Letter from April 26, 2011

Dear Family,

  Ok, so first I guess I should say happy anniversary Ashley and Josh, I hope ya'll had a wonderful day yesterday! Also, Happy Birthday to Madison tomorrow, I hope you have a wonderful day! And now it's time for the rest of the story.

  So, most of ya'll know that I'm now a Hmong missionary, but I'd thought I'd enlighten you a little bit about them and about what I'm doing here.  So, the Hmong people are originally from China, but then immigrated to Laos.  During the communist take over they hid in the jungles and then swam across the river into Thailand whenever they got a chance.  Most of their lives the Hmong people have been the dust of society and their name for themselves in Hmong, means "free people" so they've always settled in places where they could be themselves with their own culture.  Mostly in the mountains in Laos to be out away from people and then split up here across the country.

  With that being the case my mission boundaries extend from the international border to the top of the Carlsbad mission, because their are so few Hmong people here in California.  Our branch has about 25-30 members in it but most of them are inactive because they only joined the Church for the welfare program.  Elder Insong and I are the only ones responsible as well for trying to teach and reactivate them and their families, so it's a tough job.  Interestingly enough though we found out that I was the only one allowed to have language study to learn Hmong since we just took over two areas from the Carlsbad mission and added them to our own, so Elder Insong might be leaving me soon and I'll have to learn the language with the help of some members that speak English pretty good and are just excited to teach us their language.
  A lot of the work is reactivating members, but there are two referrals we received earlier this week that we're planning on contacting today after meeting with Elder Perry.  It's tough though because a big part of their culture is drinking and smoking so the Word of Wisdom is a big issue that it's hard to change among the people, but we're working hard and relying upon the Lord for lots of help.

  Well, I've got to get going, today I get to meet and Apostle so I'm pretty excited to get going, I hope everyone is well, and I'm still waiting for pictures of my new little niece, whom I hope is healthy and well!  Hope to hear from ya'll soon!

 

Love,

Elder Wise4