(Elder Cummings)
I talked with my brother on how to start these weekly
emails, cause it gets kind of hard to have anything truly creative or new
during MTC when it's the same thing every week. Let alone home/virtual MTC
where "you don't even have the bois".
The days and weeks really are very similar and that's not a
bad thing at all. Just full of gospel and language study, on my own, with Elder
Liang, and with my stellar district. There's a lot to learn on how to
effectively teach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, let alone in Mandarin.
Elder Liang and I taught our first Chinese TRC this week!
Needless to say, I am once again grateful for Elder Liang and his immaculate
skill in Mandarin, he carried me most of the way through the lesson.
You gotta find fun where you can these days. So it's always
a blast when our teacher, He Laoshi, shares a google doc with us to create any
Chinese sentence using the new grammar principle we're learning that day. I
think Elder Welker won "Most Creative" when he came up with “Chúle
Chummings zhǎnglǎo yǐwài wǒmen dōu bùshì dinosaurs" which means
"Besides Elder Chummings, we are all not dinosaurs" Very nice Wekler,
very nice. I think another highlight of the week was when Elder McKellar shaved
his head and when I told him he reminded me of a scripture story he knew
EXACTLY the one I was thinking about(2 Kings 2:23-24).
My spiritual thought comes from the Bible Dictionary
definition of Prayer. Part of it reads, "As soon as we learn the true
relationship in which we stand toward God (namely, God is our Father, and we
are His children), then at once prayer becomes natural and instinctive on our
part". I found this a very powerful but simple truth, especially when I
have to describe prayer and its purpose in Mandarin. I basically say something
along the lines of "God loves us. He wants to communicate with us, His
children. Through prayer, we can communicate with our Heavenly Father".
Not very eloquent I know, but when you're forced to use limited vocabulary and
grammar skills, I've found that there is no way fancy words and sentence
structures will distract from the truth I am trying to profess. The truth is
that God is our Father. He does want to communicate with us, to help and guide
us. When we understand that we truly are children of God, prayer not only
becomes more natural, but more powerful. Prayer is an act of faith, and through
prayer we can find truth and knowledge and comfort and direction and advice and
solace and peace...the list goes on and on. I know this to be true, I know
because I've acted in faith in prayer, I've "tested" it and I have
been able to see just a glimpse of the blessings it has given me, because the
blessings are endless.
再见！說祈禱！
Elder Cummings
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