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.

December 23, 2009

Wow. Elder Um is awesome. I was really nervous about getting a Khmae companion. They are very hit and miss on whether they work hard or not. But he is great. I have a hard time keeping up with him. He doesn't ever speak English so I get to speak Khmae 24/7 with him. He's teaching me a ton of Khmae and I've been teaching him a ton of English in return.

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. I’m super excited. It’s still really hot out though. It doesn’t feel like Christmas at all.

Branch 12 is awesome. We have a ton of investigators. It’s crazy. So many!! And we keep finding them left and right too. So we keep on having a ton of people to teach. The area is a massive bike ride though. It’s WAYYYYYY bigger than branch 1. We get over 100 people to church. Our branch is so big and is having so much growth that we actually have 2 sets of Elders in this branch. Elder Thompson is here too. He was in my group in the MTC. He is really awesome. So it’s pretty sweet getting to see him a lot now.

I'm working on memorizing the Khmae dictionary. Today I learned a word that means to show off by eating a lot of food. I don't know when I'll use it. But if its Khmae, then I'm going to learn it.

All of our investigators are awesome. And we have about 10 recent converts that we have to teach too. So we have the recent converts help teach. And the recent converts all give out a ton of referrals so we're just racking it in right now. I've been praying so hard for all of them to keep progressing like they do. Elder Um is super legit. I absolutely love him to death.