June 13, 2013
Hello Tiny Family,
I’m sorry I didn’t send out an email this week. I’m still learning
how to manage my internet time; every week our Mission President sends us assignments and
so between those and reading emails, my time is usually gone. If you could
encourage people to print out their things and mail them to me, that would be
awesome. But I’ll try to see what I can do to manage my internet time better.
I realize I neglected to mention about a kadrillion things
in last week’s email. First of all, I got a referral on my flight over here. It
was a teensy, 2 hour flight but I still got a referral. I was super excited
about it, especially because the group I was flying over with was rather
immature (kneeling backwards in their seats talking to those sitting behind
them, cheering whenever they announced snacks, standing up and yelling up the
aisles, taking flash pictures of everyone on the plane, talking and singing at
the top of their lungs). I understand that they were excited, and with a group
of 30, all that excitement was amplified. But overall it probably wasn’t the
best display of a quiet dignified group of missionaries. Regardless, I started
up a conversation with the woman next to me. She had just come from dropping
her daughter off at a rehab center in Salt Lake and was on a connecting flight
back to home in Alaska, where she’d left four young kids with their grandma and
was worried about them. I suggested we say a prayer for their safety, and then
after the prayer I taught her a little bit about the plan of salvation as well
as how to pray. I asked her if she’d like to have missionaries in Anchorage
come and teacher her more and she said Yes! I wrote down her information and
brought it to the mission office when I got here.
I love the concept of never being off the clock. On p-day (preparation) this past Monday we tried to find a Cambodian restaurant, but ended up in a
Vietnamese place. I asked the waiter how to say things like “Do you believe in
God?” “Do you go to church?” “Can you read in Vietnamese?” “Have you ever heard
of the Book of Mormon?” etc. and then explained to him why I needed to know how
to say those things by sneakily teaching a first discussion. I left him with a restoration pamphlet, a Mormon.org card with our names, number, and church
address, and a Vietnamese Book of Mormon. Hooray, the Church is true in
Vietnamese too.
Thanks so much for the package you sent. I taped everything
into my journal minus the cake mix and frosting which were put to use
immediately. I gave my companion one of the party blower things which she
adores and keeps in the car at all times just in case. Her parents aren’t
members; she doesn’t even know her dad and her mom doesn’t support her going on
a mission so she doesn’t get much mail. She is: ¼ Chinese, ¼ Vietnamese, and ½ Cambodian.
This is her first time in the states.
The members here take good care of us. There’s a family with
chickens that gives us fresh eggs every week. There’s another family that lets
us do our laundry at their house and using their washer and dryer rather than
going to a laundromat which saves us about 10 bucks a week each. The Relief Society
President gave us pillows and blankets because we had neither and regularly
checks up on us to see if we have food in our fridge. There’s an Elderly man in
the Stake who sometimes takes us out to buy groceries and he’ll give us 100 to
spend on food, detergent, and toilet paper. There’s a man in the ward who owns
a bakery and at the end of each month he gives us first pick of the bread, bagels
and cakes he has leftover. People randomly buy us cereal, paper towels, and
snacks. And people force money on us occasionally. The last Elders in this ward
were lazy, disobedient, flirtatious and ended up getting sent home for some law
of chastity stuff. They had an emergency transfer and switched them out for
sisters which were Sister Noun (my companion) and her trainer. Sister Noun said
it took a long time for missionaries to gain the trust of the members. But once
they saw how hard working and dedicated the sisters were they warmed up and
they've been welcoming us ever since.
Do you read the mission blog? I think our mission president is pretty good
about updating it with pictures and things.
This mission has a lot of traditions. Everyone is required
to attend the transfer meetings, whether they’re being transferred or not. We have specific songs we sing, and we have a mission theme: Faith is the power, love
is the motive, obedience is the price, the spirit is the key, the restoration
is the message, members are the means, Christ is the reason, baptism is the
way, joy is the reward.
We do conference calls every Sunday to report our numbers, share
miracles that have happened and hear a message from President and Sister Weaver.
We get weekly homework assignments that we have to complete and mail into President by Saturday. We have one day a month called “park day” where we can’t
use our cars at all, and we walk to all our appointments and talk to everybody we
see on the streets. Every day of the week we do “5-7’s”, which means as a companionship
we pray over where to tract and then knock doors from 5 until 7 every evening.
This is how we find the majority of baptism and (reportedly) we’re the 2nd
highest baptizing mission after Provo.
There are 13,000 Cambodians living in our mission
boundaries. Most of them were baptized in the 80’s and are now inactive and
attend Buddhist temples that have services in Cambodian. They said if we get
enough Cambodians to church they’ll consider opening a branch. But none of the
Cambodians want to come because there isn't a branch. There is a Samoan and
Spanish Branch in our stake and we tract into a ton of Samoans and Hispanics.
Which is a bummer because they get so excited to hear we have a branch in their
language and want to learn more about the gospel, but we can’t teach them, so
we have to hand them off to the Spanish Elders or Samoan Elders. I didn’t
realize what a privilege it was in Boston to be able to teach everyone we
encountered. Here we make a lot a referrals, and receive a lot of referrals.
The Spanish Elders are our friends. The areas where they are high Hispanic populations
there are also high Cambodian populations. So we work pretty closely with them,
giving them streets to tract and getting a referral from them pretty much
daily.
I’ve been in Tacoma 2 weeks, and the church is true here
too.
Sister McQuivey
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