wanted to tell you how important it is to have a favorite hymn. It sounds dumb to some, and perfectly logical to others. But after living in this crazy city for 11 months, and it is so loud here, it's nice to be able to walk down the roads humming a hymn to yourself as you look for someone who may be interested. My personal favorites are Come Ye Children of the Lord and Now Let Us Rejoice. #58 and #3 They are just happy and uplifting hymns full of hope in the future and the Second Coming. And they are perfect to have always in mind to bring to remembrance in case I get stressed or overwhelmed in India. Find your favorite hymn, study the words, they can bring peace, they can turn away temptation, they can bring happy thoughts.

I love you guys...I love the Jazz...and you better #TAKENOTE

Elder Armstrong 

Week Forty-Seven

Dear Family, 

I hope all of you had a good week, mine was pretty good. Just working and enjoying each day because my year mark is coming up fast and after that I hear it only goes by faster. This week I literally turned down buying food at a street stand because it was 40 rupees (60 cents) and then walked about a mile in the heat to eat at a street food stand that cost 30 rupees (45 cents). The meal filled me up completely and I bought a liter bottle of water for another 30 cents. It is unreal how cheap things are here, I will come back home and die because I won't want to spend a single penny. Plus all my rupees look like monopoly money; I have purple, green, red, white, and orange, but instead of the monopoly man with a mustache and a top hat it has Mahatma Gandhi. India is a pretty cool place.

Noida is a great place and I have changed so much since coming here, it's amazing to see the church at such a small beginning and to know that someday Noida will have 4 wards. It's faith in that future, that helps all of us keep going. We as a district are pushing continual improvement here in Noida and trying to have zero setbacks. Even if we make a tiny amount of progress, we want that over any type of setback. We always want to be climbing. 

This week we found a new investigator which was a miracle. We have been on a drought of investigators this last month. His name is Shiva Ji. He is an awesome kid who just moved to Delhi from a small farm community in Maharastra. He wants to study here in Delhi and was looking for a job when we found him. He let us in and we taught the restoration and he even accepted baptism. He is awesome and is keeping commitments so far. We were praying for him to get a job and he did, but he works on Sundays during church, so that is a challenge we are trying to overcome. We have high hopes for him and I hope he can be baptized before the end of this transfer. He could turn into a great leader to help our branch. 

In English class this week I was able to give the Gospel Message at the end of class, and I chose to share my favorite Mormon Message. "Bearing Our Burdens with Hope" It's such a good video and I hope you will all take some time to watch it, even if you already have. It's only 8 minutes guys;)

But I love the message because truly hope is a necessary part of our spiritual life. The Book of Mormon teaches that if ye have Faith, Hope, and Charity, then ye shall always abound in good works. Hope is so important because it gets us through the tough days. Hope helps us understand that it won't always be bad, that it won't always be hard, that someday all will be well and we will no longer suffer. Whether the situation is your child going in a direction you had otherwise planned, or a loss of a job, or walking all day in the heat and dirt of Noida, someday all will be well. We can either wait for that happy day to come, or we can build our Hope and enjoy the tough and sometimes heart breaking journey. I promise if you weigh your burdens down with Hope, you will get the traction you need to push through another day. Rely on our Savior and his Redeeming Power, there is no other who can help you like He can.

Let's Go Jazz! I'm cheering from India, and I can hear that arena from here. Jazz fans are the best fans. 

Love Elder Armstrong

Week Forty-Six

Hello Family!! 

This week brought transfers and I am still in Noida with Elder Mani and I am still the District Leader. Noida is tough still and there are a lot of downsides to being here, but we focus on the positives. Yesterday we set a goal to have 25 people at Sacrament meeting every week, we have high hopes to reach our goals. Transfers happened and we lost some good missionaries. Elder Dusara went home and he will be missed, but I'm excited for him to be back in Seattle watching the Seahawks. If we have counted correctly we now have 39 missionaries in Delhi, 6 in Mumbai, and 7 in Pakistan. So that's my entire mission if you didn't know. We are really low and all the news from the mission office points to no new missionaries for a few months. Satan is doing everything possible to stop the India New Delhi stake from forming, but we know who will win. 

Things are going great here for the most part, I have no complaints. Wait, yes I do, it hit 108 degrees this week. I will gladly complain about that.  I'm as Indian as ever and I speak awful English unless I actually try to speak like a normal person. But if I'm naturally just flowing, I speak like an Indian. I haven't lived with an American for over 6 months, and after this transfer and the shortage of missionaries it could be 6 months or so until I live with a white person again. 

Yessssssss JAZZZZZZ!!!!! Oh man do I miss them. I am so happy they are having success and especially getting some wins in the playoffs, I hope you are watching for me.  Yell real loud, I miss it so much. 

This week I was actually going through my wallet where I have kept my old Jazz tickets from the games I went to last season with friends. I was remembering those great nights (beating Kobe by 40) and all the fun we had, I also had tickets from the BYU football game me and my family went to. I had such a blessed life and I am so thankful for the things I was able to do and see growing up, but in my wallet was something else that I hold tightly and that was my temple recommend. 

 

In India we have no temple...the closest being Hong Kong and soon the Thailand temple. And the theme lately that keeps coming up is temples. Pocatello is getting a temple, there was a lesson in church about temples, we teach families about temples, and then in the midst of day dreaming about my Jazz winning 10 championships in a row, I saw my temple recommend. I am so grateful for it, and it means so much to me. 

The temple is such a special place, and it seriously is the House of the Lord. I cannot wait to go back to the temple, and I am amazed at how many families here save everything they have to fly to Hong Kong and get sealed together. They simply can't wait until a temple comes to India. But even if they cannot go to the temple, we teach them how important it is to have a valid temple recommend anyways, always on hand. It is so important to know that you are worthy to enter the temple, even if you cannot go often or at all. I promise if you live by the standards of holding a temple recommend you will never fall of the straight and narrow. Always have it with you, always live worthy of it, and always strive to attend the temple. The blessings are real, the power is real, and living worthy to be there, is something we can't treat lightly.

Go Jazz, or #TakeNote I guess is the slogan, I like it. 

It's good to be in the playoffs, it's better to be in India. 

Elder Armstrong

 

Helping the family move and riding on top of their belongings.

Lovely Canal

Holi

Week Forty-Five

Namaste from Hindustan, 

What a great week in India! We had a lot of exciting days with a lot of new things. It was one of those weeks that felt like it was the start of my mission where everything was new and crazy! Last night we ate at a member's home, and I have no idea how, but they fed us Pork. It was okay, not my mom’s pork chops, but it was a nice surprise. I will admit though, it was tough eating some of it, I haven't eaten anything like that in 10 or 11 months, if you don't count the dog and the one time me and Elder Openshaw got beef from the nice Muslim guy. But it really was hard to eat, the texture, everything was different and felt weird...it's scaring me that in a year I won't be able to eat normal in America. 

Then in the middle of the week we had another sketchy moment where things could have went really bad. We went to a member's home, the Aryan's, to teach a lesson and eat dinner, they are our most active family and are our favorites;) They are so nice and seriously would do anything for any missionary and we are teaching one of the sisters who lives there. The problem is they don't live in a nice neighborhood, the things you see around their home is stuff I could never take pictures of, because I would feel awful and disrespectful, and I could get stabbed.  Anyways dinner went later than expected so we tried to get a quick auto ride or rickshaw home, but no one came by, then at 10:30 the metro shut down and we couldn't travel by metro. So here I was in Trilokpuri trying to get home late at night in a bad area. The family then decided the best option would be to walk me through the neighborhood to the main road, this whole time not worrying one bit about my companion. (white kids with backpacks are the target for criminals I guess.) So I take off my tie, untuck my shirt, and basically they tell me to not look at anyone. So I was escorted through town by Brother Sumit and 4 of his close family members and friends...all pretty big guys. It was awesome, I wasn't worried for a second, and neither was Elder Mani, but we would have been if it weren't for the members. 

Then we got a call last night that Sumit was robbed as he left an ATM withdrawing money to help pay for his sons tuition. 5000 rupees gone, and now his kid has to wait until next year to start 1st grade. So who knows how many more visits we will be making to the Aryan family. It's sad. 

Not much other news. Transfers are this week and we are waiting to see if I will be staying or leaving Noida. I have no idea what will happen so I guess you will hear about it next week. This week we watched General Conference and I loved it. I loved President Monson's short but wonderful talks. Usually I feel like some talks are boring and some are great, but this time I felt as if just about every single one of them was really good. I had a lot of questions answered and I felt the Spirit, especially as the choir sang...they're good. 

This week I just wanted to share some thoughts about Humility. The same crazy night we were in Trilokpuri we had just shared the scripture Luke 18:10-14. I hope you will read and mark that. It was later shared in conference with us this weekend. I love it and I know that it applies to us so much today. It is very easy to think of ourselves as higher than another person. Or to think lowly of another, but we know better. In the scripture the Pharisee exclaims in prayer that he fasts twice a week and that he does so many great and wonderful things, and then he says that he is thankful that he is not as the Publican who is right next to him. But the best part of the scripture reads "for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted." What a scripture. If we are as the Pharisee trying to talk our way into heaven, we will not get there. It's about actions, and it's about understanding who you are. The publican understood he wasn't perfect, saying "God be merciful to me, a sinner." No one is perfect, we have heard that over and over since forever. But sometimes we forget and still think that we are. Try and work on Humility, even if you are already good at it, because no one is perfect, and we should all be striving to be perfect. Do it because God, will bless you. Those who are humble by choice will be more blessed than those who are compelled to be. It brings peace and happiness, to us and to others. 

Love you guys, Go Jazz

Elder Armstrong