Week Two

Well, it is pretty hard for me to grasp, but I have already been here for twelve days!  Time has really been flying, I can tell you that much.  My Hmong is coming along great.  I am able to teach SIMPLE lessons with no notes or too much language preparation.  I really find it amazing how quickly I'm learning.  I don't know where I will be at the end of these nine weeks, but I want to say it will much better than I had reason to hope for when I entered the MTC.

This week didn't come with as many funny Hmong moments (I guess that is a good thing), but we did have some other "fun" things happen.  My companion and I were locked out of our dorm room for example and I officially have lost my first sock in the laundry.  Some fun mission experiences right there!

Two of the other Elders in my district (a group of missionaries learning the same language) are native Hmong speakers and we will be seeing them off next week.  It is sad to see such great walking dictionaries leave us, but it is for the best.  They are nervous to go out into the mission field though.  Most Hmong speakers cannot read and write their own language, and that goes for these guys too.  They have picked it up faster than the rest of us--as expected--but they still don't feel very strong with the written language. Here they do sacrament service speaking assignments here is they have all the missionaries in the zone (a group of districts) prepare a talk on the same topic and then in Sacrament Meeting they announce who the speakers will be.  They called both John Vangs to speak this last week, so we spent much of sacrament meeting listening to the Elders Vang teach and testify about baptism.  They both did a great job.  We are really going to miss them.

We got Paj Vmw to commit to be baptized this last week!  That was a neat experience.  We did it just in time too.  Our first "investigator" became another one of our language instructors the very next day.  We start teaching our second investigator today and our third investigator tomorrow.  I will definitely let you know how that goes.  Teaching in Hmong has been my favorite part of the MTC experience so far.  On a side note, we figured out that Paj Vwm translates to crazy flower.  That made all us Elders smile.  Paj Vwm really does not fit that description.

I've been pondering a few scriptures this week that I have found to be insightful.  I may not quote these right, I'm going off of memory, but two are from 1 Corinthians and I think the references are 6:20, "Wherefore you have been bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's", and 7:23 "You have been bought with a price, be ye not the servants of men".  It has had be thinking about all the times I don't act to glorify God, all the times that I serve myself, me being very much a man.  How many times have I served the wrong master?  This has had me wanting to be more committed to getting outside myself and my own desires and really working on self mastery.

The next verses come from Mather 6:25-30.  I'm not going to quote all of these, but there is one verse that reads something along the lines of "Wherefore if God so clothes the grass of the fields which today is and tomorrow is cast into the oven, how much more will he provide for you, of ye of little faith?"  This verse has given me peace when I have felt undue stress with the rate at which I have to learn here and just wondering if things will work out.  All it has taken is some thinking about "do I really believe this" and I have been back in a good peaceful mindset.

The last thing I want to share comes from the Old Testament.  I don't think I will get the reference right, so I will just give the background.  The verse I have in mind is from the story of Moses and the burning bush.  In this chapter God declares to Moses that his (Jehovah's) name is "I AM THAT I AM."  It took me a while to come to conclusions about why that was so significant.  There are four other references to that name, "I AM," one in the New Testament and three in the Doctrine and Covenants.  It occurred to me after a half-hour or so that Christ is the only one who can declare His existence by virtue of His existence.  All of us to not exist of our own power, only Christ does.  Only Christ was saved by His own power.  He is that He is and that is unique to Him. 

Well, I have to get going.  Thank you to all of you who wrote back to me!  It was nice to hear from you.  I promise that I (might) send some pictures next week so you can see what the other Hmong Elders look like.

love,

Elder Jared Cummings