A Time of Adjustment

​I have now been in Singapore for over a week. I'm starting to adjust, and I'm liking it more and more. I think it's been the hardest adjustment I've had to make since getting in the mission field. I am with new people--new companion, new room mates, new house, new wards, big expensive city. I think God is, once again, trying to teach me patience and resilience. Also, Filipinos here speak very good English--they are taught American English too. So it's been a language adjustment as well. My spoken English got very poor in Malaysia--I even would mix Malay words in and almost never say the English word/could not remember the English word, because the Malay word better described the thing. So I am re-learning English. It's exciting.

Last week we had a lesson with people who are of the Baha'i faith. There is more than one point in my telling you this story, but I'll start with one that is relevant to my bad English. To the lesson, we brought two of the Elders in our Zone because there were some people there who live in their area. So it was four missionaries and four people who came to meet us. Two were Singaporean, one was Canadian, and one was Moroccan. All of them had really good English... and I have been in Malaysia for the past 10 months. So anyway we had a really good discussion and I participated quite a bit, and afterwards as we were walking home, Elder Shone came and was talking to me. He said something like, "I really appreciate the way that you teach, and the spirit that you invite as you teach. Also I can tell that English isn't your normal teaching language." I laughed. He is a Linguistics major, so he was paying attention to my sentence structure and the way I expressed certain ideas which apparently was heavily influenced by Malaysia. I thought that was interesting and amusing. Maybe someday I'll get good English again...

Some other points of telling about that lesson was to mention how the woman from Canada has read the Book of Mormon for education purposes. But she didn't get the point of it and doesn't know it's true yet. It's funny that someone can miss the message of the Book of Mormon if the Holy Ghost and real intent isn't a big part of your study.

I know by the power of the Holy Ghost that the Book of Mormon is true, and the Jesus Christ is the Son of God and Savior of the world. I know that not from logic or reasoning or my own opinion, but I know it because I have received personal revelation directly from God through His Spirit. What a priceless gift. I know He lives.

I am out of time, but Singapore is great. I'll write more next week.

Love,
Sister Gopinath