Do You Understand the Words that are Coming out of My Mouth?

Language is one of the greatest challenges we have in this mission. There are so many languages spoken that it's a major difficulty. In the Lubumbashi area they speak Swahili (of the Congolese variety) not Kiswahili, which is the Swahili the Kitabu Cha Mormoni (Book of Mormon) is translated into. In the North of our mission they speak Thsiluba. In Burundi the language is Kirundi. Neither The Book of Mormon nor any other church materials are yet translated into either of these languages. All of the countries also have French as an official language. In DRC there are five official languages, Swahili, Tshiluba, Kikongo, Lingala and French. In Burundi there are two, French and Kirundi, but many of our members speak Swahili and not Kirundi. Some only speak English and Swahili, not French, because they were sent to neighboring English-speaking countries during the war. Only about 70% of the people speak French. Many of our elders and others speak many languages-French, Swahili, Tshiluba, Lingala, Kikongo, some English and Kirundi and a tribal language or two. So, why is learning one new language, French, such a challenge for me?

Brent speaks French so well that people say he speaks better French than they do, and it's true.

Every Sunday in church as the meeting is translated from French to Kirundi we hear many language all bringing the same message. It's quite an amazing experience.