So that was THE COLDEST shower in the history of mankind, felt even worse than early morning swim practice in the winter. I have an elevated heart rate and am feeling very awake...but at least I'm clean! But today was a very good day, there were lots of happenings that I was happy about. I've also taken to translating hymns for part of my language study, it's so fun! I think it's a good way for me to learn grammar and some church vocab, and it's so interesting because in Spanish, they don't worry about rhyming like we do in English, they focus on the meanings of the words, and I just think that is so neat. Today we sang "Silent Night," and I worked on a translation. Take it with a grain of salt, since I'm not the best authority, but I thought I'd share it with you because I was so struck by the words they used:
"Night of light, night of peace; The reign of great solace has come
The child sleeping heralds God's messenger of peace.
Sleep, child, in peace; Sleep, child, in peace.
Night of light, night of peace; The Shepherd will show Celestial light in great fullness,
Holy choirs that sing well-being.
Today, the Lord was born; Today, the Lord was born.
Night of light, night of peace; See the light of His face.
This is the dawn of the Redemption; God, through Him, will give us salvation.
Oh, blessed Jesus! Oh, blessed Jesus!"
Anyway, I just thought that was kinda neat to think about the slightly different take on the hymns...there's similar differences in meaning in the scriptures, but they're a little more strictly close to meaning as the English version. But I suppose there can be more freedom in the hymn translations.
Also, I was reading in Alma 2 for personal study, and Alma is so awesome! I especially liked verses 30-33 where he prays to the Lord for strength to overcome that challenge so he could help his people continue in righteousness, and gah! He's just such an amazing person! He was a chief judge and leader of the army, and an amazing missionary, and can fight with a sword and stuff, and incredibly smart, and just so strong in his faith and righteousness. So cool. I challenge you to go read the book of Alma as well. Very good stuff there!
We taught an investigator today whose name was Milton Zelaya, he was nice and patient, and the lesson went fairly well. I love hearing the Spanish versions of names, so cool! He pronounced his name "MEEL-toh-nn", and another guy, Alan: "AL-ah" with just the tiniest bit of an "n" at the end, for about 5 min I thought he said his name was Anna! Whoops.
So the Spanish language is definitely fun. But we learn 1 or 2 new grammar concepts each day, so that is really helpful in improving our speech, so I am grateful for that. We actually taught the new nortes the other day, and it was so exciting to see how far we've progressed! We're amazing! Also, since it's our 3rd week, our teachers have declared that we can't speak any English at all when we're out of our bedrooms, and we've actually been able to adjust to that quite well. So I'm pretty proud of our district for being able to switch over.
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