(I posted her first letter home before she sent us this email, so please excuse any repeated info's - Sister Zaugg's Mom)
Well, it's true when they say that days here last for weeks and weeks last for days. I can't believe that I've almost been here for a whole week and yet at the same time I'm like, "wait... I've only been here for less than a week?" It'll be like, 12PM and we're going to lunch and we realize it isn't dinner time and we're like, "HOW LONG IS THIS DAY??" But I think it's because we study all day long! It's wake, eat, study, study, learn Thai, teach in Thai, study, write in journal, go to bed. I sometimes don't get to read letters until the day after I get them.
Anyway, first day, as soon as my host elder got my stuff it was go go go!! I got my books, dork dot and was sat in my classroom where my teacher was already speaking to us in Thai and expecting us to reply! My district is very small. There are only five of us Nccng Thai (young thai) and like, 28 of the Phii Thai (old thai)! They treat us like their children! haha The first day they just swarmed us and kept asking questions, we barely got to eat cause we had to talk so much.
On the second day we learned how to pray in Thai. Right now our district goal is to be able to give a full Thai prayer without the book by Sunday. We try only to pray in Thai now, but a lot of times it turns into Thaiglish. The crazy part is that we gave our first discussion to an investigator (pretend investigator) on the THIRD DAY!! IN THAI!! It went... uh... bad. haha I'm not gonna lie, I was pretty discouraged after that! But I knew that it was supposed to be hard and my companions (Sis Barton and Ng) were determined to focus and meeting Joe (investigator)'s needs! So the next day on our second lesson we focused on bringing the spirit into the lesson and making sure that he knew we care about him and love him and that our message was from a loving Heavenly Father. It went MUCH better! It was still bad, but we made sure to tell him that our Thai was bad so to bear with us. haha Yesterday we had our third lesson... and it was a disaster. About 3/4ths through we realized that for the last three lessons we've been teaching him the SAME thing. So we are praying very hard and studying and hoping that the Lord will teach us what Joe NEEDS to hear to grow closer to Christ. Our job as missionaries is to strengthen his relationship with God. It's just really hard because we are realizing that it's hard to know what to teach!!
But that's what the MTC is for right? I think it's just a miracle that we're even able to give him 30 minute lessons in Thai and kind of have a conversation with him when we've only had like.... 12 hours of instruction in total! The gift of tongues is SO real!
The first week was really hard, but everyone said to make it to Sunday and that it would be better and they were right! It is much better. I don't feel like I'm about to collapse at any given moment. The food at the MTC is pretty good. The cookies here are famtabulous!
Hmmm... can't think of anything else. Just know that I love you all, and I want to know how you're doing! I'm growing so much here, it's the hardest thing I've ever done so far, but I know that it'll all be worth it.
Sidtee ruu waa phaphupenchaw rag raw!
