Unusual MTC Practice: Ingles Funeral

Sister Meagan Jackson reported a very unusual practice that I haven't heard about despite having three daughters serve foreign language missions in the last three years. In a post entitled Ingles Died and Life is Good she shared this rather interesting language learning process:

This week has been great. Full of spiritual experiences and fun times as well. Probably the most exciting thing from this last week was our "Ingles funeral". Yes, we can no longer speak English in the classroom...ever...so we held a funeral to pay our final respects. My comp gave the eulogy, the elders gave talks, we sang "each life that touches ours for good" and "God be with you till we meet again" as the hymns, and I did the special musical number...an English tribute I wrote on the piano in about 5 minutes containing all of our favorite spanglish phrases. Then we took a walk out to the edge of the mtc campus where we buried English (a piece of paper with our favorite phrases on it :) It was pretty dang awesome, and I will record the song and send it home...though you have to understand spanglish so maybe Jessica can translate it for you :)

I guess they are working on realizing a symbolic rite of passage that will psychologically cause missionaries to shift from English to a new language immediately. It is quite a fascinating practice.