MTC - English Study

Last month (August) we got the opportunity to help two young missionaries improve their English before leaving for their assignments in Uyo, Nigeria.  Everyone in Africa speaks English.  Not really well, or I should say not like it is spoken in the States or other countries I have traveled to.  African English has its own sound.  Pronunciations of some words have a UK accent.  Other words have the accents of the person's native dialect, one of the hundreds of dialects spoken in Africa.  In addition, sentence structure and tenses are a bit messed up.  However, the Africans seem to understand each other well and just roll with it.

The MTC in Accra, Ghana, is the MTC for all of Africa.  We have met young missionaries from Kenya, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Zambia among others.  They all have that "doe in the headlights" look just because this is the biggest adventure of their lives and they are soaking up everything they see, smell, touch and hear.  Some of these young missionaries do not speak English well.  I should say their English is not as good as the others and it is obvious they could use some improvement to be more effective in teaching the gospel.

We were invited by the MTC senior couple missionaries to help two young men improve their English.  I think the invitation came mostly because of Elaine's work at the small local library where she teaches English to elementary age kids from James Town, many of whom are orphaned or abandoned, left homeless and live together at an orphanage.  

Our two victims, or rather students, were Elder Freeman from Liberia, and Elder Boima from Sierra Leone.  Here are these young men with their instructors.  We are all wearing badges!  It feels good.

We spent an hour each day their schedule permitted to go over pronunciation and reading skills.  We used the Book of Mormon as the text and focused first on 3 Nephi 11.  We also used the Church's scripture stories for young readers.  That way we could read and look at the pictures to help them better understand what they were reading from the Book of Mormon.

They were excited to be with us and determined to improve their reading and comprehension skills.  We not only spent weekdays with them, but went in on Saturday as well because they wanted to.   We were impressed with their attitudes.

Elder Freeman had an accident when he was twelve.  He was hit by a car after helping his school teacher take some materials from the school out to her car.  On the way back to the school, a car hit him and he injured his head.  That is the major cause of his learning challenge.  What an impressive attitude and testimony of the gospel!  You could hear and feel it in his prayers.  You could see it in his determination as we read together.  

Elder Boima enjoys dancing.  He needed to get up every now and then to clear his head to continue reading.  He kept at it, determined to take advantage of the opportunity to work with us.

After a few days of reading and learning together, we split them up with Elaine taking Elder Freeman and me Elder Boima.  They were both happy to do that.  I know Elder Freeman was especially happy to work with Elaine.

As I worked with Elder Boima, he was honest with me regarding his comprehension of what we read, so we stopped, as needed, and talked about the gospel principles in the verses we were reading.  He is humble, honest, with a knowledge of his calling and the truthfulness of the restored gospel.  He will do well.  It will be tough, and he will do well.  Both of them will.  They are both in Uyo, Nigeria now, in the eastern part of that country. 

Elaine and I were in Uyo in July.  It is a rural area, not crowded like some other places we have been.  We both liked it and want to go back.

Good luck Elders!