New Coat

I bouht a new coat - a top coat to go over my suit when I go to Church. I also bought a nice hat to go with it. I looked in many stores. In clothing stores, they were too expensive - the cheapest was $300. Most of the other stores like Sears, Wealmart, Target and Ross didn't even sell them. I felt impressed to ask the cashier at Sears wear I could find a top coat. She said - right across the street, at the Burlington coat factory. There prices were much lower, and I got this coat for $75. So I bought a hat too.

I went to a Single Adult Family Home Evening yesterday evening. I am realy glad I went. The hosting family fed us dinner. The lesson was about cultural patterns of thought - teaching us the difference between asian, arabic, latin, german, english and british communication patterns.

For example, asians do not speak directly about the topic, they talk around it, getting closer and closer to it, using personal experience - so oyu develop a realtionship with them. The example given was the statement: My aunt called me, and I went over to her house on the other side of Hong Kong. I was so glad to see so many of my cousins. Then we ment to my aunt;s friends house, and met many of her family Then we all helped the friend move into a new apartment. (The main point is never mentioned - that we should all work together)

another example was personal space - asians have a large personal space - meaning that they stand far apart while speaking and their is less touching. Latins have little personal space, and speak to each other sometimes nose to nose.

antoher example is property. Latin cultures have a more expanded concept of group ownership, which oft times interpreted by English culture as stealing.

Another example is the deaf community. Since their means of communication has so much overhead, they are brief. A culture has arisen from this that is very blunt. It is not considered rude to be very blunt.

The point of the lessons was that this is a global Church now. We have 15 langauges spoken in our ward. We need to be aware of this, to help us feel more unity - so we don't take opffense when none is intended.

About 50% of the people in the lesson took this to heart, and really tried to understand this. The others were adamant that this is an english culture, and these people should not only learn english, but adpat to all our cultural ways as well.

I taught my first sunday school lesson yesterday. It went very well.