Nyob zoo,
This week on Tuesday we dropped Elder Lewis off and we said our goodbyes so he’s at his house now doing whatever he’s doing. This is the first week of the two trainees taking over an area. The funny thing is Elder Vang was made a trainer so I’m getting trained by a trainee. I was made the designated driver and I’ll just say - I’m the worst driver ever now since I haven’t driven in 4 months. It was honestly like starting over. Scary! I really do not like the Wisconsin roads at all. It’s like driving a bowl of spaghetti - the roads are so random and don’t make any sense at all. It was very different without Elder Lewis. We were used to following his lead which was nice, but now we have to plan out our whole days, and we don't really know too many people or the area too well. So it is different, but it is good too.
This week was super super busy. It was the busiest week by far that we’ve had. It was an interesting time for us to be on our own and doing our own thing. This week we had Thanksgiving and Hmong New Years. So 3 days out of the week, no one wanted to meet with us because they were celebrating Thanksgiving and Hmong New Years. On Thanksgiving, we went to a member’s house named Karol Smith. She is super awesome. She is a recent convert of a few months and her grandson got baptized a couple months ago too. We ate the classic Thanksgiving food. Turkey, potatoes, ham, stuffing, pumpkin pie, etc. The rest of the day was just a regular day so we went tracting all day which sucked because I didn't want to go for obvious reasons. As well no one really wanted to talk to us. But we went anyway. And we met some cool people so it was all good.
Hmong New Years was on Friday and Saturday. We went to that for a few hours both days. Basically, it’s a huge get together with all the Hmong people in the Madison area. So this was the Madison Hmong New year. They have a Hmong New Year for all the cities like Wausau, Appleton, Green Bay, Sheboygan, etc. There were a ton of people there, probably around 4000 Hmong people that came and celebrated the New Year. There are lots of booths that sell clothes and food. and they have some stages that people can do dances and sing, stuff like that. They have a model - kind of like a beauty pageant as well. All the Hmong people dressed up in their Hmong clothes and they were really really cool Hmong clothes. The Hmong New Years was pretty fun, but also pretty weird because I was the only white dude there; there were so many Asian people.
This week because of Thanksgiving and Hmong New Years, no one would meet with us so we didn’t have much to do, but it was ok. Everyone said after Thanksgiving and Hmong New Years, they’ll meet with us, so we’re going to take everyone up on that. This week we’re going to have a lot of people to meet up with, so that will be good.
Also this week, Andrew and Kaozong received the Holy Ghost at church. We were really worried they were not going to come because they both got sick over the weekend and they were acting like they were not going to come. But they came for the whole Sacrament meeting which was good but went home after that.
Also when Elder Lewis was still here, he had some former investigators he wanted us to meet. They had been pretty busy and the whole time he was still here with us, we’d go stop by and they were never home. But Me and Elder Vang were able to run into both of them which is kind of crazy since we weren’t able to run into them for seven weeks with Elder Lewis. But we ran into both of them and we got an appointment with both of them next week, so we’ll see how that goes.
I’ll just end by saying that I'm doing good. I’m having a lot of fun. The mission is keeping us busy and we’re working hard. If anyone has any questions, shoot me an email and I’ll try and answer them.
Have a great week.
Elder Tshwj
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| The top 5 photos are from Madison Hmong New Years |
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| Our investigator, Kelly |
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| Thanksgiving |
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| My new name name badge. I got it a couple weeks ago. It has my updated Hmong name and as well the Tub Txib part which basically means mail messenger (closest thing to missionary I guess. I wear t he Hmong one when I am with Hmong people and the English when I am with English speaking people. |
