Mangoes and Chicken

from email dated April 7, 2009

i have one funny story this week. members and investigators always love their elders and always love to show their love by giving us food. they especially seem to love us during mango season. we get tons and tons of mangos, nearly every day. we've actually started giving them away because there's no way we can keep up with them all. my khmer mom even came down from siem reap to eigth branch to see me with a bag full of mangos and said she wants to ship a whole box but i'd have to go pick it up at the bus station. yeah, lots of mangos. anyway, that's normal, the mangos. what's not normal is what happened with a recent convert last friday. we just got done teacher her when she asked us if we like chicken..."sure, chicken's great", we said unknowingly. she went and caught a live chicken (she's got tons of them) and tied its legs and gave us the whole darn thing. "you just cut its throat, boil it, pluck the feathers, and cook it however you want",she said. oh yeah, easy enough i guess, though i didn't want that mess in our house. i did however take the chicken; i stuck it in the basket on the front of my bike and rode to the next appointment. at the end of the day we got another member to fix the chicken for us and take most of the meat (i figured butchering a chicken myself would make a nice mess of blood and feathers i didn't much feel like cleaning up). we ate some of it anyway, and tasty it was. yeah, i'm not sure how many elders have ever gotten live chickens from those they teach...we did. :) i'll attach a picture for you.

Ben the Elder P, with a G in the middle

Baptisms

from e-mail dated 3-25-2009

the other is a new convert we just baptized last week. two more this week, and one the week after. the work progresses, even in buddhist countries.

Editor's Note (mep) These other pictures are not from the 8th branch; but since it's been awhile since we've received a CD of pictures and since I've not posted any of these other baptism pictures previously, this seems like an appropriate place for them.

from e-mail dated 2-29-2009

attendance here in 8th branch is climbing, which is a good sign; we just had 88 people last sunday, the highest since i've been here. we have ridiculous numbers of investigators every sunday for the past month as well, over 10 people at church every single week. we have several baptisms lined up for march and more for april. it's amazing what can happen when you start to feel comfortable speaking the language and can actually have your personality back, bilingually. i can't tell you how many times these past few weeks people have done double-takes, believing themselves bamboozled by some magic trickery seeing one thing and hearing another, looking at me and listening to my voice.


from e-mail dated 3-3-2009
my week has been very good; we have 7 investigators to be baptized in the next 2 months, something i'm pretty happy about. that number just seems to keep growing by the week.




from e-mail dated 12-31-2008

my week wasn't all that eventful, and i haven't had time to get back to the sausage place to get pictures for dad. sorry on that one. we've been getting fairly busy with investigators recently (i see what other elders write in their emails...it's all about mission stats and stuff...maybe you guys feel left out and would like a piece of that pie?)...we have 4 people with baptismal dates currently, which is good. i enjoy the people i teach, which is even better (i've never been much on the stats), and there is real faith in a few of them, which is the best.

Operation Smile

from e-mail dated 3-25-2009

one picture is of the doctors i translated for at the operation smile project at the russian hospital here in phnom penh a few weeks ago. nice guys, two of them Indian, the really tall white one from orem, utah.

Family Home Evening Photo

from e-mail dated 3-17-2009

the picture is of a family i've gotten pretty close with here in 8th branch; we went over to their house for FHE this past monday.

i had a chance to do some translating for a charitable organization called operation smile last friday and i will be going again this coming friday. i translate for doctors who came to help people with all sorts of problems: dental work, cleft lip surgery, speech therapy...all sorts of stuff. the weird thing is i knew nearly all the medical terms i needed before i even went in to do the translating; i'm not really sure where i picked them all up, but it was somewhere along the way.

from e-mail dated 4 february 2009

i don't have much time today; most of my pday was spent at the zoo, an hour car ride from here. i arranged a district activity (i've been district leader for nearly a year now...yikes, never really thought about that, but i've got a nice collection of lessons built up that i've taught and kept in a journal) there with all 10 of us; it was pretty fun. i got to pet an elephant and several other critters; they had some cool things there, and it was all really free, not at all like the penitentiaries we paranoid americans have in our zoos. i could basically get in with whatever i really wanted, and the critters could roam about fairly freely, though there were cages and such; plus, they get fed there and are all now ridiculously tame due to people exposure that they don't want to go anywhere. anyway, it was fun, and i'll get a picture or two to you next week.

To Market To Market

What Do You Eat that Makes You so Tall?