4 July 2016

This last week has been one of interesting and challenging experiences. We have been sending our thanks and gratitude to Google Translate for it was and is going to be our best friend. So far in our mission, we have been working with people from Russia, Dominican Republic, France, Italy, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Romania and many others. The majority of these people come in speaking and understanding very little English.

Last week Golden happen to be working with a lady from Russia who spoke no English and I was trying to work with three others in getting them on FamilyTree and teaching them how to use it. I was finding that I could not work with three people at the same time so I asked Golden if he would work with two and I would work with two, but he couldn't because he was trying to do sign language of sort to communicate with this sister from Russia. Luckily, one of our regular patrons saw the problem and she started working with one of my patrons and I could focus on the two sitting together.

The next day was going pretty slow and then another Russian lady came in wanting help but spoke no English. Golden and I were struggling trying to figure out how to communicate. Finally, I remembered that the night before I was playing around with an audio version of Google Translate on my phone. I was hoping to get something to help with my Spanish and it worked quite well. I had left my phone home so I told Golden to try and do the best he could until I could get the program onto his phone. When I got it downloaded, I tried it in Russian and to my surprise it worked wonderfully well.

I handed the phone to Golden and said, "Start talking in it." As he was talking to me trying to learn, everything he said was being translated into Russian to our patron. She could not figure out what was going on at first and then realized that the phone was repeating everything Golden was say to me to her in Russian. She started laughing and so did we. With the phone she and Golden were able to understand each other quite well.

He had been trying to help her with FamilyTree. With the phone, Golden was able to ask if there was anything that we could do to help her and she understood. It was then that we found out that all she really came in for was to find out when the wards were meeting on Sunday. She said that she was a member and left with a good feeling of friendship. I think that it was quite a relief to have a way to speak and get help.

The next morning, we showed the translation app to our relief missionaries, Elder and Sister Hanson, and they were so excited. Sr. Hanson loaded the app onto her phone and started playing with it in Spanish, as we have a lot of Spanish speakers coming in and it worked great. She tried it out on the security guard outside the center and then the security guard loaded the app onto her phone so that we could all handle the many languages that come in. It was a wonderful experience and one that we will never forget.

It is starting to get warm and muggy here now. When we came home from serving at the FHC, we found all of the kids and families playing in the water from the fire hydrant by our apartment entrance. This was something that Diane did as a little girl in Provo expect the water marshal would give them all taffy as they played.

 We were shopping at Bed Bath and Beyond looking for a meat tenderizer hammer and came across this really cute breadboard. It shows us where we live and where we serve at the current time. We are at the top in Inwood where the red arrow is pointing and we work at Lincoln Square in Manhattan, the lower arrow. It takes us 30 minutes to get there on the subway 1 Train.