kamusta kamo? I've
been pretty good here at the mtc, our teacher had noticed that we hadn't been
SYL (speaking our language) enough outside of our class and the language was
getting in the way of teaching when we taught returned missionaries at the
Teaching Resource Center, so he challenged us to an English fast where we speak
only Cebuano for a week starting 4:30 last Tuesday, so we have about 31 hours
left where we speak only Cebuano even to friends unless absolutely necessary
(interviews with leaders, choir, etc.). Its kinda frustrating for other people
in our zone who don't talk Cebuano - the only reason they can kinda understand
us is because we accompany the words with sort of a primitive sign language
(shrugging the shoulders when we say ngano, waving when we say kamusta, looking
confused when we say "unsa?", etc) - it's interesting. However, we
don't know a ton of Cebuano, so there are a lot more periods of silence than
there was before :P after this is over, we're going to try to speak Cebuano as
much as possible except for when talking to people who aren't Cebuano speakers
:)
Adlaw sa mga amahan
went pretty well - at one part during our choir practice on Sunday that day the
director stopped to talk a little bit about how fathers, especially Heavenly Father, watch over us - he went on to talk about how
the Cherokees would have a manhood tradition where they´d have the father take
the son out into the woods and blindfold him, set him on a stump, and have him
sit there all night and don´t take the blindfold off until they felt the sun
through their blindfold. When they took the blindfold off, there would be their
father - he had been there watching over his son the whole time. But none of
the other kids could know about it because part of the tradition was that the
boy couldn't tell anyone about the experience.
the director then
shared another story where his dad, when his mom was gone, took them to a
river, blew up the raft, and set them in it, and told them have a good time,
and watch out for the pillars of a bridge because it can flip them. then he set
them on their way and got in the car to meet them at the bottom. they had fun,
but then as the bridge came up the raft was sideways and so one half was
paddling for one side, the other was paddling to a different side, and so the
support of the bridge flipped them over. they all got to the shore but the raft
was gone. they walked down the side of the river, and as they got around the
first turn, there was their dad, raft in hand. It turns out that he had driven
slowly down the road next to the river out of site, watching carefully, when he
was sure that all of his children had made it safely to shore, he went ahead,
got the raft, and met them at the next turn.
Both of these are so
much like our Heavenly Father - we may not be able to see him, but he's there
watching over us even when we're scared and/or feel alone just like the
Cherokee father. Also, like the Choir director's father, Heavenly Father has
set us on our way, telling us to have a good experience and what to look out
for, but as we go through life, he's keeping an eye on us every step of the
way, ready and wanting to help if we just ask for it.
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