What Happens When: You learn how dolphins are trained - wk 6
Hello Everyone! Suisaday!
This week was seriously so fast... I don't remember a whole ton, but I will try to update yall on the most important stuff!
Highligh of the week: President Richard J. Maynes of the 70 came to speak to us this week. And boy was his talk amazing!!! Some of the quotes I loved: "Keep your faith higher than your fear" "You're responsible for your own good time!" I really loved what He said about choosing to continue on in faith becuase everything will always work out for our good IF we put all our trust in the Lord. So lucky to hear from such amazing people every week!
For all of you who are wondering what in the world my subject line means - no we didn't get to see dolphins. I WISH! haha no, but I did learn a great lesson that I feel like I should share.
Our whole district seemed to be having a hard time this week with our lessons. Sometimes we (everyone on earth) feel like when we take 1 step forward, we take 3 steps back. Well, our teacher Lokkruu Mickleson (who is literally heaven-sent) pulled me and my companion out of class to tell us a story he was told when he was in the MTC titled, "How Dolphins are Trained". It goes like this: dolphins are put in an arena with a bar. If they figure out how to swim over the bar, they get food and all is happy and well. Well, as soon as they figure out how to swim over the bar, the trainers move the bar up higher and the dolphins don't understand what they are being asked to do. Until they stop and figure out how to get over the raised bar, they feel like what they're being asked to do could be impossible. But, the dolphins work at it until they eventually figure it out.
Then one day the dolphins come out to train, and the bar is out above the water. And they ask "what do you want from me? what do you want me to do? I don't really wanna be out of water, I want to be in the water where i'm comfy". When the trainer blows the whistle, the dolphins try with ALL their might to get over the bar, and eventually they will. When they finally reach the bar they realize it's kinda fun to jump that high, and the reward is good! Long story, but I tell this because It's so true about all of our lives - especially the missionary life. When we have a good week, the language is becoming easy, and we feel like we can do it, we are jumping over the bar. God knows we can succeed, and he wants to train us to become even better until we finally reach our full potential - out in the air. Sometimes we feel like asking "what is it that you want from me?" God says, "I just want your ALL." Give him your all and you can jump out of the water over the bar, and the reward is good! I loved this little analogy. Helped me get a better perspective on this training thing we do as missionaries to become better servants of the Lord.
The Thai district (who have become our best friends) left this morning at 2:00am. I am so sad they are gone! no one is replacing them or us cambos until like mid-december. Our zone will be SO empty!!! The rest of our zone here in the MTC includes Hmongs, Cantonese, Laosian, Thais, and Vietnamese speakers. We all speak to one another in different languages and it's so fun to never know what anyone is actually saying! haha. Just Kidding. But not really. We have all become best friends and play some Bball, have nice hallway chats, and eat meals together! SO FUN!
I've been busy writing and translating talks the past few weeks. Even if we aren't called to speak in our branch sacrament meeting, we are still all required to write a talk. and then we translate those talks because it is 99% guranteed we will have to speak in church our first week in the field. YIKES! Ha It keeps me busy, but in 21 days when I get to cambodia I will be really glad I took the time to do it now :)
This is week 7 for us! It's getting pretty crazy, we have 8 investigators and 1 Less-Active member we are teaching every week! It's so fun to see all the progress we are making in the language. A month ago, I literally knew nothing. Now, I can teach a whole lesson in full-cambodian on my own! This week for TRC we will not be teaching volunteer RMs anymore. Nope. Now we will have the opportunity to SKYPE REAL CAMBODIAN PEOPLE IN CAMBODIA and teach them a lesson and actually have to use ALL KHMER WORDS!!!!! So nervous but SO excited! I'll let you all know how this goes next monday!
Have a great week everyone! Thanks for all the emails! I love you all so much!
Much Love,
Sister Haddock