"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. :)