YSA and Stake Conference - Hyderabad, India

We had the great experience of participating in an all India YSA (Young Single Adults) conference in Hyderabad from May 25 - 27. This group is for young single adults between the ages of 18 and 31. For this conference, singles up to ages 37 and 38 attended. On the same week-end, we also were privileged to be part of a conference for the church where the first Stake of the church in India was organized.

 

On Wednesday, May 23, we began our journey by having our picture taken with the two women who clean the apartment building and look after the plants. They are wonderful women who love to have us say hello to them. They don't speak English, but they are thrilled to associate with us. They make our days fun. Taking these pictures gave us something to do while we were waiting for the taxi to pick us up to go to the airport.

 

The hotel had two buildings: Green Park Hotel and the Marigold Hotel. This is the outside of the Marigold. All the meetings and activities for the conference were held in this building. Our hotel room was in the Green Park part. All foreigners had to stay in the Green Park.

All the missionary couples worked a long day on Thursday getting all the packets ready for the YSA. We had approximately 600 attend the conference. The missionaries here are [right front] Elder Zobell(Warner, AB), [left front and then going back] Elder and Sister Meyers (USA - serving in Sri Lanka), Elder Hatch (Cardston, AB), Sister Allison (Cochrane, AB), Elder Tiefenbach (Regina, SK).

 

We had computers working to get name tags, etc. ready for the registration packets.

 

 

Sister Wigg (from Calgary) was the official photographer. She was busy everyday documenting the conference. She had the wonderful experience of being with the General Authorities of the church throughout the week-end.

The young single adults arrived throughout Friday morning, beginning at about 4:30 a.m. We did not get up that early, but Sister Wigg and Elder and Sister Kellerstrass (from the USA and serving in Sri Lanka) were up early to meet the first train. They deserve a special thanks. Elder Kellerstrass and Sister Tiefenbach are talking with Rooben from Coimbatore.

The highlight of the YSA conference was the devotional on Friday morning when Elders Oaks (from the Quorum of Twelve), Hallstrom, and Perkins spoke. Their wives also spoke, and the wives spoke at a devotional on Saturday morning while Elders Oaks, Hallstrom, and Perkins were busy with the organization of the stake. This picture shows the YSA as they wait for the devotional to start. If you look way at the back, you will see Sister Tiefenbach (dressed in black and white). She is checking the sound quality/balance of the choir. Elder and Sister Allison from Cochrane, AB are seated in the front row.

The participants in the conference had time for some fun and games. Elder Tiefenbach and I were in charge of this part of the conference. This game is called "Return of the Ring." They formed two lines and had to pass the ring up and down the line. Which ever team finished first was the winner.

Here, they decided to play the same game while standing in a circle and holding hands. They had to pass the "ring" from person to person without breaking the hand clasp. Two rings were going around the circle in the opposite direction. The person who ended up with both rings had to step out of the circle, so no one wanted to be caught with both of them. They had a great time.







Elder Tiefenbach and Sister Tiefenbach had some helpers from an organization called Help International. They conducted the games under our direction. This is Brooke, from Utah, giving instructions for a "get to know you" game.












These are two YSA women from Coimbatore, Sister Beena and Sister Shaymala. They recently retured from missions in the Philippines.

The YSA loved the "Giants, Wizards, and Elves" game. Giants beat elves; wizards beat giants; elves beat wizards. Then the race begins to capture members of the "losing" category. They had a great time with this game.

 

Many of the participants took part in a family history workshop. We had many computers available, so everyone was able to have personal time as they began their family trees.

 After the dance on Saturday night, many of the young single adults grouped together for pictures. They had a great time posing for their pictures. The YSA especially enjoyed watching the couples dance. Sister Tiefenbach helped demonstrate a line dance.

This was the view outside our hotel room window. These men are constructing a new building. They have a unique way to build things here, and as you can see, safety measures are not the same as we experience in Canada.

After the YSA conference, we attended the Stake Conference where the first stake of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in India was created. The Stake Conference was held at the Novotel, which is a huge conference centre and hotel. The formation of a stake was a significant event for the members of the church in India. With a stake, the local members have more responsibility and authority. It also prepares them to have a temple in India. Presently, they have to travel to Hong Kong to attend the temple, which takes a considerable amount of time and money.

Sister Gibb and Elder and Sister Sharma are taking time out after the conference to talk about family history. Elder and Sister Sharma are from New Delhi, and are serving as family history missionaries in Hyderbad. Elder and Sister Gibb are from the USA and are serving as Area Family History Advisors for the Asia area. They are serving out of Hong Kong. (Elder Gibb is not in the picture, obviously.)

Elder and Sister Sharma have been wonderful to us. We first met them when we had our couples conference shortly after we arrived in India. She could tell that we were not used to the new culture, etc. and simply showed us a lot of love. They brighten our hearts whenever we see them. If we have time left on our visas when our mission is over, we plan to take an additional 7 or 8 days and go to visit them in Delhi so they can show us around that area.

 

Preparation Day with the Missionaries

On Monday, we spent much of the day with the missionaries. The missionaries have every Monday to have some fun and get things like laundry done. Elder Tiefenbach played cricket with the missionaries and some youth. Sister Tiefenbach cheered them on.

This is one of the youth that played with them. The day was HOT, HOT, HOT!!!




After playing crickett, we went bowling at Brookfields Mall. We had a lot of fun. We had several spectators.











Sister Tiefenbach's first throw resulted in a strike. She impressed everyone, including herself. The rest of the game did not go as well for her.

On the other hand, Elder Tiefenbach walked away as the champion, with a score of 111. He is my hero.



We took a few minutes to pick up a few things at the grocery store at the mall, and most of us met for a picture. The two missionaries who have their dress clothes on did not play crickeet; they had some mission business to do that morning, but they were able to bowl.










The next day was the missionary district meeting. We made chocolate chip cookies for it. They turned out very well. We could only cook 6 cookies at a time, so the whole batch took about 3 hours to finish. They were much appreciated.

Orphanage and Family History Training

We had some mirrors and lights installed in our apartment this past week. We are happy to have mirrors and lights over the bathroom sinks.

The mirrors and lights make shaving for Elder Tiefenbach and make-up application for Sister Tiefenbach much easier. We were also able to get another light in the kitchen. Previously, the only light was hidden behind the valence of the cupboards. This light is above the kitchen sink.

We baked a chocolate cake for our weekly district missionary meeting. The missionaries loved it. The sugar is different here - it is far coarser, which made creaming the butter, sugar, and eggs interesting, especially without an electric mixer. Needless to say, the results were not the same. Also, the power went out half way through baking the first pan. We can only cook one pan at a time because we have a microwave/convection oven combination. We left the one cake in the oven and put the uncooked one in the fridge. About four hours later, after the power came back on, we decided to try to finish baking the first cake. Surprisingly, the cake rose again. I didn't think it would do that, but I thought it was worth a shot. We should have taken a picture of the cakes, but we didn't think of it. We will get used to taking more pictures to document our activities. For the week coming up, we plan to make chocolate chip cookies for the district meeting. I found some sugar at a different store that is not quiet as coarse, but it is still coarser than the kind we buy in Canada. We had a difficult time finding a pan that I could use for baking the cookies. The only thing that we found was something that looks like a non-stick pie plate.

I get the same response from all the stores whenever I ask if they have any metal baking pans. They don't know what I am talking about.

We had a wonderful experience visiting with some teenage boys at the Families for Children Orphanage. They have been learning English, and we were there for them to practice the things they had learned. School vacation is occurring right now in India, so these boys were involved in what they call "summer camp." It is not a boy scout type of camp; it is a learning camp. They seem to really like learning. We wonder how many teen-aged boys in Canada would consider spending their summer vacation learning another language. The boys loved having us there. We hope to go back again. Possibly, we can get some pictures together and teach them some things about Canada.

We haven't taken any pictures while we were at the orphanage because they don't allow pictures to be taken; however, we were able to get a picture of some "kids" on our way back.

Our Saturday was spent at a Family History Consultant Training meeting. Sister Tiefenbach gave a one hour presentation at the meeting. We had mature women, teenagers, and one mature man attend the meeting.

We all went to a restaurant for lunch, and the women who attended the meeting took very good care of us at the restaurant, making sure that we could have a good experience with Indian food (i.e., they ordered for us so we could be sure that we didn't get spicey food.) We had butter pannier (not sure of spelling). It is the same sauce as butter chicken, but instead of chicken, it had some kind of cheese chunks. We also had naan bread with it. It was very tastey.

 Today, in addition to attending two sets of church meetings, we attended a baptism. The brother dressed in white baptized his sister (dressed in white). We left our apartment at 9:30 in the morning and returned shortly after 6:30 p.m. We stayed late after all the meetings were over to assiste several of the young adults open an account for the church's family history program that they will need for the conference next week-end.The day was very rewarding.

We are excited about going to Hyderabad on Wednesday for the all India Young Single Adult Conference (single adults ages 18/19 - 31). Elder and Sister Tiefenbach will be going prior to the confernece to help get things ready for the arrival of the young adults. We will be helping with the family history computer center, as well as whatever other assignments that we will be given.

Shifting in Coimbatore

This is the church building in Coimbatore. Two branches meet in this building. We have the opportunity to work with both branches. That means that we are at church from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. every Sunday. We enjoy meeting with the members of the church here. They make us feel very welcome.


 The building and the grounds are quite beautiful. We hope that everyone can tell by the pictures that the day was hot and sunny.

We were able to spend some time with some young people during the week. We "played" cricket for a while - well we didn't actually play a game; we hit the ball while a young man threw the ball to us. The security guard kept telling Elder Tiefenbach that he needed to hit the ball harder and that he should hit the ball with more spirit, like Sister Tiefenbach. After we played cricket, Sister Tiefenbach helped a young woman of about 13 years learn about the piano. In the Coimbatore branches, Sister Tiefenbach is the music expert. That is way too funny. We enjoyed our afternoon with them.

We shifted our apartment on Thursday. That means that we moved to our new apartment. We were excited to finally be closer to the church so we don't have to get a taxi everytime we need to go to the church. We will still need taxis to go shopping. We have no shopping close to us.

This is most of our belongings. How many trucks like this would it take to shift all our things in Regina? This makes us think about the things we really need. Mind you, our appliances and furniture were delivered separately. And, we definitely were barely getting by with the things we had. We did not want to acquire too much so our move would be easier. We had about 3 more bags that we took in the taxi. They looked far too precarious perched on top of everything else.


After moving, we were able to shop, shop, and shop. We had to make up for the shortages we had. We didn't buy anything extravagant. Things like flour and sugar were on our list. We also needed household items like garbage containers, etc. For the last two shopping trips, we hired a brother from one of the branches here. He has an old, old car (1940's or 50's) with no airconditioning and worn out seats, but we can rely on him. He drove us to the shops and stayed with us when we shopped. This all took 3 hours from the time he picked us up to the time he dropped us at home. He charges us 500 rupees, which is about $10.00. We don't mind paying extra because hiring him saves us a lot of time we would waste by waiting for a regular taxi.

We have two photos so everyone can compare the surroundings of our old apartment to our new one.







This is the area for our old apartment with quiet streets and beautiful trees.









This is the view from our balcony of our new apartment.

Welcome. Please come in and visit for awhile.

Take a seat. We can prepare something for you to eat with our new FOUR burner stove. We also have a microwave/convection oven. Maybe, we can make a chocolate cake now that we have flour and sugar. Mind you, the sugar is much coarser here, so we are not sure whether or not baking will turn our the same. We are still looking for some metal baking pans so we can possible make pizza.

If you need laundry done, we can certainly accommodate that. We have no dryer, so you would likely have to stay the night while the clothes dry.

 Today, Mother's Day, Sister Tiefenbach taught the primary children (children aged 3 - 12) a Mother's Day song. After they learned the song, they all went to sing the song to the women in Relief Society. (Relief Society is the women's organization of the church.) Sister Tiefenbach also received three roses from the two branches.

Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there. Enjoy the day.

Arrival in Coimbatore

We are so excited to have internet. The branch president of the Coimbatore First Branch (one of the church units in Coimbatore) helped us get a USB data card so we could have access to the internet. We will try this for a while, but we are finding that it is very slow. We opted for this type of internet because our apartment is not ready, yet, and won't be until the first week in May. We may get a hard-wired form of internet once we get into our apartment.

We were met with HOT, HOT weather in Coimbatore. Temperatures hovered around 40 degrees, without the humidex factored in. We have never sweat so much in our lives. Coimbatore is a city of about 2 million people, so it is significantly smaller than Bangalore, but 2 million people is still huge. This city has a small town feel, despite the number of people here. We have seen a few larger, modern buildings, but mostly, the buildings are small and old. Coimbatore is in the state of Tamil Nadu.


The current apartment is in a nice, quiet neighbourhood called Thasami Park Residency. It is a gated community with 2 security guards at the gate. We are the only foreigners in the community. The neighbours have been friendly and helpful. We have had to approach them a few times to help us call for taxis. The taxi drivers don't understand our English, and we do not understand theirs. So, we take our cell phone to the neighbour, so she can speak to the driver in Tamil, the language of the people in the Indian State of Tami Nadu.

Welcome to our temporary home.

These are our kitchen cupboards. The cupboards in our real apartment will have cabinet doors. Yes, our cupboards are looking bare. We will buy more when we "shift" our apartment. Below is the counter top. You can see that the stove is a counter top stove. I will have a 4- burner counter top stove and a microwave/convection oven in our new apartment. I am not sure whether or not I will be able to bake in it. I hope so. The kitchen does not have hot running water, so all water for washing dishes must be heated up on the stove. Our new apartment will be the same. The sinks have no drain plugs, so we use basins for washing and rinsing. We have a washing machine, and we hang the clothes to dry in a spare room on a drying rack.

We have many power outages in Coimbatore. Generally, the power is out everyday from 6:00 a.m. go 9:00 a.m., 9:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., and during the middle of the night. We have to plan our laundry, etc. around these outages. We have auxiallry power, so we can still use the lights and fans, but not the washer or the air conditioner. Whenever the power goes out or comes back on, we have to go to the breaker box and flip a breaker. One night we had to do that about 4 times during the night - we had extra power outages. Of course, it was REALLY hot, so we had to keep the fans going. It was just like getting up to a fussy child during the night.

 

We have a queen size bed, but the mattress is very hard. We also have an air conditioner in the bedroom, as of Saturday, so the nights have been more comfortable.

Last Monday, we visited an orphanage. It has between 300 and 350 children aged from infancy to adolescence. The orphanage has decided to "specialize" in special needs children, and is slowly changing its focus as the older children move into their own housing. We heard many sad stories about the lives of these children. We will likely volunteer at the orphanage by helping the older children with their reading. Right now is school vacation in India, so we are not sure when we will start that.

We have been asked by the District President of the Coimbatore District of the church to be involved in the Family History Center, in training the director of the center, and in helping her train other family history workers. We will be attending a planning meeting on Tuesday evening. We also hope to be involved with the young single adults (ages 18 - 31) in this area. There is a young single adult conference scheduled in Hyderbad on May 25 - 27 for all young single adults in India. This will be an amazing conference, and we have the opportunity to help with the conference. One of the main focuses of the conference will be to encourage the participants to gather their family history. We will have a major role with that. We are very excited about helping in this area. This conference will coincide with the formation of the first Stake of the church in India. A Stake refers to a specific geographic area of the church, just like a district, but Stakes have a more direct link to higher church authorities. This is a significant event for church members in India.

We are slowly getting used to life here in India. We have ventured out on our own to get groceries, etc. and have made it back home. This is good.

Arrival in Bangalore

Our flight from Salt Lake City to Bangalore was LONG. We left Provo at 12:30 on Monday, April 9 and caught our 3:30 flight. The flight took us to Chicago, then to London (England), and finally to Bangalore, arriving at 4:30 a.m. on Wednesday, April 11 (Bangalore time). That would be 5:00 p.m. Tuesday, April 10. We were tired. This is the two of us leaving the airport at Bangalore.

After arriving, we rested for a few hours; then we went out to eat at an Indian restaurant. The Wigg's took us. The Wigg's are the mission couple who work in the mission office. Elder Wigg is in the above picture.

Our apartment will not be ready until May 1st, so we are staying with the Wigg's until Thursday, April 19th. We need to be in Coimbatore to register, so we will stay in an apartment that two young missionaries were supposed to have. They will stay with two other young missionaries until we move into our apartment. We spent the rest of the week spending some time at the mission office, helping when we could and doing some tourist activities.

On Thursday, April 12, we went for an auto ride. An auto is a three-wheeled vechile used to transport people. The traffice here is total chaos; however, it is organized chaos, if there can be such a thing.

This is an auto; they dart in and out of traffic, along with all the other vehicles and pedestrians on the road. We have never seen so much traffic and people. The traffic here has often been compared to a river because it goes where ever there is a place for it to go. If the road has two designated lanes, the vehicles will make it into 4.

One of the places we went on our auto ride was to the  Lalbagh park, where we saw several of these:

Friday morning was spent at the mission office, and Sister Wigg and Sister Tiefenbach went shopping for an hour to get food for the conference that President Funk (the president of the India Bangalore Mission) is having with the missionary couples. In the evening we and the Wigg's went for a walk and came accross this animal by the sidewalk:

On Saturday, we were escorted to Mysore by Karthik, a young friend of the Wigg's. He was an excellent driver, weaving through the traffic congestion with ease. In Mysore, we went to a palace, and we bought a saree.

Apparently, Mysore is famous for its silk.

We also drove up Chamundi Hill and enjoyed the view. The view would have been better had the smog not been so bad.

India is very different from Regina. Seeing young children walking in the middle of traffic trying to sell trinkets to the motorist and seeing all the people working and living in little shanties made me grateful for the things that we have. We could also learn from these people because despite their poor situation, they seem to enjoy life. We should all take a moment to thank our Heavenly Father for the blessings that we have.

Salt Lake City and Provo

When we arrived in Salt Lake City on March 30, 2012, the weather was absolutely wonderful, with the temperature ranging between 22 and 25 degrees for the first few days. This is the tree outside our hotel.

The weather continued to be beautiful in Provo when we arrived on April 1, 2012.

This was the scene on Friday, April 6.

We have had a wonderful experience here in Provo. We have met many other couples going to places all over the world. We have met couples going to Freiberg, Germany; Parguay; Scotland/Ireland; Kiev, Ukraine; Russia; several to the Philippines; Tacoma, Washington; Washington D.C.; Chile; and the list goes on.

All the couples were divided into smaller groups of about 5 couples. This is the group we are in: Sister Hale (our morning instructor), the Bush's, the Clark's, the Abbotts, the Bass's, and us.










Meeting all these people has been a great support. Leaving family behind has been difficult, but being with so many other couples who have done the same has made it much easier. We have developed our own family away from home with these people.

We are here with about 2,000 young men and women who are preparing to serve missions throughout the world. Surprisingly, or maybe not so surprisingly, out of these 2,000 young adults, we met a young woman from Coimbatore, India. She was so excited to meet us. We will definitely enjoy meeting her family when we get to India. We do not believe this meeting was by chance. We have witnessed many ways our Heavenly Father has guided and directed us while we have been here.

We leave for India tomorrow (Monday, April 9). The trip will be LONG!!! We fly out of Salt Lake City at 3:30 and fly to Chicago and then to London, England. We have a couple of hours at the airport in London, and then from London, we fly to Bangalore, India. Twenty-five hours will pass from the time we leave Salt Lake City to when we arrive in Bangalore at 4:30 a.m. on Wednesday, April 11. We will definitely be ready for bed when we arrive, but people in Bangalor will be preparing to start the day.