Jay Family Missionaries

Hey everybody,

 

It looks like I finally got a computer that has a keyboard that works right.  Most of the computers get messed up when people switch languages to type.

 

Well, this past week I got sick.  Sister Hansen had a cold that she got from Sister Harward who is in our district, and so I guess I got the same thing but I reacted to it a lot differently.  I had a sore throat and I had no energy.  During our gym time we just slept for a couple of the days.  On one of the days after class my teacher told me to just go sleep so that I would get better faster instead of going to classes but staying sick longer.  So that day my companions and I went back to the dorms during the Large Group Meeting and dinner and I just slept the whole time.  I've been feeling better yesterday and today though.

 

Colin asked about the TRC so this is what it is: the Teaching Resource Center is where we go to teach people who pretend to be investigators.  The people who come have to have a temple recommend or be a BYU student to be able to go there, or some sort of other permission like a bishop's note.  In the TRC there are just a bunch of rooms with couches and tables that are supposed to be a 'living room' type setting.  There are cameras and microphones in each of the rooms though so that you can ask the people in charge to record you if you want and so that your teacher can watch you teach the lesson.  Our teacher just flips through each companionships lesson to see how they're going and then she can give us advice afterward.  The investigators always have a role that they are supposed to play, so that we can prepare for them in advance.  When we help them move they just scatter a bunch of pictures around the room and we put them into a box or wherever they want us to put them.  And for another one we pretended it was a cafe and picked food from a menu.  This next week will be a pretend clothing store, so we are learning a lot of clothing vocabulary to prepare for it.

 

This past week was the first time that we taught a lesson in all Romanian.  It went pretty well.  When they asked questions we were able to understand what they wanted, and even though it probably took us a long time to formulate explanations we were able to tell them everything.  Usually we wouldn't see the investigators afterward but I needed to get a drink in the hall because I was dying from being sick and still teaching the lesson so we saw them out there.  One of them said we did really well and the other one just smiled.  Sora Humphries said that during the lesson he looked like he was trying really hard not to laugh, but I didn't notice.

 

Elder Cook talked at our devotional on Tuesday, he talked about a lot of different things but the thing that he said the most about that I noticed was having investigators make commitments.  He said that the commitments they make to read the Book of Mormon or pray is what converts them, and it prepares them to make temple covenants.

 

One of the Sisters in the ASL district right next door to us hurt her foot playing volleyball or four-square so she wasn't able to leave at the same time as her companions so our district has been escorting her everywhere.  She is deaf but she can read lips really well and she can speak really well.  We even taught her some romanian words and she could say them just like us, except for the ones with "r"s.  Her name is Sister Roberts.  There were a couple deaf elders that we talked to all the time too; they couldn't read lips very well or anything but Sister Humphries studied ASL for a couple of years so she could communicate with them.  One of them, Elder Melkonian, was really good at basketball so we had him teach us how to shoot during one of the gym periods.  I think it made me a lot better.  He prettymuch just showed us how to do it because he couldn't talk when he had the ball in his hands.

 

There are some pretty funny stories about the ASL missionaries because of the deaf ones.  Their classroom is right next to ours and they always make tons of noise so that sometimes we have to go ask them to stop doing whatever they were doing.  One time one of the elders was vacuuming in his dorm and the door was locked and his companions got locked out so they were banging on the door really really hard trying to make it move to get his attention, eventually they finally stuck a paper under the door and waved it around until he noticed it and went over and opened the door.

 

Ever since a lot of the ASL missionaries left we have gotten really good seats at the devotionals because they have a huge section reserved for them and no one to sit in it so they invited us to sit there with them; there were only three people until this Wednesday.

 

We got a new mission president this week: President Borne, I think that's how he spells it.  He and his wife both know ASL.  So did the last mission president.  I guess they need to know it so that they can do interviews with the deaf missionaries without an interpreter.  I don't know where the new president is from or anything right now.

 

 

I could have told you the scripture to go on my plaque before I even left, it's Matt 11:28-30.  And the picture that I liked was the one with the white background and my arm resting on the thing.  But just have Jill pick which one she thinks looks best.

 

See ya,

Sister Jay

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