We had primary activity day yesterday and we have been teaching them about the OT prophets. This one was about David and Goliath. Well this is Goliath. Some of the kids screamed and some cried, but most laughed their heads off. The adults really laughed their heads off. Our driver was David and he shot Goliath with his sling shot and ping pong balls. It was really funny, You will have to guess who Goliath is. It is pretty hard to walk with two 15 inch stools tied to your feet, but it did make for a tall Goliath
Sister Pin, Sister Thalman, Neak, Elder T, Sister Askerlund. This is a boy who asked me to baptize him. I really tried to memorize the Bapt prayer, but the pronouncation is so hard. I finally made a card to hold in my hand while I did it and it worked out well. Sister Askerlund was kind enough to romanize it for me so I came close I guess. A really neat experience. This little kid can really dance Khmer style, better than most of the girls. I am trying to let me video it, but he is so shy I will probably have to sneak up on him sometime. Sister Askerlund is from Santiquin and her parents are here now. We are going to spend some time with them next week and then she will be going home. She has been an awesome missionary and we already miss her.
Some of the visitors who come here just can't understand why we have a cross, lite up cross at that, on our church. I say well we just do things a little different here in Kampong Cham. One visitor from the US wanted it taken down immediately. I said that would be impossible and he could not figure out why until I told him that our back door neighbors are the catholic church and the cross is really on the top of their church so we just live with it. I think it is pretty unique.
Sister Askerlund and Pin with some of the youth in 1 and 2 branch after mutual. We usually have a lot more kids than this come to sabie, sabie as they call it. Sabie means fun and that is how they announce mutual in sac meeting. Instead of saying mutual they say come to sabie sabie on Sat night at 5 pm. How do you think that would work at home.
These are some people that got baptized in Br 3 last week. We are having a lot of baptisms and it is really fun to see how much the gospel changed their lives. Ming (aunt) Nie on the Right finds all these people for the elders to teach. She is just awesome. The 2 teenage boys used to sing songs and really give the elders a hard time a few months ago and tell everyone they were crazy to listen to stupid mormons. Well Ming Nie went to them and said you know nothing about the Mormons so you need to learn with the elders and then if you still feel the same you can say anything you want. Well you can see what happened. Pretty cool.
Priesthood leaders in the district when they just found out the first humanitarian project by the church to be done in KC was approved and will begin at the end of Sept. We are doing water filters, nearly 400 of them, latrines, 20 five inch wells and 20 chicken ranches. This is life saving for these good members and it is all possible because of donations from good members like all of you. The church is also doing a humanitarian project for the city of KC where we will help with clean water and sanitation at some schools. It is for elementary age school kids and will help probably 4000 kids. We will drill 35 five inch wells and build some latrines and give hygiene kits. That is another miracle. I will try to put it in a email soon.
Still trying to stay out of the mud as we go visiting members. Lim said it has not started to rain yet so it will just get worse. We just walk through it and then he washes out the van.
Elders eating noodles with chop sticks in their off hand with wrists tied together. We did this for mutual and the kids really had a good time. They just love to laugh and they really laughed at this one.
Some member were practicing a dance at someones house and they saw us walk by and opened the window and hollered at us.
A sweet member named Sok Hen. She lives and works at a bread store. Her husband left her and took all their kids and moved back in with his mother. They really hate her since she joined the church and won't let her see her kids. It is really sad, but she is so good and faithful. I will try to tell her story in an email soon
Picture of more beautiful flowers just outside of the door of a members house. More flowers come out during the rainy season, but there are already many and it is really getting beautiful.
Bread made out of some sort of tree root. Wheat flour is really expensive over here so they try everything. It is about the consistency of Styrofoam and tastes somewhat like styrofoam too, but with enough syrup and peanut butter is makes pretty good french toast.
Rice starting to grow. The green color is just beautiful and it turns golden just like wheat in Nov. so that will be pretty too.
The mighty muddy Mekong. That is not mud, but that color of water in the Mekong since it started flooding in China. Taken from the bridge looking right down on the river.
View of KC from the bridge over the Mekong
The Monorom Hotel. Here is where we did the first family history in KC and were able to print out the names with bar cods to go to the temple. A lot of people here think the church owns the motel because they think the name of it is Mormon. Pretty close, but not quite
Yes cows in a van. Still one of the greatest sights I have seen in Cambodia
Writing on the board for temple prep meeting in KC. They claim they can read it, but I'm not sure anyone can read this stuff.
We are still having the time of our lives and have so many things happen each day we can hardly keep up with it. All's we can say is the Lord is really mindful and cares about the members here. We just love just going along each day and watching marvelous things happen. We send our love to all.
