Today is TOUGH. I received
travel plans the same as the rest of my district that indicated I'd be leaving
the same time as them (how many ways can you say BLESSINGS?)! I tried not to
get my hopes up, and told myself they were a mistake, but everyone we talked to
said "trust the travel plans" and so I went ahead and got all
thrilled about it. For 4 days I was thrilled about it. Sure enough, the
travel office hadn't got the update that I'd be staying later, and so the plans
were according to the old schedule. So then I had to re-find out that I'd be
here later, which is worse than just finding out once.
Yesterday my whole district left, minus me. I'm a wreck. I
love the MTC, but today I'm realizing what I love most about it is the
people here, and now they're all gone. Before they left, we took a kadrillion
pictures and they each wrote me a message in my journal, so at night when
I couldn't sleep I sat and looked through them all and cried. The goodbyes
were rough. There was not a single dry eye in my district. And obviously if I'd
been leaving then too it still would have been sad, but I would have been so
excited and nervous that I would have a lot more to think about then me being
alone. Now I'm officially the only Cambodian speaker in the entire MTC. It's
cool to think about, but it's mostly lonely. And it means I don't have anyone
to practice with. I wish I had class all the time because then I'd be with a
teacher and forced to talk and study and learn and worry about a fake
investigator. But I only have class for a few hours each day, and the rest of
the time it's just personal study (even when it's scheduled as
companionship study, additional study, or language study, for me it's still
personal study). Now all I have to think about is the 'solo' sister
sticker on my name tag and what it says about how I feel right now. I was
blessed with the most amazing district. We were the only Cambodian speaking
district in the entire MTC for most of our time here, which means we really
were never apart. And on preparation days when there's a little more freedom in
your schedule, we always chose to spend it together anyway. And now all of a
sudden I'm without a companion, a district, any class members. All I feel like
doing is sitting and reminiscing, but I need now more than ever to focus and
push forward. I've been moved to room with the New Thais, because they're
in my same branch. They live on a different floor and have class in a
different building and so I haven't really had the chance to get to know them
besides church on Sunday. They're great people and really nice to me. But
they've only been here a few weeks and so I almost feel like I'm back where I
was at week 3, despite the fact that I've learned and grown and come so far in
the past 6 weeks. I just feel done here and I want to leave so bad, but
I'm determined to finish strong and make this my most obedient, diligent,
spiritual week yet. Please pray for me to be able to do so, and to also feel
happy this week.
Here's some interesting things about Cambodian/Khmer:
the point of the language is designed to look completely
uniform. So when you write a sentence, it looks like the same pattern over and
over again. This makes it difficult to read and write, because there are 108
letters in the alphabet, but they all look super similar.
The word for repentance means "to turn your
heart".
The word for sidewalk curbs means "the eyebrows of the
road".
We found a language here that actually looks a lot like
Khmer- it's called Georgian, and only a small group of missionaries who are
called to Georgia (the country) are learning it.
You can see and hear what Khmer is like on LDS.org. Go to
the 'teachings' tab in the top right, then click on General Conference. Pick
'all conferences', then in the top right where it says 'English', scroll down
until you get to the language 6th from the bottom, in super tiny characters. Then
click on any of the conferences, any of the talks, and you should be able to
watch it (overdubbed in Khmer), listen to it, and read it (or at least look at
the squiggles). A lot of the talks are translated by one of my
teachers; they'll give him the translated talks the night before
conference and he has to read it as fast as he can into a microphone at
the conference center so it's available online as soon as the English ones
are. For every one syllable you say in English, the Khmer translation
has about 3x as many. So when they're trying to time the reading of the
talk to be overdubbed exactly what's being said in English, it means you have
to talk super super fast. My teacher said I'll likely be translating from
English to Khmer my first Sunday in the mission, because he did in Sacramento.
They conducted the church meetings in English, but there were always at least
10 people who couldn't understand in English and so the missionaries would
translate for them. I'm at the point where it takes me 5 minutes to form a
full sentence, and usually when I get to the end of the sentence, I've
forgotten what I started with in the beginning. It's a good thing I've got
God on my side, because He's fluent in Khmer, so I don't have to be as long as
I'm worthy to ask for His help. I've already received it so much everyday.
I've been in the MTC 9 weeks, and the church is true here
too!
-Sister McQuivey
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