To Market To Market

What Do You Eat that Makes You so Tall?

Mud

Busted Bicycle Parts

From a letter dated 28 November 2008. I have dealt with more bike problems on my mission than anyone should have to in a lifetime, beating up on the cute little Khmer-style things with all the proselyting and traveling; I never really knew what sorts of problems bikes could have other than busted chains or flat tires, and I never knew how may parts bikes really have. When you break every one of those parts, however, you figure out there's a lot, and I know the Khmer names for most of them now due to the frequency of said breaking. I keep all those bike fixer guys along the road in business, anyway.

Lotus Man

We are looking forward to meeting this gentleman. Ben refers to him as "Lotus Man" because he makes his living by growing and selling lotus flowers. Here are some excerpts from e-mails. --mep

26 August 2008 i've been having lots of mixtures of emotions recently, especially being who i am from where i am in a place like i am. from stories too many to recall or recount, i've seen the issue of poverty and what people do to remedy or cope. sometimes it swells into problems of alcoholism, smoking, or abuse. sometimes people give in and find ways to get by day by day, eating 2 kilos of rice in a week often without so much as salt for savor. i can't even bring myself to say "such is life". it makes me think about what i've had, and what i've thought about having in the future, and it makes me think about wasted and whimsically spent money, this amidst a plethora of other thoughts that come and go all mixed together like a vat of various oils that never become completely solute. i dunno. it's just weird for me to think that one of my account balance inquiries of 5.00 could support a 77-year-old man for 3 weeks.

9 September 2008. i've a bit of a cold and a headache right now, but despite that, things are going well. i made the lotus man a really tasty lunch the other day and went to his house to eat it with him; it was a meal he said was his favorite, and he hadn't had it in a long time i don't think. it just turns out i'm really good at making it, as i am with most khmer foods now, as even elder sok says. he likes my stuff.

14 October 2008. i've been thinking about the old man i teach a lot recently. his property is all flooded right now, and he says it's never been this bad before. he cried for an hour last time i went to see him; he has no food, no rice, and he can't pick his lotus flowers to sell due to the depth of the floodwater. he had just gotten home upon my arrival from the house of the village leader who had given him some food to eat and, unfortunately, some alcohol to drink. he was a little glazed, and he apologized; he hasn't had any alcohol in a long time he said, but he's feeling a bit helpless at the moment on his bed, the only part of his place still above water, and as bad as it may sound, i'm sure forgetting would be a nice thing temporarily. i very nearly gave him the 20 dollars in my wallet, but for the rule directly against such doings. i called the senior couple in charge of lds charities, and they're bringing some noodles...a box i think. i hope the poor guy makes it...i mean really, just MAKES it...in the real, mortal sense. not good.

9 December 2008. tis the season around him i'm sure...seasons here don't change much, but my scenery did last friday. i got transferred to phnom penh 8th branch. i kind of enjoy being in the city for the first time after being a country boy for the last year and a half. it's a change. the house feels like a villa compared to what i just came from in sen sok. lotus man cried when i told him i'd be leaving, though he liked the idea of my going to see him with you guys in eight months.

In Deep Water

From e-mail dated 21 October 2008
lotus man is doing alright; he's gone for a week to his home province working a bit in the fields for some money, and a lucky thing, too. there have been torrential rains recently and floods...big floods. i've been proselyting in knee-deep water for two days now. all of the streets in sen sok are covered in a couple feet of water, and when places like this have problems like that, there's nowhere for the water to flow...we're already at sea-level. it's a lot of water, and it's septic, too, which is fun...i never heard anything like that in the primary songs about missionary work: "i hope they call me on a mission, so i can walk in feet of water-poo." yeah, that's not in the songs. someone needs to do some editing. :)

Rice-Rice-Rice

From e-mail dated 12 February 2008
food is good here; all of it is eaten with rice. it's funny when people ask what i eat in america to get so tall and be so white (they think it's from food...or medicine), because food to them is rice. when i answer that i don't eat all that much rice, they ask if i eat bread. i don't know how to answer because at home, we eat everything. it's so different. food here is a dish you make to eat with rice, and that's it. food at home is a dish...no rice. rice is eaten to fill people up, and the dish is to make the rice taste good. at home, all we do is fill up on the dish and skip the rice. people here don't understand that very well, and it's hard to describe, though i hope you can understand through my rudimentary english (it's hard to write and speak english these days). as far as the question about what i like; there are some really good stir fry dishes here, and i really like a soup here, which would translate to "boiled vegetables and beef." i know how to make lots of the food here, as i have the Khmer elders teach me. i'll be bringing plenty of recipes home in my head. Love, Ben the elder

From an e-mail dated 28 September 2008
i've been loving rice and food here more and more recently and have found that i can no longer eat an entire hamburger. it's nice, really, the thing didn't even taste any good to me (it was at a decent place, too); i'd rather have a soupy stewy something or a fry and some rice. i can make a ton of food now, including desserts and all sorts of good stuff, but it's sad that i'll only get to enjoy this whole thing for another 10 months (that number is ever-shrinking). going back to the freeze dried and packaged supermarket will be a change, good and bad. it won't have the stench of rot like the open fresh markets here, but then again...they're not open and fresh, which freshness i've found tastes way better than not...fruits, veggies of sorts that i couldn't even really describe if i wanted, mostly all things that i will never be able to find at home unless at an asian market, and then it'll be packaged and not fresh. alas, 'tis the bittersweet return to which we asian-goers are fated and which my sister could attest. :)
Love,
BG the EP

"Khmer is Kool"

This notebook page was written in September 2007 while Ben was at the MTC. He has expressed his love of learning the language from the very first day and has often mentioned his love of the Khmer language in e-mails, letters, and phone calls. The name tag was given to Ben on July 25, 2007, the day he entered the MTC.--MEP
From letter dated 18 February 2008
From letter dated 18 March 2008
The language is coming along great; I read at least one chapter a day from my Khmer Book of Mormon, and I've got pages in my planner crammed with vocabulary to memorize. . . I'm grateful for the language and its difficulty in writing, reading, and speaking so that there's always something to engage myself in, even in dull times. Learning Khmer is really fun, and it's become an obsessive hobby of mine to master every facet of it. There are so many sounds that English-speaking mouths simply cannot make and English-hearing ears just don't hear. It's a good thing my ears and mouth are now Khmer :). I seem to have been blessed with a talent for parroting what I hear rather well. It helps for trying to ejaculate some of these tongue-twisting and throat-exhausting sounds, that's for sure. Khmer is Kool!
Love,
Ben the Elder
P.S. It's entering hot season. . . I've never known the meaning of the word until now.
From letter dated 3 Sept. 2008

Below is a video that Ben attached to an email dated 18 February 2008. --MEP

The Dental Assistant

Dinner with visiting dentist. Sister and Brother Gartz, the senior couple in Siem Reap, are in the background and the visiting dentist and his wife (the Fords, I believe) are in the foreground. Missionary service can take on a variety of meanings. . .who would have thought that Elder BGP would ever become a dental assistant? Interesting what skills you can acquire when you're serving others in need.

Diapers, Mittens, Hats, and Booties

From a letter dated October 24, 2007

We did a fun service project this week; we assembled kits for new mothers and their babies, including diapers, mittens, hats, and whatever else Cambodian mothers need. The youth and friends in the branch all came and helped assemble the packets, and then we all took them to the hospital for delivery.

The whole thing was coordinated through LDS Charities, and the Vice Governor of Kampong Thom as well as the guy in charge of the hospital were there to greet us. Things went well and lots of pictures were taken, which I will send...I've got to find time to go print them. One funny thing I noticed in the hospital is their lack of privacy; there were posters all over the place with a photograph of a nursing mother and instructions to boot. I guess I never figured something like that would need explaining, much less instruction and an example picture. Whatever, I guess. :) Love, Ben, the Elder

Problem Solving 101

From Ben's letter dated October 24, 2007:
On Monday, my companion and I biked through some pretty fun areas; we were out finding in the boonies amongst the rice paddies, cow trails (one of which we temporarily converted to a bike trail), and stilted shanties. We had ridden quite a ways and had gone 3/4 of the way across a bridge when our trail suddenly didn't really exist any more; instead, we had a stream running across it. I figured it couldn't be that deep and we'd gone too far to turn around, so I attempted biking through it, and several more like it afterwards, as our trail appeared to be about half land and half water by the looks of things.











I got some nice pictures of it all; things got pretty wet and muddy, so it's a good thing I wore my work clothes, huh?

I Don't Like Spiders and Snakes (but my son does!)

from e-mail dated Tuesday, November 6, 2007

hello madre!

i've gotten a few of your letters now. thanks so much! i hope you like the funny picture of the hercules beetles on my face; dad will like it more than you, i'm sure. haha.

from e-mail dated Tuesday, July 15, 2008 (these are pics of fried tarantulas--yummy!)

one funny thing this week. i ate one of the spiders already. no picture proof yet, so uncle erik will be hard pressed to believe it, but it actually wasn't that bad. i prefer it to the crickets. they're all scratchy and stuff, but the spider was easy. i didn't have any more than a five second pause of anxiety or pretentiousness; i think there may be something the matter with me, cuz it was big and i don't even care. :)