December 8, 2009

The work is so hard. I've never been more tired. We are like plum out of investigators right now. Yap Mehn! I don't know what to do right now to get more. We have some that are really awesome. But they're all like 20 year old kids. I want to teach some families. But no one is ever interested it seems. We get ditched a lot too. Two weeks ago we went to that famous jail. And right after this we're headed over to the killing fields so I'll let you know how that goes. Hoan is still doing awesome. He is leaps and bounds ahead of any other investigator we have. He's awesome. Then we have Sari. She's really good too. Then we have Piap. She has an awesome desire to learn. But she has no idea about anything. So it’s taking a lot of patience with her. Right now is a ton of finding though. I keep praying for referrals. My area is really hard to go finding in because it’s all businesses and it’s in the touristy part of town so everyone here is just trying to make money off all the white guys that are walking around. So they never pay attention as soon as they find out we're not trying to buy something from them. The work is hard. But it beats having to take finals by a long shot.

Since Elder Fisher is the Zone Leader (and it’s by far the biggest zone in the mission--like 5 districts) so he has to go on a split every week in order to get them all in one transfer. So I go on splits a lot. And I always think I'm absolutely awful at Khame until I hear people from my group or the group who just came in speak. And then I realize I'm leaps and bounds ahead of all of them. Saturday I had a greenie for a day.

There is a family that hadn't come to church since I got here that's now come to church for 2 weeks in a row!!!! Praise the heavens!!! I was so ready to give up on her. I'm so happy now that they have come twice now. And I pray with all my heart they continue to come. The Book of Mormon is really helping them in that. There is another family who is all members except for the dad. And we've really been trying to help them have their own spiritual experiences. We're really pushing for them to find out on their own that the church is true.

It is so hard teaching people here because the culture is so different. They tell us all the time that they feel "too lazy" to follow God's commandments so they'll go break some commandment or they'll say that it’s only possible to follow God's commandments 60% of the time. They think that God's commandments are a joke or you can follow them when you "feel like it". And I don't speak the language well enough to be bold with them and tell them that's not how it is because sometimes I don't understand everything and when I speak my tongue gets twisted up so bad sometimes (this language is so ridiculously hard). Every night I pour out my soul to God to help me learn this language like I know my native tongue of English so that I can teach these people to the best of my abilities. I always think I'm so bad at Khmae but I'm like way ahead of most of the people in my group.