Hey! It's been a while. Sorry for not emailing last week or this past Tuesday. It's been a full week of family and service. But let's get on with what's happened!
Monday Service- I'm currently working on getting started at an animal shelter called Heidi's Village. Hopefully I can start there soon!
Gathering Humanity- The place is bustling as usual with preparations for the incoming wave of Afghani refugees. I've recently completed reorganizing the diaper shelves and oh my goodness there's so much to organize and yet we still need as many donations as we can to help these people. I'm hoping the holiday season and the Light the World movement will encourage more donations to come our way.
Sequoia Deaf School- My students are currently in love with Pokemon. I just remember my mom saying how she thought it was just a phase back when my siblings and I were kids and boy was she wrong! After 25 years, Pokemon is still going as strong as ever and I can see that in these students. They've brought both trading cards and figurines to school and even have asked me to draw some characters for them. Something that I love to do is to look up videos of how to sign the Pokemons' names. There aren't any official signs, so it's super fun to see all the different interpretations from people! One student loves to go through a list and tell me which ones she likes and which ones she doesn't like. I've also noticed my comprehension skills have gone up so much even from the 8 hours of immersion I get once a week. I'm remembering signs that I forgot from back in high school and I'm learning many new signs as well. Currently my absolute favorite service location!!!
Pioneer Village- I'm starting to appreciate the nice weather and I'm dreading the coming of winter. I know those reading this email from colder climates think I'm whining about 60 degree weather, and to that I say: you're quite right. I'd just rather be baked in an oven than frozen in a freezer. At least I don't have to scrape the sunshine off of my car windows. I've been serving at the schoolhouse (meaning I have school on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays) and I'm always excited to see how energetic these kids are to learn about how the education system was during Pioneer times. I had a gentleman today who clearly was not from Arizona wonder why all the plants here are still alive even though there hasn't been rain in months... sir, cacti and other succulents are used to the lack of water... I just told him that a lot of the saguaro cacti he's seeing are easily as old if not older than these hundred year old buildings here and know how to survive in a desert.
Casteel Seminary- Some kids are sad that I probably won't be their mentor come 2022 (because we're switching mentor groups for the new semester) while others don't seem to mind haha. I'm baffled I only have three more weeks with these kids. I feel like I just started to get to know them! I love how willing they are to listen and make comments and form friendships they wouldn't normally make with other kids in our group. I also found out that mini tootsie pops seem to be a huge winner in the treat department so I have a big bag that should set me up for a while.
Saturdays- These past two Saturdays have consisted of ushering for QCPAC's Shrek Jr., family photos, and Organ Stop Pizza. Alongside that, I've been doing a speedrun of Stardew Valley in my free time. The most common speedrun in that game is to complete the community center in one in-game year. My goal is to complete it as soon as I can because it is quite a struggle to do it in a year and requires a lot of skills and straight up luck with items such as a red cabbage and the rabbit's foot. There's also a difference between a speedrun within the game's internal clock and with real life time. I'm obviously doing this speedrun with the former method because it would be way too much time to do the other method. I'm not that crazy I promise.
Sundays- November 21st was our branch's primary program and I got to lead the kids in two ASL songs. They did incredible and I'm so proud of how they were able to carry through with a primary program that had no singing! Such inspiring kids!
With that out of the way, instead of giving you a schedule of what my day is like, I would love to explain a little bit about Deaf culture and how the hearing community can best help Deaf and HOH (hard of hearing) people.
So when meeting a deaf person, one of the most polite ways to communicate with them (besides knowing sign of course) is to use paper and pen to communicate. If an interpreter is there, try to look at the deaf person rather than the interpreter considering you're having a conversation with them and not the interpreter. You shouldn't say things like "Can you tell them ___" to the interpreter because if you're having a conversation with the deaf person, you'd want to give them as much respect as you would if you were having a conversation with anyone else. Another common misunderstanding is that ASL has the exact same grammar structure as English. There is a form of signing called SEE (Signing Exact English), but if you plan on learning ASL, don't expect it to be easy.
I started learning ASL because it looked really cool, but as I've learned more and more, I've come to recognize it as an incredible form of communication because it gives some of God's children a way to speak out that they wouldn't have otherwise. Not only is there beautiful Deaf poetry, but every person I've met who signs has turned out to be an incredible person.
Part of Deaf culture is name signs. Instead of fingerspelling out someone's whole name, it's usually easier to give that person a sign that represents their name. I did not have a name sign before I attended Sequoia, so when I was introducing myself as Mandy (Sister Wright would be way too long by ASL standards, plus I can't get too religious at this location) and as a missionary, the teacher and I realized that the sign for missionary uses "M" as the handsign and would be a simple enough sign to use as my name sign. So my name sign technically translates to "missionary". I mean, as a disciple of Christ I'm quite honored to have that name.
And so, I hope you enjoyed learning a bit more about ASL and Deaf culture. Obviously I don't know absolutely everything about the culture, not even half of it, and I still have a lot of the language to learn, but I'm loving being able to serve these kids and staff as best I can.
And here's the newest pictures:
At Gathering Humanity, we had some items to sort out that was in a Modelo box... quite a fun donation to receive (no alcohol was involved at all)
There was a kitty cat at the Ace Hardware on boxes of acid. He was the (second) sweetest boy ever (first place goes to my own kitty Eli)
I got to hang out with my friend Ellis when he came over from NJ for Thanksgiving! We made bagels with Elder Wells and Elder Tucker
A picture from my family photo session :)
A group of missionaries after Sister Daines' launch talk. Elder Otey, Sister Gardner, me, Sister Daines, Sister Critchfield, and Sister McCook
Until next time, God loves you!!!
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