Transcripts: Interviews and Experiences

Transcript: Lei Lei and Mimi McConnell: We Found Christian Love in Jehovah’s Family
Mimi: This is my sister Lei Lei.
Lei Lei: This is my sister Mimi.
Mimi: My sister Lei Lei, she is very caring. I know that for sure.
Lei Lei: One thing that I appreciate about Mimi is that she has a self-sacrificing spirit. We love our family.
Mimi: Yeah.
[In their living room, the family sits close together]
Mimi: What I love most about my mom is that she has a big heart.
Lei Lei: And I know that my dad really, truly loves his family.
Mimi: Our sister, Sophie, always takes care of you, making sure you are OK.
Lei Lei: Our family is something that we never want to replace. To us, it’s a forever family.
[Mimi strums a guitar while the rest hold song lyrics]
Lei Lei: But it wasn’t always like that.
[Scenes of young Lei Lei and Mimi]
We haven’t always been sisters. At a young age, I was already in a foster home, and then Mimi became my foster sister. We were not treated as part of their family.
Mimi: We never knew what love felt like.
Lei Lei: There wasn’t a bedroom for us.
Mimi: Me and Lei Lei would share a couch. Our foster families would leave us by ourselves at home, and me and Lei Lei had to take care of ourselves. And so, we were very close together because we would talk to each other and just help each other out.
Lei Lei: When we would go to school, we didn’t have school supplies, so I would steal stuff.
Mimi: And we didn’t have school uniforms; we had clothing that was dirty.
Lei Lei: I felt like in some way that with all these experiences it kind of made me feel like I didn’t care. I didn’t like authority figures and didn’t really trust them.
Mimi: I was lost. I was confused. I just did whatever I possibly could to protect myself.
Lei Lei: We have experienced things that no children should go through.
[Photograph of the girls with a smiling couple]
Lei Lei: We found out there was a family who wanted to adopt us. I was 12 years old.
Mimi: And I was nine years old. One thing that was tough for me was conversing. I didn’t know any English, and it was hard for my parents to know how I felt because I had a hard time expressing if I was sad or scared.
Lei Lei: I had a difficult time to trust.
Mimi: But they showed us love, and they hugged us and just made us feel at home.
Lei Lei: As I got to know them better and I got to see that they truly loved me and that they truly treated me like their daughter, it helped me to develop love and trust.
Mimi: The first time I saw my mom and dad praying at the dinner meal, it was very new to me because I never knew that there was a God.
Lei Lei: I had some past experience with religion, and I didn’t like it. So, when I first saw my mom and dad praying, I was uncomfortable with it.
Mimi: They had to figure out a way to introduce their best Friend, Jehovah, to us. They took us to this place called the Kingdom Hall. The first thing we felt was warmth and love.
Lei Lei: All these friends were coming up and saying hi to us and giving us hugs, just super loving toward us.
Mimi: Dad would give us a notepad, and he would tell us, “Draw anything that you understand.” And so those were our notes. We would just draw pictures.
Lei Lei: They would pray with us, teaching us how to pray specifically and to see how Jehovah can answer our prayer.
Mimi: We would eat breakfast every day together and do the daily text; we would re-enact Bible stories. And we prepared for meetings.
Lei Lei: The simplified Watchtower came out, and it really helped us so much.
Mimi: I was able to really learn more about Jehovah and understand it. And that helped me to give more comments and draw closer to Jehovah.
Lei Lei: A big change for me was during the 2014 international convention. Just seeing the love and the unity between brothers and sisters touched my heart. That also helped me to progress toward making the decision of getting baptized.
Mimi: Going out in service more. I think it really helped me to draw closer to Jehovah and make the Kingdom feel real to me. And so that’s why I wanted to get baptized. After I graduated high school, I started to pioneer. It’s one way to show my love to Jehovah. I used to just take care of myself, but I learned to take care of others and to think of others first. For us young ones, we should appreciate every moment that we have with our parents. Your parents are the best friends that you could ever have.
Lei Lei: Going out in service wasn’t easy for me at first because I’m actually a very shy person, but I decided to rely on Jehovah and started pioneering. And just recently, I started commuting to Bethel one day a week.
[Laughing, Lei Lei works with friends in a Bethel kitchen]
The important quality that Jehovah has taught me is love I felt that love from my family, from Jehovah, and from my friends. I learned that it’s OK to love people, and that’s what you are supposed to do. You love people and take care of people. And I feel like my life is more satisfying and meaningful.
Mimi: When I meditate and think about what Jehovah has done for me and Lei Lei, I don’t have to be afraid. Jehovah is my “secure refuge,” because life may change, but Jehovah does not change.
[Lei Lei, Mimi, and Sophie faces beam as they walk in the ministry with their parents]
[Logo: Black capital letters JW.ORG inside a white box. Copyright 2019 Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania]