Our branch in Chennai consists of about 120 regularly attending members. We attend the English-speaking branch, but it has a geographic boundary which takes in many members who only speak Tamil (or very little English) so in reality the instruction is more 50-50 English and Tamil. I serve with the Primary and David serves with the Young Men, and we both take on our own projects to help improve things wherever we see needs. My latest project is teaching piano to some of the primary and youth. At the moment I am the only pianist in the branch, and there are only a few of us across the entire district, so I'm hoping to help improve that stat over time. Fingers crossed that when we leave, somebody else will arrive who can continue the lessons.
There are four other branches in our District. We are part of the Bangalore India Mission. The closest Stake is in Bangalore, where the India Temple will be built.
At Christmas time the branch puts out a nativity display.
This is our Church building. It is three stories high and about 8 years old.
This is the street in front of our building. That is about 4/5/6 lanes (lanes are a bit of a fluid concept in India) of traffic all travelling in one direction. Every Sunday our driver has to cross across all of those lanes of traffic in a short period of time in order to get us into the chapel gate.
Here are some of the branch members.
This year there was a Pongal (harvest festival) display at the front of the chapel. We hadn't seen this before. It must have been newly made for this year.
Ethan, David and some of the young men at an activity.
A welcome display in the foyer. Made from flowers.
Some of the Primary children. When everybody is at Church we have 15 children. Three of those primary children are now youth - including Erica!
The little girl at the front in the white dress (named Kim) joined our primary early last year. She had moved from a different state of India and spoke neither English or Tamil. For the first few months she would spend her time in primary either crying, refusing to participate or trying to go into the nursery to play with the toys. In the last quarter of the year she gave her own primary presentation talk in English and sang all of the songs with the other children. Last Sunday she volunteered to say a prayer and did the entire thing herself in English. She now regularly answers questions, has friends and seems to really enjoy being in Primary.
The boy at the back right (Abhinauv) is incredibly smart. I think he knows every scripture story back to front. His English is incredible. He devours books. He recently entered an essay contest in India for school children and came runner-up. He won a trip to NASA!
The three girls to Erica's left speak a lot more Tamil than English, so I'm sure they don't always understand what I am saying, but they are super respectful and reverent. Ritika (in black) was brought to Church by an Aunty. Ritika decided to get baptised, and since then her Mother has also been baptised. Keshini (in the peach dress) comes to church with her older brother and an Aunty. Her parents are not members (yet). She is always a ray of sunshine. Cheryl (with her hand on her face) was recently baptised. She is the sweetest girl.
The boy in the suit was named after two Prophets - Kimbell Smith! He is a ball of energy and loves that he is now the most senior member of the senior primary. He's always keen to help and will make sure we have enough chairs in the classroom.
Collectively they all love singing Do As I'm Doing, The Miracle, A Child's Prayer, Follow the Prophet and playing 'stop go' (we have stop and go road signs that they hold up to indicate when the other children should start and stop singing).
They are a great group. I need to try to get a picture with everybody in it!
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