Elder Cloward: India Bengaluru Mission: E-mail: July 13, 2015 "Oh come on, I just cleaned this!"

"Elder, where's the lid for the blender jar?"
"Don't know Elder, sorry."
"Okay, I guess I'll find something else..."

This is more or less the conversation my companion and I had Sunday morning as we prepared food to have for lunch after church. He was preparing chutney, I was upstairs getting ready, and disaster was lurking in the corners of the kitchen. I never understood before why they tell us to stay on the same floor of the building as your companion, but now I know. As I walked downstairs and into the kitchen to check on his progress I stepped into the aftermath of a chutney tornado. It covered everything; the counters, the floor, the cupboards all the way on the other side of the room, but best of all was my companion, who was covered head to toe. Apparently when he couldn't find the right lid for the jar he decided to just use it without one, which resulted in him and the kitchen looking like a chutney-stained battlefield. After I regained my composure from laughing more than I should have, I offered to help him clean up, but he insisted that he do it himself. As he dabbed at the chutney and massaged his injured pride I chuckled one last time and then continued to get ready. Lesson learned- always use the right lid on the blender, or don't blend at all.

Speaking of blender lids there was another important lesson they taught me a little while back. In my old apartment we used our blender frequently to prepare smoothies, chutneys, and other items. All the lids to the jars were purple, which made them easy to identify when we opened our less than organized kitchen cupboards, but unfortunately I learned the hard way that the purple dye wasn't as permanent as it should've been. Somehow, (and I still can't figure out how) one of the purple lids got into my laundry without my knowing. I was surprised as I removed the lid from my laundry after the wash, but I was even more surprised to discover a large purple stain on the back of one of my white shirts. Luckily this wasn't the first time I've had my clothes stained by an unwanted object in the wash so I knew that the stain would fade after a few more cycles, or at least I hoped it would. So far I've had my white clothes stained green, purple, and blue twice, which has left them all a nice shade of grey. You'd think that I would learn after the first, second, or third time of doing this, but considering the fact that I even remember to wash my clothes regularly at all is a miracle you can't really blame me.

These last 6 weeks in Chennai have been awesome. I've had many ups and downs but I feel like I've grown tremendously here during this transfer. I leave for the Philippines tonight to renew my visa and I'm heartbroken to be leaving a city and a branch that I've come to love so much. On the bright side though we were able to baptize our investigator, Joseph, yesterday. We've been working with him for a long time and I worried he wouldn't be ready before I left, but due to some divine help it happened.
Here are the photos: