Another Letter Home Assignment From U.S. History

In the past week one of the many in-class assignments I’ve gotten in U.S. History was yet another “Letter Home” assignment. This time it was in the perspective of a Native American missionary student writing back to his family. The letter itself is in the extended body of this blog post. Feel free to comment on it here in the comments of this blog post. Enjoy, Alex.

Dear family, I miss the way you taught me, with the dance and in-context learning. Here at the missionary school we’re learning in a totally different way. The missionary school has prayer and religion at the center of all learning. So in the morning at 6:00 AM we have prayer before anything else. During this time we’d read a chapter in the New Testament and do the devotions of our group. The rest of the morning (aside from breakfast) we would spend the time doing our designated tasks in the gardens around the Commons building. This same task was done right before the evening meal. We also get practice in mechanical work that they hope will be used when we leave to assist in daily life. We need to do the plowing of the nearby fields. For this the townspeople are kind enough to lend us equipment. The afternoon is spent doing the actual studying. This is done in one room with tables. Each of us are learning different things and at different levels. We take the time to practice all we learn and so to get it deeper in our mind. Living conditions aren’t bad here, there’s just many of us. That is what makes it seem bad. Some of us don’t live at the Missionary, and those people don’t always get to school on time, if at all day to day. These people actually make us wear clothes. That is a new thing to me and my classmates. We really don’t care about it much now, but it was uncomfortable at first and we know that when we’re back at home you’ll not let us. That makes it an annoying part of this missionary school. Sincerely, Alex Celeste