We are picking up our 2nd investigator this week. It will be one of our classmates from our district. We all had to create our *investigator* personality last week and this week we will take on that role as the *missionaries* teach us. We will just be teaching one on one, instead of in companionships, since there are only 5 of us in our district.
It should be interesting :) We will keep progressing with Rado. He is supposed to be our Investigator for the rest of the time we are in the MTC.
I finally feel like things are moving forward with Rado, our investigator. We have taught him about 5-6 times now (about prayer, church, the restoration, faith, etc.) but I felt like we weren't getting anywhere. He was keeping the commitments we gave him, like reading the BOM and praying, but since he is already a Christian we felt like we had to move forward with our commitments. We needed to challenge him ya know? On friday we taught him the first part of the restoration beginning with God's love up until the beginning of the apostasy. He said he didn't really believe it since he was catholic and thought the pope had priesthood power. We were out of time so we left him with a brochure about the apostasy and asked him if he would read it and pray to know if it was true. We prayed together then and he prayed to know if it was true. We left and set up an appointment for the next day. We planned our lesson and were going to go into greater depth about the apostasy so that he could maybe understand priesthood authority better. BUT! That whooooole lesson plan went down the drain because we walked into his house (which is the janitor's closet by our classroom) and he immediately said "so I read your pamphlet, and I think it's true. I believe there was an apostasy." Sister Johnson and I just looked at each other and we were just like .... WHAT!?!? What do we teach now? He wanted to learn more about our prophets. He said "so you have a prophet today?" and we said yes. "Many prophets" "no, just one" we answered. " And apostles?" "12 just like in Christ's time." we said. (and this is allll in slovak). We then bore testimony about prophets and asked him what he thought now about priesthood authority. He said "I don't really know if I believe priesthood authority was taken. But I am open to the idea. I want to think about it more." We testified and taught him about our church, how we worship, and invited him to come to church. He agreed! He came to church today (supposedly. It's all a role play so our teachers just said to act like he came and pretend) and tomorrow we will be teaching him the first vision. I hope it will go well. We are going to challenge him again to be baptized. This time I think he will be more open to the idea. I think he believes Joseph Smith was a prophet just from what he read in the pamphlet and the discussions we've had. We are still trying to find out. It takes a long time to get through ANYTHING in slovak.
on a funny note: The word for "help" and "urine" are very similar in slovak... So... we had our Elder doing a demo in class and he was teaching about how with "God's help" anything is possible. BUT... help was slightly mispronounced and he accidently said "god's urine" Needless to say, our teachers got quite the laugh out of it. None of us really understood what was going on until they had explained it. Boy am I going to have to be careful with this language.
I see people at the MTC that I know alll the time. It's really nice to have familiar faces since everyone in Slovakia will be a stranger, ya know? I see people I had classes with at BYU who teach here or people from my previous wards that are now on missions. It's so crazy.
One of the sisters in our district has a dad who works for the church. He sent the picture of us all holding our BOMs to the translation department for the church. (since we are the first missionaries EVER to take BOMS to SLOVAKIA!!!) and when they got the picture they wrote us saying that there is just something different and special about this group of missionaries and they could feel our spirit just by seeing our picture. WHOA. I truly feel inadequate sometimes as a missionary, but other times I realize I have been comissioned by a prophet of God to go forth and preach His gospel. It's all so overwhelming and exhilerating at the same time. I love it :) Even if it's so so super duper stressful at times.
I met an Elder in the Bookstore from France who doesn't speak English very well, so it was SUPER AWESOME to be able to speak french with him just for a little. I think he felt relieved to have some one understand him because everyone in his district is learning spanish, but their first language is English. I can already see Slovak impacting my french :SS NOT GOOD! Once I know something in slovak I'm like.. how do you say that in French again? It's crazy. Gift of tongues is so real. When we are in lessons and I'm teaching with the spirit, words I may have looked at only once come to my mind. And when the spirit isn't doing the teaching it turns into "um.. uh... slovensky... um... nie.." The spirit is AMAZING.
The language is still crazy. Everything starts with a p or a z and its fifty bajillion letters long. Like, check this out, restoration? Znovuzriadvenie. (just try saying that.. just try ;)
I think I'm starting to understand a little bit of the language though. It's just crazy. They have these things called declinations, which you may wanna google to understand, but its like instead of having words for "of" or "by" or "through" you have to take the noun and add certain endings on it. Or if the "noun" is being verbed, as we call it a.k.a direct object, then the endings change. Or if it's indirect object then the endings change. Then things with genders change. and there are masculin, masculin inanimate, feminine, neuter. etc. I have no idea how I will ever memorize it all. Even likes like "my, ours, yours, his" will change into like 30 bajillion different words depending on which nouns they are used with or which adjectives etc. There is SOOO much to memorize.
It'll come it'll come :) Elder Scott gave us an apostolic blessing saying it'll come; so it will :)
Also, I love the temple so much. I am going to miss it SOOOO MUCH! I really really really really really wish the people in slovakia could know the great blessing that is the temple. and the gospel. and they will!! It will just take time.
oh also! Just some fun info, our P-day will be changing to most likely friday. Sooo you may start getting e-mails from me in a few weeks on friday instead of monday.
I also now know when I will be released. I will be released on October 16, 2014. (I was hoping to come home right before my b-day but it looks like I'll just barely miss it. so 2 b-days in the field)
Until next time :)
Love sister kane
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