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!

Busy Days, and a Haircut!

 Jambo! (Hello!)

I skipped a week last week because it was so busy. We are so busy everyday. This is an example schedule from tomorrow (Tuesday)

6:30 Wake up and do daily planning, get dressed, eat breakfast, etc.
8:30 personal study
9:30 Lesson with a friend about God's love
10:00 companionship study (where we plan the lessons for the day)
11:30 district council
12:45 Lunch
1:15 Language study
2:30 Making miscelanious calls trying to get people jobs/housing/etc.
2:45 Lesson about the Restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ
3:15 Lesson about Temples and eternal families
4:00 Lesson about baptism
5:00 Dinner with a Swahili member family!!
6:20 Lesson (in English) about the Restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ
7:00 Lesson discussing Jesus Christ's atonement and the sacrament 
7:35 Lesson about priesthood healing blessings
8:30 Lesson about the Plan of Salvation
9:00 we get home
10:30 go to bed.

So yeah. That's kind of crazy once I lay it all out. I love the busyness of it, though. There's always stuff to do.

Also big news: TRANSFERS

Transfers are basically when missionaries get moved around to different places. One of my companions, Sister Emmanuel is going to Meridian. We'll miss her so much, but she will be so great over there. So it will just be me and my companion, Sister Millard. We are also getting our missionary teaching boundaries changed, so that we won't have an English ward as well as the Swahili ward, it will just be Swahili work, which is definitly going to make our language skills better lol.

Also even bigger news: HAIRCUT!!

I got my haircut today. Here's a picture of my companions and I infront of the haircut place, me with my very long hair before it got chopped off:

And here is me now. I love it so much:

My haircut today was terrifying, but it turned out SO GOOD.  Also, the student doing in was so scared lol. She'd never done a pixie cut before, and so she kept being like "AAAAAH" whenever she cut a large chunk of hair off. Once she was like "oops". A little scary. I would have loved to have it done by a real hairstylist, but one of the service missionaries owns the hair school, and he gives all the missionaries free appointments, which is so cool.

Also I think it's cool how much grilled fish Africans make. Apparently that's a thing. We met this lady just grilling whole fish outside, like everybody does it.

Spiritual Thought:
 I absolutly love being here in the immigrant population areas, because there's so many languages and it just amazes me how worldwide the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is. So many different languages and there are recources and books and confrence translations for everybody in their native language which is SO COOL to me. I love that our church is making such a huge effort for the blessings to be avaliable to everyone regardless of language.

In the land of the potatoes...

 Jambo! (Hello!)

So much stuff happened, but I will strive to be concise.

I got to Boise on Tuesday. I met my district who are all Swahili/French missionaries in Boise. 

I met my incredible new companions. I'm in a trio with Sister Emmanuel and Sister Millard.

I think it's really weird being here though because I think I've only met 1 African American so far. When you see a black person walking about, there's probably a 95 percent chance they're an immigrant. Some have citizenship, but all were not born here except for the kids under 10. I feel so weird whenever my companion shouts "Jambo" at a black person as we're walking, and they reply, saying, "Jambo, habari?!" It's so funny. But it would be so awkward if they were actually African- Americans, but none of them have been so far thankfully 

It's so cool how many immigrants there are. We meet Swahili speaking people when we're just hanging out at the library. We saw three Rwandan bibis (grandmas) sunbathing and chatting in their awesome colorful dresses and headscarves on a lawn. Random kids, running across the street, yelling at each other in Swahili. Last week, we went to Walmart to pick up meds, and we met a Congan refugee in line behind us. She was not interested in the gospel. But she was excited to have someone to talk Swahili with.

Also, african families are SOOO big. There was a guy we found on the street who was like "Nina bize kuongea sasa kwa sababu nina watoto kumi nyumbani" which is "I'm too busy to talk right now because I have 10 kids at home". And that's basically a normal number. So whenever we go to someone's house to teach one person, we end up teaching 2-7 people instead. So the eternal families topic is quite popular. That's the default after "God loves you and He has a plan for us".

This is us yesterday when we were celbrating getting done with door to door knocking on Sunday. Sister Emmanuel likes to balance Book of Mormons on her head when her hands get tired lol.

One of the families we're teaching is getting baptized soon, and the mom makes these beautiful felted islander flowers (The family is from Micronesia). And all three of them came to sacrament meeting yesterday with them in their hair it was so cool. Anyways, she gave us each one.

 

One of our favorite things to do is to give people banana bread. We've seen so many hearts be softened because of the spiritual power of banana bread. Here is a picture of a pass along card with our number, and some bread that we left for somebody. 

Spiritual thought:
I really love the verse in 2 Nephi 33:6 which is "I glory in plainness; I glory in truth; I glory in my Jesus, for he hath redeemed my soul from hell."

It's just such an uplifting, simple verse, and even though we don't exactly believe in hell, I love the phrase "my Jesus", and it's a happy verse, and I love those.

Farewell Utah... Hello Boise, Idaho!

 Jambo! (Hello!)

    I'm currently at the airport, about to fly to Boise!  Finally! 

The Mission Training Center has been wonderful, but I'm excited to go into the field. There's a lot of things that I learned at the MTC. Here is a list of my top three takeaways:

1. The Book of Mormon is awesome. For the last few years, I've really been focussing on the Bible, which has been wonderful. The Bible has so much facinating stuff in it, but The Book of Mormon is "Another Testament of Jesus Christ" (Kitabu cha Mormoni ni:  "Ushuhuda Mwengine wa Yesu Kristo"). 

      It testifies so strongly of Him and His character, and has so many awesome stories about the faith of Native American individuals. My companion and I studied Mosiah chapter 4 and we both highlighted basically the whole chaper because it's so full of awe inspiring teachings.

(An assignment to share a Book of Mormon verse in Swahili that we did a couple weeks ago.)

     2. I really like dressy clothing.  As many people know, before my mission, my go to outfit was jeans and a t-shirt, or if I was feeling fancy, maybe even a long sleeved shirt!   But being here and having to wear missionary attire everyday has it's benefits. I'm so glad that Sister missionaries are now allowed to wear dress pants. So exciting!

     3. Time is a lot nicer to you if you keep a gratitude journal. I feel like with SOOO many things in the past, if I didn't like the expierence, it would go slowly, and of course when I'm enjoying somethings, it feels so short. But I've done a lot of gratitude journalling over the last 6 weeks, and I've noticed that it's been opposite. 

One of the biggest things I've been grateful for is the awesome people in my Swahili learning group.  They're so happy and positive and it was so much fun to go to class for hours a day. Here's a picture of me and my amazing companion, Sister Bickham:

Currently I'm sitting at the airport with a bag of snack mix and a Bluey coloring set, so I'll be pretty busy.

Spiritual thought: Yesterday, I made a playlist of hymns that I really like for the plane, and I highly recommend people to go listen to "Consider the Lillies" by the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square. It's such a pretty song and I love the message.

Quarantined. "Whomp! Whomp!"

 Jambo! (Hello!)

     Last week I mentioned to a few people that I was feeling not good due to allergies. That sickness got worse and worse until I finally went to the MTC health clinic and got checked. I had the flu. (Influenza B)  This is one of my roomates and I at the clinic waiting for our test results. She was sick as well.  We are both clearly very excited:

     We both tested positive, so we packed up our suitcases and moved to the quarantine dorm building until our fevers and aches were gone.

     Most of this last week was spent in quarantine, which was honestly really good, because yes, it prevented me from getting other people sick, which was awesome, but also, I got to sleep whenever I wanted, which was AMAZING. 

Also, the food was always warm, unlike some cafeteria food. It was a little odd though, when they would put your meal bag outside your door in the hallway, and then knock on the door, then you had to put on a mask and quickly open the door, get the bag, and close the door. It often felt like we had leprosy. This is the room:

Luckily, when I got out, my comp and friends came to save me and take me back to our dorm.

    So that was Friday last week through Tuesday morning. We went to a BEAUTIFUL temple this morning. It was probably the prettiest temple I've ever seen. The Provo City Center temple. Here are some pictures of the outside:

And here are some interior images:

Spiritual thought:

During quarentine, I had the opportunity to do a lot of general conference talks. Like, a LOT of them. I mostly listened to the old ones like between 1971-1990. There was a talk that I absolutly loved in April of 1989 by Marvin J Ashton. Basically his talk was on worthiness and how people self judge worthiness, when WE shouldn't be the ones judging, because that's God's job. Like how judging other people unfairly is bad, it's just as bad to judge yourself harshly.

A quote that I liked from it was "worthiness is a process and perfection is an eternal trek".

Thanks for reading, and I hope you all have a weekend filled with amani and furaha (peace and happiness).

Kwa heri!

Swahili Slang!

 Jambo! (Hello!)

It's less than 3 weeks until I'll be in Idaho, and done with the Missionary Training Center. 

    I've realized this week that the gift of tongues is real. It's wild to me how fast I'm learning Swahili.  We've only been doing language classes for a week, and yesterday we had our first conversation with a native Congan. He immigrated to Iowa ten something years ago, I think he was telling us the story of how, but I couldn't understand any of it unfortunatly.

     BUT we did manage to ask his name, where he's from, how his breakfast was, what he likes to do, how his family is, and we shared our testiminies of God and Christ in Swahili, and ended with a prayer. So I think that's a huge win. He was so sweet. I think he sensed that we were very nervous, so one of the sentances that I did understand was "Don't be anxious, you have God with you." AWWWWWW!

This week was mostly focused academically on Swahili, but also much of it was figuring out ways to use slang. We're not supposed to use slang because it's very unprofessional. But we have a loophole where if we translate the slang words into Swahili, then it's ok, because we're learning.

Here's a list of words and their appropriate usage:

Acha fujo (stop the chaos): this was the first one to be used. One of our teachers said that it was a common phrase used by parents when a kid says a bad word. We like to yell it when someone says a slang word in English.

Acha kupiga kelele (stop making sounds): can be used when people are being too noise or just annoying in general.

Ufunguo wa chini (lowkey or "key of the lower"): as in "ufunguo wa chini, the chocolate pie today was actually so good."

Wewe ni pacha wangu (you are my twin): can be used as a greeting or as a "me also" statement.

Mwongo!! (Liar!!): can be used anytime you feel like it. Very useful phrase. Usually yelled or at least loudly spoken at a person while pointing.

Kweli Saaaaaaaana (sooooooo true): used as a statement instead of "facts" or "for real" etc.

Amina! (Amen!): we were learning how to pray this week, and amina sounds so much more fun than just amen. so now we use it in everyday conversation.

Honorable mention: Ng'ombe. This word is so weird but fun to pronounce. It's translation is cow, but we just randomly say it whenever for just for fun.

Sorry there are not many pictures this week. (I didn't use my camera as much unfortunately.)

Where my companion and I do our morning scriptures study session:

Our morning view every day as we walk to class:

Flowers at the temple:

Spiritual thought:

This week we really worked hard on the "Missionary Purpose", because we memorized all of it in Swahili in just one day. (My brain hurt so bad that day! lol)  But I really like the wording of it and the emphasis on helping others to come unto Christ.

"Invite others to come unto Christ through helping them receive the restored gospel of Jesus Christ and His atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost and enduring to the end."

Anyways, I hope you have an awesome week!

Sister McMullin