Familia ni bora = Family is best!

 Jambo sana!

      We had transfers this week! I am back with Sister Emmanuel as my companion (from Tanzania). She is so cool. 

     My Swahili is gonna be so good. It's cool how many random phrases I am learning. "Haishabishi kwa haraka" Is what you say when you are eating food that isn't filling. And kubipu is to call someone specifically to get their attention. So if I sent you a text and I wanted you to see it, I would call you, then hang up really fast.

      Sister Emmanuel also gave me a dera, which is an African dress that people wear at home.   It's so comfy. It's like wearing a blanket but as a dress.

    On Saturday, we got permission to go to the temple as part of my sister's memorial service.  It was so good to see family who live in Idaho who I haven't seen for a few years.

   My two Idaho cousins are ALSO going on missions this month, so that is so cool. One is going to England and the other one is going to Peru!  I am so proud of them.  

I feel so short compared to my cousins even though I'm literally older than both of them!   

My beautiful grandmothers and my companion  

 Sister Emmanuel is a part of the family now.

I am so lucky to have such an amazing family during this time to support me. I love them so much. Also I am so, so, so grateful for an amazing mission president who okayed everything! 

     This period of time has been very hard to be on a mission. I'm not sure how many of you know, but my sister died a little over a month ago. 

     Truthfully, some days it has been debilitating. But I have amazing people around me and at home. And I KNOW that Noel is helping me with missionary work. I KNOW that God wants me to stay out here to help his children, and I KNOW that my family is being blessed more than we can ever know right now.

Also, I got my ears pierced today!!!!!!    Slight topic change. The lady who did it was surprised that I wasn't afraid of the huge needles, and I was like "Yeah, I was a phlebotomist." I think it turned out super well!

       That's pretty much it for this week. Oh, except one day, we were at one of our church member's houses, and she was asking us to help her with knowing which bills are which, 'cause she doesn't know English and also she can't read. So we were helping her, and we found a jury summons in her pile of mail! 

     I don't know why they send jury summons to people who 1. Don't know English and 2. Can't read.   She was just gonna throw it away and then get fined.  Thankfully, we helped her get in contact with the right people to be like "Hey I don't speak English, do I still have to go in?" That would have been SO STRESSFUL!!    Jury duty is scary for normal citizens it would be even worse for someone who can't speak English.

Spiritual thought:
I am obsessed with this quote from Hugh Nibley explaining the atonement (the "at-one-ment").

"There is not a word among those translated as 'atonement' that does not plainly indicate the return to a former state or condition; one rejoins the family, returns to the father, becomes united, reconciled, embracing and sitting down happily with others after a sad separation."

What more can I say? That is my favorite description of the atonement I have ever heard.

Sister McMullin

I Love to be a Missionary!

 Jambo watu wote! (Hello all people!)

     This was us for a lot of this week. We like to play a game called "What's the air quality in Idaho gonna be today?"

      I think one of the most annoying things about being a missionary is that I am not able to look up where is having massive fires, so I don't know what state to be mad at for all the smoke.

     Other than eating really good African food, I think my favorite thing about being on a mission is being able to help people. I remember I would work in my hospital job, caring for patients and trying to help people in any way I can, and then going back to college after working during the breaks and feeling so self centered "How are MY grades?" "When are MY friends hanging out today?" "Is MY violin bow rosined enough for MY quartet performance tomorrow?" And I hated that feeling, but it is SO GOOD giving 18 months to God so that He can use me to help others.

    We have a favorite hymn in the Swahili ward "I'm Gonna Live so God can Use Me".  (click on the link to hear!)  I invite everyone to listen to it, it's such a bop.

     But anyways, being so un-self-centered is indescribably rewarding, whether it's helping immigrant families with physical necessities like translating for setting up food orders through the church ('cause their food stamps were revoked) or helping with spiritual needs. Especially helping with spiritual needs.
     
     The gospel of Jesus Christ truly brings traumatized families together in unity. I have seen it, I have seen miracles of families who were broken who are now loving each other, eating together, praying together and reading scriptures together. It's so, so beautiful.

     On a less serious note, I saw a squirrel last Wednesday. I swear squirrels and rabbits don't actually exist in Idaho. I don't understand how I've literally seen 4 squirrels and 1 rabbit the ENTIRE TIME I have been out here.

Spiritual thought:
Moroni 10:4-5

     So, Moroni is Mormon's son. Mormon was the prophet-historian guy who compiled the Book of Mormon together (The Book of Mormon is a series of books written by prophets from the ancient Americas that have prophecies of Christ and accounts of Christ coming to the ancient American people.) 

Anyways, Moroni is Mormon's son, and this is what he said in the very last chapter of the book:

4 And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.

5 And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things.

      I love how in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, we have such an emphasis on on-going revelation from God, and personal revelation. That's why we have a living prophet today, that's why as missionaries we are begging people to pray after they read even a few verses of holy scriptures because we KNOW they will get an answer from God. 

     It's so cool to me that I have the ability to know through the power of the Holy Spirit if something is of God - if something is true.

Have a week full of appreciating wildlife and hopefully no coughing because of smoke.

Sister McMullin

Food, Friends and God's Love

 Jambo!

Sorry that I haven't sent anything out for almost a month now,  it's been a weird month. 

A few quick highlights from the last few weeks:

I made ugali for the first time! It's so delicious. Every time we've had a meal with members or friends, they've had ugali or fufu. It's basically boiled water mixed with cornflower. I will be 100% be making it when I'm back at home, too.
You roll it up into a ball, and dip it into whatever sauce or soup you're having.

We also got a picture with our favorite bibi (grandma) friend. She has been a member of our church for twelve years, her testimony of Christ is so inspiring. We love her so much. Also, I always look foward to going  her house because it always smells like African food, which is my new favorite smell.
(We got her permission to post this picture)

We  were able to go to a neighborhood in our area that has street names only music related  There was Capriccio Street and South Woodwind Street, it was hilarious.

We also planned the baptism date of our friend, Nepumuseni! He is so excited, he's wanted to be baptized for so long. Ako poa sana sana sana. He is honestly better at church attendance than many of our actual members, he also reads his Holy Bible and Book of Mormon every single day. He is just so cool.

Also I've started learning Kinyarwanda because Swahili isn't hard enough lol. No, Swahili is very hard, but also we are meeting so many refugees from Rwanda and Uganda who don't speak much Swahili, so I'm learning all the gospel words that people wouldn't know in a second language. Like prophet is "umuhanuzi" or the Holy Spirit is "Umwuka wera." And of course "Yesu ni umukiza wachu!" ("Jesus is our Savior!")

When I was called Swahili speaking to Idaho I did NOT think I would also be learning Kinyarwanda, Kibembe, and some French. Life is insane. Languages are SO cool.

Spiritual thought: 1 Nephi 11:17

I am obsessed with this scripture. It's where the prophet (umuhanuzi) Nephi is talking with an angel in a vision, and the angel asks him if he knows about God's love. This is what Nephi answers:

"And I said unto him: I know that he loveth his children; nevertheless, I do not know the meaning of all things."

We don't have to know everything. We don't have to know what happens after this life. We don't have to know what the judgement will look like. We don't have to know anything EXCEPT that God loves his children. And that is all of us. God is not only just and fair, but also so loving and merciful. Nothing else matters but his love for us.

Napenda kabisa. (I absolutely love it.)

I hope all of you have a wonderful week!!

The Challenges of Illiteracy

 Jambo!

This week was so fun, but also stressful (like most weeks here).

     This week I wanted to talk a little about the language barrier between African immigrants and the American communities they live in. I've been here for a while now and I've been amazed at what the church does for people. Spiritually, but also with physical needs.

     I didn't know what Deseret Industries was until I came to Idaho because there are none in Wisconsin. But it's a thrift store chain that the church runs where refugees and low income people can work who don't speak English WHILE getting English lessons so that they can later get a higher paying job that requires English skills later. 

     Anyways, we went there the other day to get some clothes, and we saw so many of our Swahili church members and friends working in the back! It was fun to say hi to everyone!!

     We had a baptism for our friend Winnie yesterday! It was great to see all of our hard work pay off, and of course all of her work. She loves to listen to the Bible and Book of Mormon verses we send her everyday. She can't read, so we record voice messages for her. But, she has an incredible memory, because when we ask her her favorite part, she can just recite the verses she liked almost word for word. She's so COOOL!!!!

     This is the situation with many many of the people we teach here, they don't know how to read or write unless they are under 30 basically. So even if they wanted to learn English, there are so many barriers. You can't just get a textbook for Swahili to English, cause they can't read in either language.

      You can't do classes downtown for immigrants to learn English because that would require transportation which they don't have. If they tried to take a bus, they couldn't read the stops or the schedule. 

     And even if they could read, they use a different time system than then the west! I actually think it makes infinity much more sense than our clock that randomly starts in the middle of the night. Since they are close to the equator, their days stay the same length. The sun rises and sets at the same time all year. Their day starts at sunrise at 6am. As I am writing this email, it is 11am. So in Swahili time, it would be the 5th hour of the morning. Saa tano ya asubuhi.

     I'd say 3 quarters of our African friends use Swahili time, but then there's the rest of them that use French time because they're from the French part of Congo. I don't know French time yet, I just know that it is very complicated 

     So yeah, I don't think people understand that some immigrants can't just "learn English" even if they have a desire to and even if they live in a big city like Boise.

     It's been so rewarding to translate for our friends' job interviews and help them fill out government forms and get food. But it is also terrifying to think that if we weren't here doing this, it wouldn't be done!

     For language study I started translating the Book of Mormon into Swahili. That's actually been so helpful for being able to make sentences. I'm really good at understanding people when they speak but it's still a struggle to speak myself. Ni sio rahisi (It's not easy). Obviously the Book of Mormon is already translated into Swahili, so this is purely for language practice.

Spiritual thought:

     I have found a love for the Book of Enos this week while in an amazing lesson with our friend, Hamisi. It's a story about a man named Enos who goes and prays for forgiveness for his sins. I love verse 5 , it says "And there came a voice unto me, saying: Enos, thy sins are forgiven thee, and thou shalt be blessed".  When we pray for forgiveness we are not ONLY forgiven, but ALSO we are blessed, and I think that's so cool.

Those are my deep thoughts for the week. Here are some pictures!

     A member gave some food to us to take home which was so so generous of her. It was really good. I am getting less picky with what my food looks like. 10/10 would not have eaten this 4 months ago.

Here is a video of how to eat the ugali and samaki.

Us with our beautiful friend, Winnie, and the lady who drives her family to church every Sunday. 

Us making our weekly 5 loaves of banana bread for our friends 

And then, of course, what we do with the banana bread!

"Pole kwa jua!" or "Sorry for the sun!"

 Jambo!

     It's almost my birthday, so I got a shoutout in the mission president's letter to the missionaries along with everyone else who has birthdays in June lol.

    The people here are so cool. I know enough Swahili now that I know generally what they're saying, and they're so amazing. We met a new friend the other day, Yuumba. We were just knocking on doors in an apartment complex. And we get to her door and we talk to her at her doorstep for a little but, she is obviously very surprised that there are two white girls that are speaking Swahili. Then she notices that we're both squinting because of the sun, and she's like "Pole kwa jua! Kuja ndani!" which is "Sorry for the sun, come inside!" This is one example of many many Africans who have been so hospitable to us.

      90 Percent of the Africans who we meet while tracting immediately are like "Karibu!" (Welcome!) and invite us into their home.

     There was this one Bibi (grandma) who kept muttering the word for "lies!" during a lesson about Joseph Smith, and then after, she was like "nakushukuru sana, karibu tena!" (I am so grateful to you, you are welcome to come here again!) Again, they are so cool!! I am learning so much about hospitality!!!

     When we were doing more English work at the start of my mission, EITHER people would say that they have already have a church they attend, say they are way too busy to talk right now, or just slam the door when we introduce ourselves. NO ONE invited us inside their home. It's unheard of with English speakers.

     Anyways, also I just love the phrase "Pole kwa jua" it's so funny. In Swahili there are 2 words for Sorry. There's samahani (which your would use if you bumped into someone). And then there's "pole" (pronounced po-lay) which is a word we need in English. You would use it if someone tells you their parent passed away. You would use it if someone told you they just lost their house. Or if they were sick. I just think it's a cool word. It's a "sorry" for things that aren't your fault.

Anyways, here is a picture of Sister Millard and I after a long day. Idaho is very very sunny. I miss the Midwest spring tornado season.

There's a magical member from our roommate's English ward who brought over a bunch of stuff for us!  She's so cool. So excited to eat the chocolate covered almonds!!!

Spiritual thought:

     I've always loved the verse in Luke 15 verses 7 and 10 where it talks about how all of heaven will sing and rejoice when one sinner repents.

      In the mission field, I love it even more because it basically describes us. My companion and I literally screamed with joy when we heard a voice message (at 10:45pm btw) from one of our friends that we're teaching who hasn't ever come to church say that he would be happy to drive others to church who don't have cars, then stay for the sacrament! Same when a friend that we haven't taught in a while reaches out to us with her favorite scripture!

YAY! Missionary work is so tiresome, but for those moments, it's so worth it 

"No Soliciting!"

 Jambo!

Last week I was horrible at taking pictures so I'm hoping this week to make up for that.

It's week 2 of not having ANY English work because we dropped the English ward completely, and are solely focusing on the Swahili lessons. It has been so stressful for language study, but honestly this was the push that I needed to really figure out how to speak Swahili. I have many basic gospel topics down, and am pretty comfortable teaching them. The 3-5 Swahili lessons a day makes me get a lot of practice.

Here's a funny door sign that we saw while we were knocking doors the other day. usually people just have no soliciting signs and since were not soliciting we knock anyways, but this door had it all covered  

There was one time when we almost got kicked out of our favorite apartment complex area because we met the manager there, and she was like "It's actually illegal to solicit on my property!" But apparently this happens quite a bit, so my incredible companion explained that we're literally not soliciting, and we have paperwork to prove it.   So yeah. That was exciting.

This is a fun random hand soap container that a family had in their bathroom. It's really interesting to see the inside of people's houses, because they usually always have a lot of African cloth on the walls and windows, then they have random American trinkets or wall signs that are like the Utah "Live Laugh Love" font. 

I just think it's a kind of funny combination.

This is me and Sister Millard during our insane reporting/voice messaging people Saturday night. So So So many people who we messaged. Usually we report and do phone contacts in the car right after we get home from our last lesson, but that day we decided to make it cozy by getting into PJs and eat dinner, then report while pacing back and forth in the backyard like crazy people. 

We messaged about 35 people (all in Swahili btw) about going to church. We just do voice messages for all of our friends, because probably 60 percent of the adults we teach aren't able to read.

Anyways. If you see missionaries on the street, please be kind, cause so much blood sweat and tears, and messaging people nonstop from 8-10:30pm, goes into their job.

One last picture.

So our district (the group of missionaries working in our area) likes to leave pass-along cards on each other's cars with a note.  This was one that we got on our car with the first note, then we put it on the French trio's car, and then they put it back on our car, with each set of missionaries adding to the card in their language. 

It translates as:  Jesus loves them/ and you too/ goodbye!

It's because we all go to the same apartment complexes and so when we see each other's cars just randomly very often.

Spiritual thought:

"Now it is better that a man should be judged of God than of man, for the judgments of God are always just, but the judgments of man are not always just." (Mosiah 29:12)

As a missionary, it's stressful 'cause it's kind of like "It's YOUR job to get EVERYONE baptized and if you don't get even one person baptized, then they won't receive the full blessings in heaven". 

But I don't think that's right. If I mess up in a lesson, and the person never sees the missionaries again, God's not gonna hold that against the person, or me. 

God is just, and obviously missionary work is important to help people in their lives in earth, but it's definitely not gonna be eternal damnation for the people who don't get baptized, which I am so happy about.

Miracles, Poverty, and Joy...

Jambo! (Hello!)

This is my first week of doing ONLY Swahili lessons. (We had our area re-arranged after last week's transfer, so we are no longer responsible for an English speaking congregation, just Swahili speakers.) It is very very busy still. It's amazing how we just keep finding Africans who want to talk with us about Yesu Kristo, it's so fun! 

Miracles:

Many miracles this week. It's amazing to see how much God wants this work here to progress. Literally just Wednesday, we were talking with a girl about our age who is so excited to be baptized, and we were supposed to be teaching her about Christ's commandment to love others and to serve. It's going pretty well, then this fully formed sentance in Swahili comes into my mind, which is insane on its own.  I felt so strongly that I HAD TO SAY IT! 

"Tukitaka kuwa kama Yesu, tunahitaji kusheriki injili ya Yesu Kristo kwa sababu Kristo alisaidia watu wengi kwa sababu aliwafundisha wengine kusianana injili yake." 

(Which is basically "if we wanna be like Jesus, then we need to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with others because Jesus helped many people because he taught them about his gospel")

So I say it, and then the girl starts talking about how she really wants to help us with our missionary work and knock doors with us and share her testimony with other people, and it was SO COOL!!!!  We were obviously like "Yes please!"  because she speaks Kinyerwanda as well as Swahili, which we really need!

Poverty:

Anyways, on a sadder note, it's been hard to see the amount of poverty of the immigrants here. We like to say in America that we have great infastructure for helping people get on their feet, but I don't think that's exactly true. 

The amount of people who are desperately and unsuccesfully searching for a job to feed themselves and their children is insane. So many parents we're teaching rely on us to translate food stamp paperwork and government forms, and even job interviews and orientations. Just today, we translated for a few friends for jobs at Deseret Industries. (It is a non-profit thrift and donation store our church runs. It also provides job training for people who would have a rough time finding work elsewhere. )  It took 2 hours out of our P-Day, but it was completly worth it.

Literally all of the African households I've gone to have no lights on at all. Ever.  At the start I was like, "Oh do they just really like the dark for some reason?" But it's because they want to save money. So even though all the appartments have overhead lights and lamps, they're never on.

Also, I've gotten an impressive callus on the side of my finger from opening plastic waterbottles that they all give us when we come to teach lessons. I'm not a real adult, I don't know if clean running water costs money, but it's just something I've noticed.

Spiritual thought:

Sing, O heavens; and be joyful, O earth; for the feet of those who are in the east shall be established; and break forth into singing, O mountains; for they shall be smitten no more; for the Lord hath comforted his people, and will have mercy upon his afflicted.   (1 Nephi 21:13) 

I love this verse because even though there's so so many issues in everyone's lives, we are all able to find joy and peace in Christ. Even though I've only been out in Idaho for a month, I've seen so many people's lives and vibes completely change as they study and learn about Christ, and I think that is so cool.

Sorry that there are no pictures this week  ):

Lemme add one at least.

This is a matching game that I made up and drew on stickynotes for the kids lessons this week. They had so much fun. Also, I'm so grateful that most of the Swahili kids speak really good English!