Grand Prairie Day 2

Service! We worked Hmong territory in the Dallas area, our group didn't find anyone who was actually Hmong but there were others who had good calls. The highlight of our service day was association.

Talyssa, Keon and I worked with Nina (a sister in the Lao group) and Madelynne (a sister visiting the Lao group from the ASL congregation)

After service Nina took us back to her house for lunch. We ate Fuh which is kind of soup. The hmong, Thai and Lao people all eat soup for nearly every meal.

To be honest, I am definitely not a fan! haha

It is a combination of noodles, meat (they use EVERY part of the animal so who knows what you are eating), then boiling water is poured on top to cook the meat and noodles, they then add various sauces (including Fish sauce..they LOVE fish sauce) top it off vegetables, bean sprouts and cilantro and a bit of Lao hot sauce.

In their cultures it is very rude not to eat what you are given, so we did our best to eat every meal we were given.

The meeting was at 1 on Saturday. We sang the opening song in Hmong (well those of us who could sang in Hmong and the others looked at the print out of the song confused and did their best)
The public talk was in english and the watchtower was read in Thai, questions were asked in engligh and Lao and comments were welcome in English, Hmong, Lao and Thai.

The lao group has put forth diligent effort to learn Thai as well as the Lao language because similar to Hmong, there are currently no watchtowers available in the Lao language.
It was a very encouraging experience, and so incredible to hear comments in 4 languages and yet everyone learned something during the meeting.
After the meeting there was a picnic in the park, we enjoyed ethnic foods, association and practice presentations in multiple languages.

After the picnic the Hmong group decided we would have a little after-party of our own. We piled into caravans and headed into the city to check out a hip Jazz lounge.

Angel was driving very poorly and Both Alma (his wife) and I felt really sick. I love the picture on the right, her face was priceless!

And here is a silly picture of Benny and I seated at our table after a 2 and a half hour wait.

Grand Prairie Day 1

We left for Texas around 3 on Friday afternoon.

We didn't arrive in town until after 9 but our Host family had kindly prepared a meal for us.

Our first meal of the trip (pictured above) consisted of freshly made beef jerky, Lao noodles and sticky rice. It was really good!

Grand Prairie and the nod of approval

We are going to Grand Prairie Texas and will be staying with the Lao brothers and sisters as the Laotion congregation will be hosting our visit.

Mondo and Leah are leaving today
Alan and Theresa are leaving at 4 a.m. tommorrow
and the rest of us will be heading over throughout the day on Friday.

So excited!!!!!!

I had an exciting moment yesterday. Last night was the first Hmong Theocratic ministry school!
We are still waiting for our Hmong songbooks to come in so we were trying to keep up singing in my engligh book when I decided to look over Barbara's shoulder and try reading her song book. To my surprise I was actually able to read the Hmong songs!

My assigned comment last night was about pagans and the cross.
FUN....not.
I had to find the words and figure out how to pronounce them. It was difficult because the Hmong resources do not list words like "Christianity" So I had to look through my Hmong bible teach book and find words.
I was so certain I was going to mess it up, unfortunately the time came for me to give my comment and I managed to spit it out in a pathetic manner before someone pointed out that I had gotten the "nod of approval" from Fuji our Hmong brother. Apparently that is an honor and that is his way of saying "I actually know what you said and it sounded pretty good."
Everyone wants to get a nod from Fuji, He even does it for his wife and she is almost more Hmong than he is!

I was very very proud of myself.

Anyways, Benny had the bible reading in English last night and he did so well! I still can't believe he was able to pronounce all those words right!!

Texas

The Hmong group is taking a trip next weekend.
There are trips at least once a month but usually only a few people go at a time, for this trip the entire group will be travelling together.

We leave Friday all together piled into a couple of cars and will be staying with brothers and sisters (I don't remember where in Texas we will be). We will be gone Friday-Sunday.

Here is the travel schedule:

Friday afternoon: leave for Texas.
Arrival late friday night.

Saturday: Meeting in the morning
Service all afternoon

Sunday: Service in the morning
Shopping in the afternoon (its cheaper to buy things in Texas)
Drive home Sunday evening
Arrive home late Sunday night in time to get back to work on Monday.

I'm excited, it will be a lot of fun!

Changes

We are not getting a Hmong class. Looks like we are on our own for now.
With the growth we have had recently the Circuit overseer has decided it is time we have our own theocractic ministry school twice a month. We are on our way to becoming a congregation!

Currently we meet in a very small back room with no air circulation and only one small window, because we no longer fit back there we have been told we need to figure something out pretty quickly or we will be sent to another host congregation with a bigger library for us.
There is a Hmong family studying with Theresa and they are attending a few meetings so we will also begin having public talks interpretted into Hmong along with the ocassional public talk in Hmong.

Very exciting changes!!