Water Festival for Missionaries

Every year Cambodia has a 3 day Water Festival (last Wednesday, Thursday, Friday).  This severely cuts down on teaching because no one wants to learn. Water festival sounds pretty cool though.  It has a lot of tradition dealing with the ancient kingdom and such.  From the very little bit that I saw, it looked cool.  One funny part was that we tried to go and teach Luen during festival.  A few days earlier we had taught about how it is a commandment to keep the laws of the land.  He informed us that he was trying to live the laws of the land and that he could therefore not meet with us because water festival is for resting.  At least he is trying, right?

Mei was confirmed this last week by the branch president which is great.  Unfortunately, she is already having trouble keeping the Sabbath holy.  She had to leave and go to the provinces to go and sing for her job.  It is a common problem here, and a little bit of a bummer because she committed to living the law before baptism.  She is still really good though and still very strong in the gospel.

Elder Sok and I did not have any lessons on Monday afternoon so we went to our CBR and found an inactive family and rode over the Cambodia/Japanese friendship bridge.  We started to follow the little drawn map to the house.  We found roads and alleys flooded with water.  We decided to keep going, and we rode through.  We rode through water that at times came up to our shins - while riding our bikes.  It was 2 -3 feet deep.  We stopped at a little dry spot, and then tried to go again.  Elder Sok's bike slipped, and he crashed into the water.  We laughed pretty hard.  Then while he was trying to clean up I went to the edge to look down the road to see how much farther.  I slipped as well and got my butt and pants all wet.  We continued onward – shoes and lower legs just completely soaked.  We never found the family, but we tried hard and had a fun experience riding through the water.  The people living there said that water had been there for 2-3 months. It was really stinky.  Flooding happens all over Cambodia – especially in the provinces, or kites. Though there isn’t so much now because it is more of the dry season.  

Update on Chanlina and James: Chanlina was all ready to take him back to her homeland after water festival, but she told us she found an organization that runs a school James could go to.  I am really grateful for that.  Now hopefully they all can get baptized together sometime in December.  We could not meet with her again after she told us that, so we will see how it worked out later this week.   

CBRs (CBR's are just done after someone is baptized; you fill out a big form with their picture and info) were pretty sad because we literally sat and flipped through hundreds of people that are just inactive.  I read the comments, and it always starts off great. But then for some reason or another they are inactive.  It’s very sad.  I do not want any of my investigators to be like that.   

 We had Zone conference (a training meeting for a group of missionaries in a certain geographic area) yesterday – my  first. It was really awesome.  President Smedley is a great mission president, and we got counsel from the Assistants to the President, Sister Smeldley, President, etc.  We ate some delicious food, etc.  President Smedley went into more detail about his vision of one day having a temple in Cambodia.  He told us he was exercising one morning and pondering about how hard it was for Cambodians and Vietnamese to save money to go to the temple in Hong Kong or the Philippians.  He told us he had the thought, "Do not bring the members to the temple; bring the temple to the members".  That has been his work ever since.  That is why he is pushing for stakes by June 24, 2012.  I really felt the Spirit strong and felt that I need to do my part to work harder to help these people go to the temple.  At first I believed that someday maybe they would have a temple, but I figured that maybe not Cambodia - maybe another one in another closer country that would just bless Cambodian people to have an opportunity.  But after he gave a talk and I really felt the spirit and felt such a strong motivation to help, I started to think.  I thought of all the temples in Asia.  According to my recollection there are 1 or 2 in Japan, and 1 in Hong Kong. I think one is in Taiwan, 1 or 2 in Philippians, and that is it.  It makes complete sense to me that a Cambodian temple would bless all of Southeast Asia.  Its right in the middle of Vietnam and Thailand.  Vietnam is not open to proselyting yet, but they have 2 branches in Ho Chi Min and Hanoi.  Thailand has branches and districts like Cambodia.  Plus, members in India could be blessed because Cambodia is a lot cheaper and closer for them to travel then to Hong Kong.  I don't know when, but it makes sense that someday Cambodia could have a temple that would bless all of Southeast Asia.  

Maly continues to progress as well and has accepted the law of chastity, word of wisdom, and tithing.  She told us that she did not want money; she only wanted her family to have happiness.  Once she is baptized, her older brother wants to start learning.  He has a lot of potential too.  The other brother though....he’s a little bit of work.  He does not want to learn.  He's kind of a gangster.