(*Note from Madre D - Raquel's camera quit working and she ran out of time to write the picture captions...so stay tuned...hopefully she'll fill in the blanks next week!
Thanks to the other sisters for sharing their photos! Especially Sister Kamp!)
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| Sister Kamp and Sister Yochim |
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| Fireside |
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Nasna choinka - Our Christmas Tree!
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Dear Family and Friends!!!
I can't believe that we are three weeks down! This week was both difficult and amazing! I definitely struggled this week with the language and feeling the Spirit! I began to be really down on myself but all of sudden I started to notice all these mini miracles that kept happening through out the week that I will talk about throughout this email!
Our Pday usually ends at 4:50 and then after that we have classroom time, but last week we started this thing called TRC! It is where we go teach members a short message we prepare! These members have served in the mission before and so they speak Polish to us the entire time! I was so incredibly nervous!
Sister Kamp and I decided to teach a similar lesson on faith we taught to Karina! We are sitting in the room waiting for our first person to come in and in walks Kendall Blake! Kendall Blake is a cousin of on of my best friends from college and she reached out to me when I got my call! I was so excited and all the nervous tension I had just completely went away and our lesson was able to go so well and we were able to ask her questions about the mission which was incredible!
This past week we also taught 8 lessons! Yes 8!!!!! It was crazy! One of those lessons was a Relief Society lesson! We taught on how to recognize the spirit! I know this lesson was for me because I learned so much from it! When we were told we would be teaching Relief Society this past week I was honestly not excited! We had so many other lessons to plan and I felt like this was another thing to do!
However, when we began to teach this incredible feeling came over me and I was prompted to share an experience that I had! It was like I was reliving the experience and I just felt this immense love, peace, and joy come over me! I knew I was meant to teach that lesson to teach me!
That night the Media Director of the church came and spoke with us and revealed the new Christmas theme this year! We were able to watch the video as well! When it comes out on December first I encourage all of you to watch, it is SO GOOD!!!!!
This week we started teaching our lessons without a script! Before this Sister Kamp and I were good about just writing our lessons in English and then translating during the lesson. We usually brought a dictionary and this little black book with helpful words for missionaries! This time though we were only allowed to write bullet points of the order of our lesson and we made a companion goal to write less than 25 vocab words to bring in with us!
Our first lesson like this was when we taught Słowek about the Book of Mormon! He had asked why he needs another book of scripture when he already has the Bible! Sister Kamp and I prepared this lesson and we felt good about it! I was so nervous and a little frustrated because I felt like I was so slow talking!
Before every lesson Sister Kamp and I say a prayer and we ask to be able to speak our language the best we could! We went in there and it was like night and day from us practicing our lesson! We understood everything he said and he understood what we said and he said everything makes sense that we taught and that he would read the Book of Mormon! We were so pumped! My whole attitude changed and I know that what happened was not by us getting all of a sudden better at Polish, we were blessed with help!
We also taught Karina this week! She has progressed so much and really wants to be baptized but her husband won't let her so we are working on that with her! It is incredible to go in those lessons with her and feel how much she has changed!
Language lesson for this week:
In Polish there is no word for "the" or "of", instead they have cases to decided how to conjugate the nouns! Cases are crazy!!!! There are seven cases in Polish! We learned two of them this week, the subject of the sentence and the direct object of the sentence! This is a short summary of how they work: cases focus on the noun and the adjective! First you look at the origin of the noun, if it ends in a consonant it is either masculine personal (if the noun is a living thing) or masculine, if it ends in an a, oć, or ość it is feminine, and if it ends in e or ę it is neutral! After you figure out that you then change the ending of the adjective to i or y for masculine personal or masculine, a if its feminine, and e if its neutral! However everything I just described is for the first case only! Each case has different endings! Talk about confusing, but honestly I love it! It is going to take a lot of practice though to remember using them when I speak! So much more makes sense now in Polish after learning about cases though, so that is good!!
Oh another thing we learned how to say what our purpose is (well a summarized version) in Polish! We sang it to the tune yankee doddle and we haven't forgotten it since! Here it is:
Zapraszamy innych by przyszli do Chrystusa pomagając im v pryzjęciu pryzwróconych prawd.
We invite others to come unto Christ by helping them receive the restored truths!!
Oh one of the best things that happened this week though was I received a slip to let me know a package had arrived! Sister Kamp and I ran to get it and the guy comes back with this CHRISTMAS TREE from my Mom!! We screamed and ran back to our room to show the other Polish sisters! We put it up that night! I can't even explain how excited I am to be in the MTC for Christmas! It was the BEST DAY EVER!!!!
I just want to let you all know how much God loves all of us and that you are never alone!! I have learned so much about myself this week as I have been able to see all the mini miracles God has put in my life! I am so grateful to be on this mission and to learn the crazy language they call Polish!! Kocham Cię!!!
Do Widzenia,
Siostra DeMordaunt
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