Elder AJ Halling Boston Massachusetts Mission: Monday Already?

Guess what they say is true. Every week goes by faster and faster. We just emailed, like yesterday... didn't we? So crazy.

This week's been pretty fun. We've traveled a lot. We got a lot done. It's probably all pretty boring to you all. But hey, for those who'd like to ready anyways, here you go.

We visited Ludlow, MA, Hartford, CT (Hartford is so sick, such a cool city. Ghettos, yo.) Bridgeport, CT, Woodbridge, CT, Groton, CT, Norwich, CT. All of them were new extender companionships hopping on to join in on the Skyping fun. We are going to have some great digital missionaries this upcoming transfer. We're excited.

Here's a cool story from this week. So here we were working on one of the websites that is pretty "beta" for finding people to video chat, right? And we find a man from India who just wanted to practice his English. We agreed, and decided we'd just talk about the gospel a bit with him and see how interested he was. Well, after practicing English for about 2 minutes, we just said "Hey, you know, we'd love to teach you a bit about Jesus Christ." ..It goes silent for a minute. And he goes "really??? I would LOVE THAT. I just posted a few questions on the internet and nobody responded to me, I want to know more about Jesus and the bible. Can you help me?" We were stoked! We agreed, and set up a time to Skype later on in the week. So we planned a lesson that was basically going to explain who Jesus Christ was, and why we have the bible, why it's important. Things like that.

Well, we come back to find out that he is in the Hindu religion, which is super common in India. But he tells us, he's been listening to Christian internet broadcasts for years now, and he always watches videos about the Savior. Then he breaks off into this amazing testimony that he can't be active in one religion, but know that Jesus Christ is his savior. He knew Christ was his savior. He doesn't even own a copy of the bible, he just reads it daily on his computer or his phone. But he is absolutely in love with it.

How amazing is that??

So he gave us his address, he wants the missionaries to come over, he accepted baptism, and he is just golden.

Here's the super sad part. He lives 2 hours away from the closest church. He lives in a country that is religiously free, and the church is there. Just not in his area. How sad is that, that this guy has access to the truth, but can't live it - purely because there isn't a group, branch, or ward in his area. We're going to call the mission he's in and see what they think we should do. And of course continue Skyping him.

The other awesome story from this week, President Packard called us Sunday morning and asked us to come to the Boston Stake conference, because he'd be announcing that the stake president gave him the thumbs up to ask every member of the Boston Stake to participate in digital missionary lessons via 3-way Skype. How cool is that? So he asked us to bring our sign up sheet, and a pen, ready to have everyone sign up. I think we have about 50 members who've said they'd love to participate via Skype, with so much more who will sign up. It's exciting! We're going places!

That's about it for this week.

Sorry the pictures are always from P day, but we went hiking, and I loved it, so enjoy some pictures. :)