New Comp!

Hello!

So! This transfer has changed things up! Previously there were 4 elders serving in Dowleswarem and we had the area split. Now. 2 elders have been pulled out and we are covering the entire area of Dowleswarem! My new companion is Elder Eames! He finishes his mission next transfer so wish me luck. But we now cover the entire Dowleswarem branch. Its going to be a busy 6 weeks. President Berrett told me he would probably put 2 more missionaries here after this transfer. So will will see. All I know is that I will definitely be here for another 3 months. Also my 6 month mark is in 2 days! Man time flies. Sort of! Kind of weird though. 1/4 of my mission is over. That makes me sad but also reminds me that i have 3/4 to do all the work that I can. Pretty sweet!

So this week was pretty slow. Elder Sharma mostly wanted to say goodbye to members so we visited a lot of them. Which was also really good. The relationship between members and missionaries is pretty weak here so we will be working on strengthening that for the next couple of months. We are also going to be focusing a lot more on less actives and recent converts. This branch has like 400 members but only 70 are active. We have some work to do. We have been going on exchanges with members to help them with their home teaching because they dont know how. This week I have been thinking a lot about what I am actually doing. We are literally laying the foundation for the Church here. These people dont have much of an idea of how things are run or how the church does things. The missionaries are the ones that kind of over see things. Its interesting to watch and actually very humbling. Its a lot of pressure put on us to make sure that the affairs of the Church are run properly and that everything goes smoothly. Pretty intense, But cool to see and be a part of. 

Its been getting really hot again... bleh. haha the humidity is insane. The weather has now changed to raining a little bit during the night and then blistering hot for the rest of the day. Haha something funny that we realized this week is that our a/c is set at 24 C which is like 75 degrees i think and when its set that low we freeze to death at night. It gets soooo cold! I woke up like 3 times last night because i was freezing. I don't know if thats normal or not but I just remember that our house was set at like 68 right? I dont know. But Its weird. 

So the language barrier is rough. It is so hard to find english speaking people here. I know a little bit of Telagu but I can understand more than I speak. Also we aren't allowed to teach in Telagu. There is a thing called the English memorandum which was set by the area presidency. Just means that we have to teach in English. Sometimes we have a member come and translate for us but we arent supposed to. Its pretty tough. Breakfast usually consists of corn flakes and sugar. Every once in a while we get Bajji or Dosa or Idly or Parota or Chipothe. All are really good except for idly. Its like this mashed rice patty and its.. Interesting. We have a washing machine in our apartment but they dont have dryers here so we hang our clothes on racks. In the dirty swarem our building doesnt have a generator so when the power goes our we are on our own. Its lovely. But the power doesnt go out as much as it used to which is way nice! Well. Yeah... Love yaaa

Elder Checketts