2019 was welcomed with …… FIREWORKS!! We did not have the intensity or number as at Divali (a previous post). The neighborhood artists design and execute their kolams in color for New Years.
We are preparing another 2 families from Adyar Branch for the Taiwan and Manila Temples, including a missionary and soon to be newly wedded couple.
Late one night in early January, the quiet was shattered by singing and drum beating. We were thinking that this was another Puja, so we ventured out to view the festivities. A motor driven cart was traveling the colony (neighborhood), in celebration of some great event in the local Muslim community. Perhaps it was the installation of a new leader. The singing and music wound its way into a small Muslim enclave about 1 kilometer from our apartment, near the vegetable and fruit stands. Everyone was having a great time – the kids were happy to be up late. The celebration culminated in the raising of a green flag above the small mosque. A prayer of blessing was pronounced on the proceedings. This wasn’t a New Year celebration – that is done later in the year at Ramadan.
President Prince asked Sister Gibson and I to teach English once a week. He made this request in November. We began teaching on Wednesday evenings at 6:30 PM for one hour. It soon became evident that there is a demand amongst Indians to learn English from a native English-speaker. We advertise English Class with a large banner on the outside wall along Taluk Office Road, which is a main artery in this part of Chennai. We are under strict rules that there will be NO proselyting during class, since this is a public service. We are allowed to open and close with prayer. After a 5 – 10 minute break, we offer a video about the Church to anyone who is interested. We must make it clear that class has ended and anyone staying to view the video, is doing so voluntarily.
Many of the people who come to the class are either workers who communicate with the States (during the overnight hours, due to the time differential) or college students that want to improve their English skills, by communicating with native English speakers. Previous to this time, local English speakers (native tongue – Tamil, with English as second language) were teaching the class, but there was not much interest in it.
Several students requested that we expand the class to 2 hours and then to 2 nights per week. By the end of December, we were teaching English for 4 hours per week. Average class size was around 10. We had to split the classes – one for beginners (Sister Gibson taught) and one for advanced English skills, i.e. conversation (Elder Gibson taught). Between the two of us, we taught for a total of 8 hours per week.
Sister Gibson taught the very basics – counting, simple verb conjugations, colors, etc. Elder Gibson’s conversations with his class covered a wide variety of topics: Indian history, geography of South India, class members’ native places, Chennai commerce, American and Indian movies/TV, careers and/or school courses. Indians are taught English in their schools – British English. They are not encouraged to speak it in or out of class. Several advanced secondary school (equivalent to high school upper class-men) attended class and told us that some of their peers are actually hostile toward speaking English.
Some students have questions about verb conjugation rules that we have not dealt with since High School (mid-1960s). For instance, we had long since forgotten that there are 9 ways to conjugate verbs in British and American English, so we had to do a little review. Elder Gibson hopes that his Cortez High School Senior English teacher (Mr. Strebe) is out there somewhere – if so, he is probably smiling right now. We devoted half of a class to verb conjugations – by the time we were finished – class members had had enough, so we went back to our conversation topics.
President Mortensen asked us to find a replacement for our English teaching assignment. He is adding a new assignment: go to Coimbatore and work with the Saints there to prepare them for the Temple. Since the Lord always provides – a brother from Utah is coming to stay for 6 months and he will take over the teaching duties in February. We will miss our class.
