This week Elder Ballard and I hit a bit of a slump in our
teaching. Over the last four weeks our
teaching pool has decreased sixty percent.
Not all bad. We have been able to
focus more specifically on the people who are more sincere in wanting to
learn. Sincerity is an issue you run
into a lot in Hmong work apparently.
There is literally no word for "no" in Hmong.
All that aside, we have seen miracles! This week we went to contact a referral in
downtown Fresno, only to find that they lived in a gated community. Naturally we did the missionary thing and
went to the call box and began calling the numbers of each Hmong women's name
on the residents list. It wasn't long
before we had success. An old niam tais
(grandmother) excitedly said that she would be over the open the gate the
moment she heard that we were LDS missionaries.
Mai L. came to let us in, and she wasn't blind like our
referral was supposed to be. As she was
leading us to her apartment we did pass the blind Hmong woman we were looking
for. She ended up not being interested
after all, but Mai L. was!
Mai was born in 1948 and has spent most of her life in
America. She was baptized a member of
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in September of 1987 in San
Diego and attended church there for five years until she moved across the
country for a job. This was the last
contact she had with the Church. For
longer that I have been alive she has had a testimony of Joseph Smith and has
not known where she could go to worship.
When we she excited pulled out her "Selections from the Book of
Mormon" in Lao we more than excitedly gave her a full Lao
translation. We taught her about the
living prophet, a new one to her, Thomas S. Monson and about the things he and
the apostles have taught us recently. We
told her about the Hmong ward in Fresno and she excitedly committed to start
attending.
We went back to see her on Saturday to follow up with her
and introduce her to the members who volunteered to give her a ride to find
that she had a friend who she wanted us to teach who spoke only Laotian. My companion has picked up a little bit of
Lao while he has been in Fresno, but that wasn't enough to teach on. We taught the message of the Restoration in
Hmong to Mai, who then taught it in Lao to her friend, who then replied to us
in Lao, which Mai translated into Hmong, which my companion translated into
English when I wasn't catching it all.
There was a lot going on, but at the end of the lesson, and under the
direction of the Spirit we taught about baptism and Elder Ballard was able to
commit our new investigator to be baptized in his native tongue. He accepted!
God works in mysterious ways. It is hard to grasp the big picture when we
are in the moment, but as the plan unfolds in becomes clear who the author
was. God does not forget His
children. He does not leave them
comfortless.
Thank you for all the emails! It has been great to hear from you all about
your adventures wherever you are in the world.
I hope you all have a great week!
With love,
Elder Cummings
Sorry the file size is too big to send two pictures
together. This is what I ate this week!
And here is evidence that it really went down!
It came back up later that night. There was something wrong with the pork. You're also not supposed to eat the chicken's
eyes...oops.
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