It only took five days for my journal to catch up to the fact that it's 2024 so we're off to a great start this year. Also, we managed to stay awake until 11:00 pm on New Year's Eve so that's a huge accomplishment. I see great things ahead for the two of us!
It has been a bit of a strange week. We started off with a fun New Year's Eve: lunch with another missionary couple followed by sight reading string trio music (violin, viola and cello). That was lots of fun and we found some pieces we quite liked and others that were okay. Then we had fajitas for dinner with a senior missionary sister from our MTC group. It was a very delicious end to 2023.
New Year's Day got off to a lazy start but we had fun visiting some Asian stores and eating a fun bento box lunch. Then we got back to work, scheduling student interviews for the following day. We also put together a fun puzzle we borrowed.
The rest of the week we had interviews each day along with lots of emails and messages to help students figure out the registration and application process. We're not sure how much we're helping as it's a tad difficult to fix what's on their screen when they're in Africa and we're here but we try. We also know who to send them on to for more advanced help. It's tricky to take all the normal confusion of registering for classes and then add in that it's completely online and in a language that may not be their first language. Some days I'm amazed any of them actually figure it out.
When we ask the students the basic Word of Wisdom questions we can pretty much predict two things: when asked about smoking and tobacco use, 99% of the time we hear "oh no, I would never do that, it's very bad!" and when asked about tea there is always some sort of tea that they drink like cocoa or herb that is just fine so we always have to clarify that one. And then, if they do need to quit something, like coffee, in order to do Pathway they are quick to want to do whatever they have to to get their education. These students are just so eager to learn and grow!
One of the greatest things we very constantly hear when we ask them about their experience with Pathway Connect is that they loved the religious emphasis! We often have them tell us how wonderful it is to learn about Jesus while they are also learning other things like job skills!
We went for a walk in the Avenues (we live right on the edge of that neighborhood) and had fun seeing great old houses. It will be fun to spend more time walking when it's a bit warmer. We actually got snow yesterday so winter has arrived, sort of.
On our tour of the temples in our allowed boundaries, we went to the Oquirrh Mountain Temple this week. It is fun to see how the different temples are laid out and how some are so much smaller (like Oquirrh Mountain) than others (like Jordan River). However, no matter the size or location, the feeling is still the same and it is such a wonderful place to be.
We had a lunch meeting in the Pathway building this week and I was amused at the placement of the fire alarm on this map:
So, we'll keep praying for peace in the world and do everything we can to at least promote peace in our small corner of it.
Happy 2024!
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