"I'm Not Home..."

Halo Keluargaku,

Well, this week was another pretty standard week out here in JB. No visits from general authorities or other famous people but lots of knocking and teaching. So it was standard, but pretty good!

One of the highlights was a lesson we had with a Chinese family early in the week. I think I told you about meeting them before. They're the family I told you had been praying for some comfort just before we knocked on their door. Anyway, they're still doing great and we had an awesome lesson about the Book of Mormon with them, the senior couple serving here and one of the branch missionaries. They're a family that's really sincerely searching for the truth (which I've found can be a really hard thing to find) and who are really committed to following whatever answers they receive, so I'm confident that they'll be getting the right answer soon. Unfortunately the husband has to go to Indonesia for business for about a month later this week, but we're still hopeful that everything is going to work out fine.

We've had some weird weather lately. Just the other day we had a day that was super overcast and very hot, but that never rained. It was really strange. Usually if you walk out of the house and it's a really hot day (which really just means it's a few degrees Celsius hotter, I think the temperature here just varies between 29 and 32 degrees, but it always feels a lot hotter!) you can almost be positive that it will rain that day. It's actually pretty predictable. So it was weird the other day to have a full day that was hot and cloudy without rain. The clouds were actually nice though, it's always better to have the clouds than the sun. The sun can be really brutal out here.

We had a fun contacting experience contacting and Indian man at his home just before he left for his job as a bus driver in Singapore. Well, we asked him if we could come back the next day and he told us a little bit reluctantly that that would be ok. So, the next day we start the fairly long bike ride in the hot sun to go out and go see him. Well, you can imagine our relief when we saw that his bus was still parked in front of his house, meaning that he hadn't left for work yet. Anyway, we walked up to the door and rang it, waited for a couple of seconds and saw just a flash of somebody walking out the front door and hearing a short of muffled gasp/shout. Well, that was strange we thought, but we figured he'd be coming back out in just a second after he grabbed the keys. Well, we waited there for a few minutes in the beating sun and... nothing happened. He didn't come back. After waiting a couple more minutes we retreated to some shade at his neighbors house and gave him a call.

"Oh hello friend, we're at your house right now and it's very hot. Do you think we can come in?"

"Oh uh, actually I'm not home right now. Ya, I'm visiting my relative"

It was at this point I realized that I was not only hearing his voice on the phone, but could actually hear him speaking inside the house. Well, after a short conversation (wherein he asked us to go visit him at his "relative's" house that was actually some distance away!), we just went on our merry way. Sometimes things don't quite work out the way you hoped they would, but at least it was funny!

Well, other than that, things are pretty much going the way they've been going here. We're still having a blast and doing our best to teach Heavenly Father's other children.

Anyway, I'm still loving it here! We're working hard and I'll be finishing up strong for sure!

I love you all so much. Thanks for everything!

Love you!
Elder Blissett