The Church in India & Baptisms in November

• The baptisms are all planned to go down (go down?) on November 23rd. I'm really excited. We might have to push them back one week, but that's Okay. They need to be ready. They are all doing well. One family didn't come to church because one of their relatives died in the night; but they are still happy and love the gospel.
• There are about 350 members in the branch but about half are inactive. So around 1 70 come every week. Its a pretty big branch in India. We are trying to work with less active members, but the branch has terrible records so we don't exactly know who is inactive. We just ask members if any of their friends stopped coming to church. The branch actually does really well with home teaching, but not everyone has home teachers. That is something we are trying to work on.
• Everything (the church organization) is pretty much the same. They don't have Young Men/Women, but most everything is the same.
• For Institute and Seminary they just have a member teach. It works out well. Most classes are full. There are people that come every week, and some that come once in a while.
• Members are very stubborn about referrals. They don't give them. They have them, they just won't tell us. It's really frustrating. I don't know why either. We are trying to work on that . We are having a fireside next Sunday to try and get referrals. Hopefully we will get some.
• . . . there is one funny story . . . We met this family and taught them. Then we were leaving and they just like threw their naked baby at me. I didn't know what to do, because we aren't supposed to hold children, but if I hadn't had held it, it would have fallen to the ground. So I just held it and they took a picture. I was like, "What is this? Where am I?" It's crazy. So many times crazy things are happening. It's nuts. Anyway, that is my funny story for the week.

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