Week 43

O Swa! (that's how you say 'what's up' in Caren)

So Peh Reh and Lu Dee were baptized yesterday! It was awesome. I'll try to explain their family situation so I can explain the baptism. This might get really confusing. Here we go! So Deh Reh and Seh Meh are Peh Reh's parents. Deh Reh was baptized a few years ago, and Seh Meh was baptized a couple months ago. Peh Reh is married to Lu Dee. Peh Reh also has a little sister named Lu Meh who is also baptized.

We wanted to make the program special for them, so we asked Seh Meh and Lu Meh to give talks in their own language, they are both extremely shy, so we just asked them to give testimonies, so they did that and that was cool. Deh Reh said the closing prayer, and we were going to try to have the Baptismal prayer said in their own language but that would have been getting a little too crazy. Anyway, it was a good program and the baptism went well. It seems like the ward is pretty excited about it.

I don't have a lot of time and that was the main thing that happened this week that I wanted to tell you guys. Oh, and transfer calls were last night. My companion is being transfered. I was only with him one transfer so we weren't expecting it. Ok, I've got to attach this picture and get running!

Love Elder Holt

Week 42

Hey!

This week was sweet! The best thing that happened was that Key Mey's
family came to church. This time it wasn't just the parents and
the two toddlers. It was the whole family. We were standing inside the
foyer when the 4 oldest kids in the family walked in, (which we were
stoked about,) but we didn't see Key Mey or his wife. We asked
the kids where their parents were, and they said that they just went
home. I assumed that Jo (the mom) probably had to go to work, so I
didn't think much of it and was just happy that the kids came. Then 4
minutes into Sacrament meeting Key Mey and Jo walked in with the two
youngest. Key Mey made two trips to get all 6 kids to church and
Jo had gotten permission to go to work late again so that she could
come.

After sacrament I had to herd all 6 kids around the hallways trying to figure
out what rooms their classes were in and dropping them off one by one.
It was a little hectic, and then we went and got Key Mey who was wandering
around looking for Jo. We found Jo outside the bathroom, and got them to
the English class that we have for the Burmese people.

At the end of church it was a little crazier because they were trying to get the
whole family together in a corner of the church so they could leave. It was really
funny because Jo was yelling to me the number of kids left they needed to find
in her thick Burmese accent and then I would go off to find them. She kept losing
track of her youngest and then turning around to count them all again.

They ended up all liking church a lot. They would come every week but Jo wants
her kids to learn Caren (their native language) and they do that in Sunday School
at their church. I think that's only every once in a while. We'll have to figure that out.

In other news we taught this girl named Kisha this week. I don't know if I've mentioned

her very much. She was a media referral that requested a bible and we've met with

her a couple times. Teaching her is kind of crazy because she goes off on tangents,

but we actually had a sweet lesson with her this week that got somewhere. All of our

lessons so far have felt like she is cautious towards us and like she is hearing us out 

and not looking to learn, but this lesson was the first time where she was actually

looking to us for answers and had legitimate questions. We didn't stick so much to any

of the lessons, but we had a really good conversation about our purpose and what

being a child of God really means. We were bouncing around to a lot of other topics

but I feel like we made some progress, and we were able to teach out of the Book of

Mormon the whole time. I think she is more open to reading it now. 

 

We have a baptism coming up on Sunday! Peh Reh and Lu Dee. They have had their

date set a couple weeks before I got here, so we've just been reviewing commandments

and helping them prepare. That's happening Sunday after Church so it should be sweet!

 

k bye!

Love Elder Holt

Week 41

Sup!

So it was raining a lot this week, which meant we can't really go
riding our bikes around town because whatever pants we decide to wear
will just be ruined. All the dirt and rain kick up from the tires and
just destroy them. So, we were riding buses around.

Buses are fine, except it takes up most of our time to ride a bus to
an appointment, have them not be home, and then go wait for a bus and
catch that somewhere else. Sometimes it just feels like we're on buses
and trains all day long, but that time can be productive if we can get
in conversations with people on the buses. Sometimes its a little hard
to talk to people, because there's a weird social code on buses where
people won't even look at each other. Sometimes people talk, sometimes
people ignore us. Sometimes people will ask what we're "slingin", or
just tell us to teach them "the word", so that's where our good
conversations come from.

We had our lesson with the Key Mey family with the intent
of setting a baptismal date. That went....alright. We started by
reviewing the restoration, having them say what they knew about it and
stuff, and then we re-taught baptism and the importance of baptism
within the gospel, and then invited them to be baptized. I don't know
if I've laid out their family situation, but there is a 17 year old
daughter, a 13 year old son, a 12 year old daugher, and an 8 year old
son, and then the two parents. Everyone wanted to be baptized, but Key
Mey said he had already been baptized.

The problem with Key Mey is that he knows pretty much no english whatsoever,
so we spent time trying to explain the restored authority and how that matters for
baptism, which is touchy enough to do in English, but the problem is
that whatever we were saying was being translated by one of the
daughters, but not exactly very well. A lot was getting lost in
translation and there were a lot of misunderstandings, but eventually
we simply invited Key Mey to pray about it and he agreed, so we'll see
where he is this week. They couldn't make it to church because of some
fathers day thing, but they promised to come next week.

Another thing that happened this week was that we met this really
cool guy named Elmore. We were waiting for someone on the sidewalk of a kind
of busy street, and we saw this jeep flip around down the street and he came
and pulled up right in front of us. He called us over, and he's this big black guy with
a bull ring nose piercing, and then he told us that his best friend was a missionary,
and he started telling us how he was taught back in 1988 and went to the Hill Cumorah
pageant and stuff. He's the nicest guy of all time, and he spent an hour telling us all
these stories, and eventually invited us over for dinner, so we'll go over there this week.

Love,
Elder Holt

Week 40

Oy!

I'm still alive. This week I decided that I am now more likely to get
injured riding a train or a bus than riding my bike. I have yet to
develop the incredible balance that every person in Buffalo has when
they are riding a bus.

Seriously though, whenever I get on a bus, I slide my card and right as 
I turn around the driver just floors it and I almost fall face first into one
of the side polls every time. Every other person I see though is completely
un-phased. Teenage girls will get on while they're texting and the bus will
take off and they don't even shuffle or anything. It's worse when I don't
have a spot to sit and I'm just standing there, because everyone around
me that's standing doesn't even have to hold on to anything, so I try to look
all casual like them and just keep my hand on a nearby seat, but
really whenever the bus slows down I am digging my toes into the
ground and flexing my quads as hard as I can so I don't fall forward,
which usually doesn't work and then I stagger forward and desperately
look for something to grab on to...it's great! I guess it gets people
to notice me right?

This week has been good! I'll just give you guys the good main
thing we were excited about this week. The Key Mey family is one of
the Burmese families we are teaching. We call them the Key Mey family,
but that's mostly because the father's name is Key Mey and Burmese
people don't have last names. The other Burmese people that were
baptized are from a different part of Burma, and in their part their
last name is just their gender. For boys it's "Reh" and for girls its
"Meh", so in that family we have Deh Reh, Seh Meh, Lu Meh, and Pleh
Meh. I'm sure Burma has problems with identifying people.  

The Key Mey family didn't come to church last Sunday
and they said they would, and we were really disappointed, but when we
went over this week Key Mey said that he tried to go ride is bike to
our church (he likes to ride his bike to places before he drives
there) and said he couldn't find it, so we just went with him and his wife in
his car, showed them where it was, and then gave them a tour of the
building. The next day they came, but it was cooler because the mom
wasn't supposed to come because of work and she told us she wouldn't
be there, but I guess she asked for special permission to go into her
work later to come the church! that was cool. But yah, we were excited
about that and we're hoping to commit them to baptism this week.
Hopefully it goes well!

Alright cya!
Love Elder Holt