March 2, 2010

Have you heard anything about the Cambodian-Thai War? Things are seriously starting to escalate around here. And supposedly from what people tell us it gets worse and worse. So, I was just wondering if you had heard anything or if something had been said or something. The other day the senior couple asked if we knew the emergency evacuation plan. I don't know if they were hinting at something or if they just wanted to know.

I had the opportunity to baptize someone named Vuthy on Sunday. He's really good and we'll be teaching him getting him to go on a mission in a year. We're really stressing the fact that they all need to go on missions. Trying to turn this country into the Latter-Day Saint nation that it's going to be someday.

There are some mean roosters here too. I've wanted to kick a few animals. Haha. And, I've had to run from a few bulls before too. Other than that, it's not too bad.

February 23, 2010

Work is going good. We have a lot of people that are finishing up the lessons and so they will be interviewed in the next week or two for baptism. So, that will be fun getting to see all them go through.

We just had zone conference on Monday, and it was awesome. Zone conference is always just so refreshing to the soul. I don't know why that is. But my heavens it is great. Elder Pratt from the 70 came. He gave an awesome speech. What really impressed me the most was how simple yet powerful his testimony at the very end was. He just bore testimony about all these simple truths and it was just so amazingly powerful. I guess that's why he is a General Authority and I'm not. Haha.

Language is going well. I've learned a ton so far and it's getting easier and easier to memorize words now. And, I'm starting to learn a bunch of words that are awesome but only get used every so often. Like cancer, and democratic republic, and refugee and words like that that everyone knows but they're only used every once in a while.

I've almost been a missionary for 9 months now. 3 more days and it's 9 months exactly. Crazy huh.

The Lord truly has blessed me in letting me come to such a wonderful people and such a wonderful country.

February 16, 2010

Elder Chiang is awesome. When we first started serving together, I had some serious adjusting to do because he's a bit different from my other companions. But now I'm having an absolute blast serving with him. It just seems funner and funner with each new companion I go through. But I hope that I get a chance to serve with him for at least 2 or 3 transfers because I think that we teach and work really well with each other. And, it's really fun doing that.

I'm absolutely loving the work right now. I'm having a great time. Which means that God is probably going to have to humbe me here real soon. But I just can't keep it to myself. I'm just too happy for my own good right now. We have all these investigators that are reading the Book of Mormom, keeping their commitments, and doing whatever it takes to do what we tell them to do (or rather what God has commanded them to do). I honestly think that we are kicking Satan's butt right now. We still get rejected a ton. But just spreading the news of the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ is just too much fun. And the fact that people are hearing it, triumph or fail, is still a victory over Satan. Someday this country is going to be booming with members of God's one and only true church. I would honestly not be surprised if someday the whole country was members.

Anyway, I can't boast and rejoice for too long. But I had the opportunity to baptize a student named Vicett on Sunday. He's awesome. And when we met him on Monday he didn't even know what to say when we asked him how the baptism was because he was so excited and happy and just everything you want to be after you are baptized.

And we have another investigator getting interviewed tonight. Last weekend was the Chinese New Year so not many people were in the city. So it was a lot of finding. But now that I can understand people and can talk with them finding is actually a lot of fun. I'd rather not do it though because it has no effectiveness. But, it's still fun meeting a lot of people.

While finding we asked someone if they knew anyone who would be interested. And she said she didn't know anyone. But, she knew someone who had joined in a Christian church before. So she led us to them and it happened to be a mom, dad, and about 7 kids. And, I think they could be really promising. The Dad is going to have to stop drinking that's for sure. But, there's nothing like the gospel that can help someone do that.

Our area is so big that there are new streets and turns to go down every single day and it's so much fun talking with all these new people. And, I love having Khmae companions. As long as they work hard and are dedicated to the work, they are easily the funnest people in the world to serve with. I'm having so much fun right now serving with Elder Chiang, my heart honestly can't contain the words I want to say.

The Book of Mormom is true. I know this with all my heart. We watched Safety for the Soul by Elder Holland (if you haven't reread this talk, I suggest you should do so now) yesterday for district meeting and discussed it. Oh my heavens, it was filled with the Spirit and it was just pumping us all up to get out there and do more of the work. We are all so excited to be doing the work right now. It's now even fair for anyone else out here in the world. God completely spoiled us when he sent us here to preach the gospel. Oh my heavens, I love these Khmae people more than anyone else in the world, except you guys of course. But they are just so fun to be around and teach and live among. On my heavens. It is amazing what God can do to you when you completely lose yourself in the work. Every thought that tries to go through my head that isn't about Christ's atonement, or about preaching the gospel, or about the truthfulness of the Book of Mormom, or the love that God has for us, I quickly throw it out. And, I hope and pray and cry unto the Lord every night that things will never change from this my whole two years on a mission.

February 9, 2010

Crazy...We thought we had a mouse in the house. We saw it running around for 2 weeks, and we tried to catch it but it always got away. We were wrong though. So we laid a stick trap and we got...7 mice, a mom, a dad, and 5 babies. One freaked out so bad that it pooped all its intestines out. Real gross. But we stuck peanut butter in the middle. And that's just irresistible to them. So now our mouse problems are over. We spent a good amount of time cleaning up the house this morning too.

Work is good. I'm having tons of fun teaching so many different people every single day. It's a blast. We have to baptize 68 people a month as a mission in order to fulfill our goal. And I think right now we're on pace.

The Khmae is coming great. It's a real blessing from the Lord to see how He helps us learn different languages.

I never realized how much more you prosper when you keep the commandments of God. I wish I would've realized that sooner in life.

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.

January 19, 2010

So President Smedley called a Zone Meeting thing, wasn't a zone conference, and we all got together to discuss our new goals for the new year. Last year, as a mission, we baptized a total of 438 people which is a lot. And President Smedley said that he had prayed a lot about this and that based off all our goals and stuff he decided that our goal this year would be........800 people!!!!!!! Can you believe that? That's almost double the people we did last year. But he said that all it will take is the faith to believe on our part and it will get done. And, one more thing...verbal prayer. So now we're praying in different rooms every night. And I love it. Just being able to pour my soul out every night is just so amazing. So I went home and prayed about this goal forever trying to make sure that we could do that. And we're DEFINITELY going to do that this year. 800 people are going to come unto Christ this year. And it’s going be an amazing experience to do that to.

We're getting it set up right now where the Branch Missionaries will be teaching all the recent converts, so that we can concentrate on getting all of our investigators progressing and baptized. It’s going to be absolutely amazing. We'll be having our third of the month this Sunday. And we have about 11 more that could be baptized in the coming months. So we're well on our way.

And we've already seen amazing miracles. We had a group of 13 people show up saying that they all wanted to learn on Monday. It’s like 4 families. And we met them all on Tuesday. Their only problem is that they are poorer that dirt. And they live right behind the Branch 7/8 building. So getting them all the way to Branch 12 is going to be a nightmare. And while we were talking with them on Monday, a group of 5 guys walked in that wanted to learn. So on Monday the Lord bagged us a total of about 20 new investigators. But none of them have any means of getting to our building. And they're working on rearranging the boundaries. But when they do we'll lose our Branch President because he lives really close to Branch 7 and they have to take in a huge number of other factors. So we'll see how it goes. But right now we're going to be teaching them all.

We've had to start double booking a few hours. So now we tell them they have to show up at 7 because if they show up at 7:30 will be meeting someone else. (And for Khmaes being on time is 30 minutes late). So this will be a good lesson for them.

We have some really good investigators right now. One has read all of 1 Nephi already and it’s only been about a week or 2. She's awesome. Her name is Maalih.

We also have 2 others that just have to get interviewed. So they should be baptized in about a week or 2. Their names are Vicett and Vuthy.

We are teaching a mom and her 3 sons and they are doing awesome. They all understand so much. And the 12 year old reads the Book of Mormon to his mom at night because she doesn't know how to read. So it strengthens them all. I was going to go buy them a picture Book of Mormon, like the one you would always read with the boys (but Khmae of course), so they could practice reading, but it’s been nonstop raining the last two days (VERY STRANGE, rainy season doesn't start until about July or August), and I don't feel like an hour bike ride in the rain to and from the service center.

Work is going well. We had 126 people to church on Sunday. Our Branch goal for the year is to have an average of 140. So we'll be pushing to get that up there.

As for the package, more chocolate or sour patch kids. Also if you could send me the CDs that sing us through the plan of salvation, that would be sweet. Remember those?