Not even 0% sure if that's how you spell that, but if you say it to a Guatemalan it means "Hi what's up?!". I hope that you all are happy and healthy and enjoying life because that's how life should be! So this week was definitely a week. First off, we had the opportunity to meet a lot of new people, our President has asked us to have a focus on finding new investigators and we did just that! Political unrest in Guatemala has sent a lot of new immigrants our way who don't even speak Spanish! In Guatemala they learn Spanish in school but at home (at least in the city of Toto) they speak a dialect called Quiche. It's a really awesome dialect that literally makes zero sense..a word that's spelled "ri re xibija'lija'xbiab" could really sound like "re re fish". Granted that's just an example, but it's been really neat to get to learn it! We have a investigator who's husband speaks Spanish but she doesn't speak any Spanish at all so we've been learning how to start the conversation in Quiche so the husband doesn't have to translate as much. It was funny because right when I started to get a hang of Spanish, we got a Quiche shaped wrench thrown in our lives to humble us :)
In other exciting news, our area has done something that has never been done before! In Houston, a big focus for the City of Houston and the Church has been to teach English to recently arrived immigrants. So they just decided to partner together and so for the last 3 years the Church has been implementing the Daily Dose program to teach the parents of students who just recently arrived in the junior high school around Texas. Fast-forward three years and the English as a Second Language coordinator for a local high school in our area hunts us down on the street (ends up following us for 10 something minutes) and asks us to start an English Class in their school. 5 days, a couple calls with President, and meetings with various school leaders and we are now in charge of an high school class where we go in and teach recently arrived refugee kids how to talk in English. It has been such a humbling experience to get to know these kids (who are really only 3-4 years younger than I) and hear their stories about coming to the U.S. from Burkina Faso, Rwanda, Columbia, Guatemala, Uganda, and the DRC.
A lot of them lost family members, friends, and left behind all they had to come the America. Their stories humble me a lot, I've realized in the last few days truly how blessed I am. It changes how you think about things. A few days ago we found a group of Romanians that are living in one of the mega apartment complexes that we work a lot in and we started teaching all of them! The translation rate is about 50% but the mother of them all, also speaks Italian which is more like a 75% translations rate. It's been such a special experiences because although they have nothing in their fridge, no food on the table, and we don't even speak their language, they are still the most loving people in the entire world. Every time we finish lessons all the kids come and give us the biggest hugs and it's the most special feeling in the entire world.
It's also changed how I look at the world, I mean I have been blessed with so much. With a family, food on the table, and everything I could ever need, yet sometimes I find myself complaining about little insignificant things that mean nothing. It was neat because we had the opportunity to host President Russell M. Nelson (who for those that don't know, he is one the twelve apostles in the LDS Church and it's a super big deal when they come to visit) in our ward's chapel. All three Houston missions came and he spoke to all of us for about 3 hours. I got to direct traffic and his security guard ran over my cone so that's my claim to fame :)
He taught us a lot of lessons but the most profound was our purpose. He told us, and the mayor of Houston, that the reason Missionaries are where they are is to make life better for the people in their area. It doesn't matter if it's through teaching them about God and Jesus Christ, or if it's just serving and helping other people, we are literally where we are to help others and that's the best job in the entire world :) When times get tough, just lose yourself in helping other people, and keep moving forward!
Les amo mucho :)
Elder Jensen
No comments:
Post a Comment