Querida Familia,
How are you all doing?
About every week the Spanish-speaking sisters go on exchanges. This last Thursday I was able to serve with Hermana Beukers in Federal Way. Federal Way is right on the Puget Sound and is beautiful. Hermana Beukers was also really good about encouraging me to speak to people in Spanish even though the people we visited knew her better than me. We were able to talk to a lot of people and set up several return appointments for her and her companion Hermana Galarza.
Cultural Lesson of the week: "Agua" which means "water" in English doesn't always have the same connotation in Spanish. "Agua" pretty much means something that is mostly water. You can imagine my surprise when someone asked me if I wanted "agua" and what they handed me was not a clear liquid (but rather white or orange with some sort of fruit floating in it). "Agua natural" means the clear stuff we call "water".
On Tuesday we had a lesson with a new investigator named R.. He was the first lesson I've had with someone that I initially contacted. We first knocked on his door to deliver a DVD that his roommate ordered. The roommate wasn't home, but R. answered and we set up a return appointment with him. When we came back, there wasn't a woman in the apartment so he told us we could just have the appointment outside even though it was sprinkling. He is in his late twenties and was telling us that he first moved to the US because he wanted more money and he saw that material things were important, but he has since learned that material things aren't as important as he initially thought. He also told us that he used to want to go out and do wild things on the weekend but then he learned that those things were fun for a little while but that fun didn't last and now he prefers to read, listen to music, or practice cooking oysters for his job. We have another appointment with him on Tuesday.
The plan this week is to spend part of my time during our breaks to create lesson plans for a 6-week English as a Second Language program geared toward Spanish speakers that we can use as a weekly service project and a way to better get to know the local Spanish-speaking population. Three years ago I volunteered at an ESL program in Provo. I couldn't have seen it then, but it is amazing to see how the nine months I spent there prepared me to be of more use here.
One thing that I have come to appreciate more than ever before is how my testimony really is my greatest possession and I should do everything I can to protect it and improve it.
Los amo. Cuidense mucho.
Carino,
Hermana Kinghorn
