Nyob Zoo everyone,
Thank you to everyone who sent me a letter this week. I don't always have time to respond to all of them, but I appreciate getting them and read them all.
This week we spent a lot of our time tracting. We didn't have a lot of people to meet with this week and most of our appointments that we had scheduled ended up bailing on us. We only had 2 sit down lessons the whole week so pretty much every day we would go tracting for about 5 hours. My senior companion, Elder Lewis, makes me and Elder Vang do the whole door by ourselves and it’s really hard. A lot of times it’s really awkward just trying to think of what to say. The tracting is a lot of fun though because we meet a lot of interesting people and a lot of interesting things happen.
This week we had two funny stories that happened while we were out tracting. The first story happened while we were trying to get into an apartment complex. We saw that you have to have a key to get inside the actual complex and we didn’t have one. My companion, Elder Lewis, said that he was just going to try his key to our apartment and see if it worked. And it totally worked!! It was pretty funny and we started laughing.
Also, this week, we went by this house and we saw all these kids sitting in the window. There were about ten little kids sitting with the grandma and grandpa. We waved at them when we walked up to the door. We walked up and knocked and they didn’t even answer. So we left and were like, “Whatever.” As we were walking away, we saw a car pull up with a mom and dad. They walked up to the house and they went inside, so we decided to go back and try again. We went back, waved at all the little kids again and we knocked on the door. And then we heard the mom tell them to close the blinds. It was funny because they totally ignored us. I'm sure it will happen a lot.
As for the language this week - it is still pretty hard. During each day, it is hard to see any improvement and progress that I’ve made. But when I look back on the weeks, I can see how much I’ve actually learned and realize I’ve improved a lot. The Hmong people are really nice about it. They are always encouraging me, and they honestly think it’s really cool that I’m learning their language. All the Niam Tais, (Grandmas) and grandpas always talk me up and say, “You can do it!” It’s really cool to see how encouraging they can be.
For a little Hmong trivia this week, Naim Tais are grandmas. They are considered the old culture people. They do not speak any English - just Hmong.
Also this week, we went and met with one of our investigators, Kawm. That day she had killed about 120 chickens, I think at work, and she had about 30 of them in her house. All of the Hmong people are super nice and they always want to give you something. She really wanted to give us a chicken after we met with her. And so she gave us a whole chicken to take home. Haha. We put it in our freezer for now. Hopefully we use it soon. We eat about 50-75% of the time in member’s homes for dinner so we will see.
Anyway, this week was good. It’s been fun to get to know the Hmong people and their culture a little better the last two weeks. The Hmong people are really awesome and really nice. I’m so grateful to be a missionary. Yesterday in church, I was able to translate a prayer and a sacrament prayer for the Hmong people. It was really hard. They attend normal wards and the missionaries translate everything for them. Even though this week, I only translated a little bit, I am grateful that I was able to do that for them. Being a missionary is really hard, but it is also really fun.
I love you all and have a great week!
Love,
Elder Tshwj Xeeb Tsab
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| P-day morning at the zoo |
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| Zoo |
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| It rains so much here. It has literally rained every single day since I got here except maybe 1 or 2 days. |
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| The chicken we were given from our investigator Extra Pictures this week! |
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| Getting soaked at the Farmer's market |
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| The capital |
