Moving Right Along

Convention is just around the corner for us here in MoBay.  We’ll be starting with the convention invitations in a few weeks and overall everyone in the group is progressing well.  We’ve had a few Indian men attending the Bible Study the last several weeks (Bible Study is the only congregation meeting we have in Hindi) and it’s nice to know that all of our hard work is paying off.

In the meantime, I’m trying to make sure that I use as much Hindi as I can while I’m out in service.  Most of the men we meet speak English fluently, so it’s easy to be lazy and just use English.  I saw that I needed to stop being lazy on a call with Sister Vina a couple weeks back. The lady started to tell us about her struggling emotionally after the death of her father.  Sister Vina mentioned that I could include this matter in our prayer to close the study.  I’m still uncomfortable in day-to-day Hindi conversation, and I was nervous about introducing things like that into a prayer. Even so, I did my best.  After we opened our eyes we saw that the lady had started crying, so pleased to hear a prayer from me in her language. I was glad I swallowed my pride and just did the best I could; the woman really appreciated it.

I’m not the only one working hard trying to learn the language. Here’s a video of a little song some of the sisters made up to try to memorize postpositions and word order:

That is:

उस को देता है  (give it to him),

उस को देता है  (give it to him),

उस को  (to him)

उस पर (on him)

उस से (from him)

उस को देता है (give it to him!),

Pretty cool huh?

Anyway, at the book study the friends strive to speak only in Hindi.  We बुरा हिन्दीalmost never use English even a little bit, although it’s quite a struggle for many of the friends, who have only been learning for a short time.  This has given rise to our unofficial mantra: 'अच्छा हिन्दी, बुरा हिन्दी, सिर्फ हिन्दी है!--aacha Hindi, bura Hindi, siruph Hindi hai!’ (Good Hindi, bad Hindi, but only Hindi!)