Update 99: 1 Away From 100!

Happy Mothers day to all of those wonderful moms out there! And especially to my wonderful mother that always knows how to spread a smile :)

Met Reut (awesome member, and his wife) and ate chicken. We had two roasted chickens, a plate of rice, sprite, and a bowl of dip sauce and just went to town tearing the chicken apart with our hands and eating it like ancient Khmer style. 

Met Saravoun, preacher guy. Gave him a Book of Mormon and he said that he wants to study and find the truth. Keep him in your prayers that he will receive an answer from the Holy Ghost!

Lots of rain. Lots. And the rainy season is only beginning.

land mine blew up close to one of our investigators house. She told us all about it. Guess the landmines aren't all quite gone.

Ran into a fellow white guy american, John, and talked about politics for quite a while, very nice fellow though.

Long the wood worker is one of our new dope investigators. He works far away in a province, but his daughter lives in the city going to school and he comes and goes and wants to be sure to meet us. He loves scriptures and is excited to study and mark and write notes in his brand new Book of Mormon!

contacting and families. We spent all Friday morning walking around talking to people and after praying about it, we went to the area north of our house. We met several famalies and individuals who gave us their numbers and said we could come back later. Haven't been able to meet them all yet, but we'll keep trying! 

service and cement with kompheak. He is one of our investigators and couldn't meet because he was busy doing cement work around his house to prevent flooding for the upcoming rainy season, so we went and helped him out. Carried sand, mixed cement, talked to his neighbors, met his kids and wife. Good time. 

dinner with members on Saturday night and our best investigator, Nida, came and we taught her about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Then we had some kebabs and bok lhong (shredded papaya salad stuff)

The border was set by the stake president and the split to form a new branch will happen after all the paper work is worked out.

Sopheak is another investigator that is interested in learning English and Jesus Christ. Trying to help him with both aspects and just committed him to read in the Book of Mormon. Hopefully he keeps his commitments!  

Saw Schiefer, Denkers, Allred, and Brown. All people that used to serve in Cambodia with me and it was awesome to see them again! Elder Schiefer was my first companion and also finished him mission in this area and has a great love for the people here.

Left our house one morning and there was a group of Khmers. One blew kisses and called us frenchies in Khmer. Unexpected, but I found it highly amusing.

. 

Stopped at a light by the airport and 4 americans in a tuk tuk drove by, "Hi, Elders! We're Mormon!" And then they were gone, too bad we couldn't stop and chat a bit. 

Never a dull day.

The work rolls on.

- Elder Taylor

Letters will be joyously received at: 

Elder Taylor

Cambodia Phnom Penh Mission 

House 2B, st. 222 off Norodom

P.O. Box 165

Phnom Penh Cambodia 

Update 98: Rivers of Chocolate

These rivers have carried away some hopes and brought new ones as well.

So basically it rained a lot and flooded the streets with interesting things and our best investigator left for the provinces for 2 months, which means I'll be in America by the time she gets back. But, she's not gone for good, and will keep learning when she gets back. Also picked up a couple new investigators this week and have some potentials to follow up on. 

The other pair of elders in our ward had a baptism and our two progressing investigators came to church!

Last p-day we played laser tag with the office elders and got our measurements taken to have some shirts and pants made for us. $7 for a shirt or pair of pants. 

The work rolls on! 

- Elder Taylor

Letters will be joyously received at: 

Elder Taylor

Cambodia Phnom Penh Mission 

House 2B, st. 222 off Norodom

P.O. Box 165

Phnom Penh Cambodia 

Update 97: Can You Say, Elder Bednar?

Because he's coming to Cambodia! We had zone conference this week with Elder Meurs of the asia area general presidency and it was announced that Elder Bednar, of the quorum of the 12 apostles that leads the church, will come next month, May, on the 21-23. We will have a mission conference, which hasn't happened in 3 years since Elder Holland visited, meaning that all the missionaries in the country will come together to hear him speak. I'm so excited! I will get to listen to a modern day apostle of God speak to me and my fellow missionaries on how we can more fully do the work of the Lord in Cambodia. I also think it's nifty how I quoted Elder Bednar in my farewell talk just before I left to serve my mission, then he visited the MTC while I was in there, and now he will be coming to my mission my last transfer! He's kind of the bookends to my mission experience. So stay tuned for more to come on that. 

In other news in the work, we found, or rather the Lord led, 3 new investigators to us this week. 

1 part member family, 1 English class student (who is also a pastor in another Christian church), and 1 street contact. All have a great desire to understand and find the truth. Very excited to continue to teach them! 

For the part member family, the parents are members, but have been less-active for awhile and just started coming back to church. Their daughter is 10 and has never received baptism, so we will be working with them to teach and prepare her for baptism. Taught her the first time this week and she is a sharp girl.

The English class student found out about our English class from a flyer we handed out to him while he was on his moto. He has strong faith in Christ and sincere questions about the restoration and modern day prophets. I'm excited to continue to help him understand about the need of modern day prophets and how God has not stopped talking to us, but still leads and guides us today. 

The street contact we actually contacted the first or second week in our area, but I can't remember talking to him, just had his name and number in my planner. I invited him to church last week and he didn't come, but this week he showed up! I was sitting in the back of the chapel waiting for people to come and he walked in, didn't recognize him but invited him to sit next to me. He then told me about how someone had called and invited him to church awhile ago, but that when he called them back to ask for help finding the church he didn't pick up. I thought it must have been the other elders, but checked my phone and it was me, whoops! (My phone was already on silent) Met with him after church and found out that he actually has many European Christian friends, and that the week we talked to him one of his friends had just told him that he needed to go to a Christian church that week, and then we invited him to come learn of Christ! The experience really struck him and he took it as a sign from God. I'm so happy that God led me to be in the right place at the right time so that I could help this man begin his journey coming unto Christ. 

This past week we also did a successful split with some members (I go with one member and Elder Richards went with another) because we had more appointments than we could make Saturday night; first time I've ever had to do that on my mission. It was a bit stressful because one member help fell through and we had to find another last minute, but it all worked out. I just ended up having to bike about 4 hours. My area is a bit large, haha.    

I also met with President Eng (stake president, ecclesiastical leader of the northern half of Phnom Penh city) on Sunday about the splitting of the Pochentong ward and he has given me another assignment to update the Google map I made this past week, such that he can use it in the deciding of the split. I'll be working closely with Elder Tuft and Bishop Mon over the next couple weeks to get that all set up; President Eng gave us a month deadline, but I think it will only take 2 weeks at most.  

The work is going strong thanks to several miracle investigators of being in the right place at the right time. I'm excited to see how the Lord guides my path this coming week as well.  

The work rolls on.  Daniel 2:45    Doctrine & Covenants 65:2  https://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/65.2?lang=eng#1

- Elder Taylor

Letters will be joyously received at: 

Elder Taylor

Cambodia Phnom Penh Mission 

House 2B, st. 222 off Norodom

P.O. Box 165

Phnom Penh Cambodia 

938 - Elder Richards loves burgers, and lucky for him there is a burger joint right by our house

941 - Biking

944 - Elder Richards found a pagoda 

955 - Elder Meurs came for a mission tour and taught us at zone conference 

958 - Khmer food. 

959 - Our area is a bit dusty. They're working on paving the highway and they soak the dusty gravel in water to try and reduce dust, but it sure does increase mud. 

964 - Food at church after ward conference

965 - cont.

966 - cont.

970 - Super fancy buy psych (rice and meat) from this morning. Cost me $1

6668 - Us with Rothea from a few weeks ago. Awesome member help, he helped us this past Saturday with our splits to teach two lessons at once.

Update 96: Miracles Continue

Last week we had the random lady, Ming Jan Two, show up to church and this past week we have been able to meet and teach her twice. She also came to church for all three hours and attended the baptismal service afterwards! And to get to and from church she road the bus and then walked about 20 minutes. She has been a wonderful example of faith unto actions as she shows her true desire to learn of Christ and follow Him. During our first meeting this week she accepted a goal to be baptized on the 27th of May and on our second meeting we established a friendship between her and a member that lives near her house. Jan Two can't read and this member, You Naa, accepted to help read the BOM with her and help her learn how to read.

This week we had a young man named Panha come to church with a member acquaintance. He also stayed for all three hours and the baptismal service and said he likes church and wants to be baptized as well. Only down side is that he doesn't have a phone, so no way to contact him, but he said he will come to church again next week and we can teach him then. 

In addition, we also picked up two other new investigators. One of which was a former investigator and isn't willing to sacrifice the time to come to church yet on Sunday because he lives about a half hour away. The other guy, however, lives an hour away and came to church! We also had a couple of the less active members we visited this past week come to church. It's exciting to see the work progress. And this week will be a full week as well with zone conference and an attending member of the area presidency. 

Other random updates of the week: 

We almost got a referral from a recent convert, but it fell through. What is exciting though is that last week we taught her about missionary work and she went out and kept our commitment to try and share the gospel with others!

Biking out to visit a member it started raining, just long enough to get us pretty wet, and then stopped. Then it got really windy and turned into a dust storm and with our wet clothes all the dust stuck to us. Never a dull moment. 

Another member family we visited, their son is a recent convert, insisted on us eating mangoes, which I didn't deny too hard because they taste really good. 

On Thursday my companion was sick and we stayed home. Got some good work done in the house, and then we were able to go out proselyting again the next day. It was a blessing that the sickness lasted only a day and on a day that we really didn't have any appointments to make, but he healed in time to go out and meet those we had planned. 

The work rolls on. 

 

- Elder Taylor

Letters will be joyously received at: 

Elder Taylor

Cambodia Phnom Penh Mission 

House 2B, st. 222 off Norodom

P.O. Box 165

Phnom Penh Cambodia 

901: Contacted a drunk guy. He told us his sister was in love with us. Fun times. 

904: I've been wanting to take a picture with this sign for over a year and finally got around to it. The sign says Holy Materials and in my hand I'm holding scriptures instead of a shoe.

910: The windy, rainy day

 916: The bike is still kicking! And everyone finds my basket on the back highly amusing

924: The baptism on Sunday. We have a font outside the church.

928/930: A member we visited; sweet old lady who gave us fruit

936: The super dusty road is under construction! Hopefully that will be finished shortly. 

Update 95: First Full Week in Chom Chao

And it has brought many adventures. It is Khmer New Year as well right now, so many people have left the city to go to their homelands and relax with family and friends. A major portion of Phnom Penh just comes here for work or school. 

Today we had a zone activity for the Khmer New Year, lots of water balloons, and I made a traditional Khmer banana dessert; tasty stuff!

Elder Richards has continued to be a trooper and we've made it through his first full week in country and he is ready for more!

Hand of God:

On Sunday we had a lady come to church who is in our half of the area (there are four elders in one ward and we split the area in half from the airport) and wants to convert to Christianity. She has never learned about Christ before, but had a friend visit from Australia that invited her to come to church and she came. (Not sure if her friend is LDS or not and if she told her to go to our church specifically or just a Christian church, either way I'm thankful to God for helping to lead her here!)

We went to visit a member who lives very far away, 30ish minutes by tuk-tuk, and while we were out there he mentioned that we should visit a less-active married couple who lived close by. We called him and he was just barely on his way back from a trip they made for Khmer New Year and said we could come visit. He is an RM and so is his wife and they have been sealed in the temple for a long time now and have their first child on the way (4 months). Due to some circumstances with school they hadn't been coming to church for about three years, but that just changed and now he said that they will come to church on Sunday! Fun fact: he is also the older brother of two sister missionaries I served with. 

The work rolls on. 

- Elder Taylor

Letters will be joyously received at: 

Elder Taylor

Cambodia Phnom Penh Mission 

House 2B, st. 222 off Norodom

P.O. Box 165

Phnom Penh Cambodia