February 2, 2010

I'm on a rice diet right now. And have a rice belly to show for it too. Yap!! That's a Khmae word for ya. Things are going well here right now. We have 15 investigators with baptismal dates. So we'll hopefully be motoring through some people here right now. I got to baptize someone on Sunday. Her name is Sotiarit. She is the cousin of some of the other members in our branch. They are all really good. So it's awesome teaching them. And we also have two more baptisms coming up a week from Sunday. A lot of our baptisms are just single people because they are mostly students who go to one of the gazillion schools that surround our area and our church building. And God wants us to baptize 800 people this year so he's going to prepare a lot more people for us to teach and baptize.

I also had this thought about 3 weeks ago that said, "What I get out of my mission is what I put into my prayers." I thought that was interesting and really good. And so far, it's been true. For all our investigators, the ones I pray the hardest for seem to progress the most. And so now, no matter how tired I am, I'm trying to pray for all of them and everything else I can think of. And, I'm still trying to improve my prayers. There are just so many things to pray for. So I keep dedicating myself to my prayers at night trying to fulfill the Lord's work that he has set aside for me.

Khame is going well. I just started the grade 4 Khmae book. Haha. I have forgotten about 99% of the words I have ever learned. But someday I'll get them all. Don't know when. But it'll come. Elder Chiang, my new companion, is great. He speaks English. So we mostly speak English, but I'm going to propose a day of Khmae and a day of English switching. That way I can practice too.

January 26, 2010

It’s been a tough week. Still lots of people this week. But one of our investigators has gone completely down hill. She was supposed to get baptized last week but she's tanked all of a sudden and so we have to keep working with her. Other than that the month of February should be filled with baptisms. We have two in a week or two. And, a family of 4 after that. I love that family. It’s a mom and her 3 sons. They are ages 12, 10, and 7. So it reminds me a ton of Nick, Matthew, and Nathan. It gives me a piece of home every time I go visit them. We have another investigator who should be getting baptized too. But he goes to Branch 7 every week because its closer to his house. So we told him he HAS to go to Branch 12 and he said that he would try to go this week. So we'll see how that goes.

Transfers are this week. Elder Um is leaving. He's been here for a long time. My new companion will be Elder Chiang. He is Khmae. And he is amazing too. I knew him well before. We're going to have fun serving together. He knows a ton of English. So we're going to have to work something out so that we can speak in English at times so I can help him and so we can speak Khmae at times so that he can help me.

I've started learning Khmae in only Khmae. I use the Khmae=Khmae dictionary only. No more Khmae-English for me. So now when I have to translate for the senior couple on Sunday its hard because I don't know words translate to in English. But I can spout off 4 or 5 different words that mean the same thing in Khmae. It’s kind of cool. I'm getting pretty confident in my Khmae speaking. Still don't understand everything. But I absolutely love this language. It’s a bunch of memorizing, reviewing, and memorizing some more. I'm going to learn this language fluently, and it’s completely through God's power. How awesome is that?!

Good luck with guitar lessons. There is someone who plays guitar in our Branch and he knows a lot of American songs so its fun listening to him play when he is hanging out at the church.