Harvesting Rice and Eating Dog Covered in Ants

As you saw from the pictures I sent (the two below) I tasted some of the most delicious food known to man - I ate dog meat covered in large red ants. Well, it all started when our member dropped off an entire leg of a dog at our house and said that he was going to come back the next day to make us food. Well, he came back and made us a dog/ant stir fry. The ants are a huge type of ant that lives on most of the trees here and they are straight vicious. If they get on your skin they dig their head in and just start biting....sometimes with the rest of their body straight up in the air. Well, some Cambodians eat dog meat with this type of ant because it gives it a nice sour taste. It did. The meat and the ants were pretty sour. Quite honestly I did not eat that much because it was not the best, but I did eat it. Our house had a weird smell for the rest of the week. So, you guys will have to try it someday.  

Mealea was also baptized which was really cool. (See next two pictures.) She has been really progressing in the gospel, and it has been so nice to see her change her attitude and to be happier. When we first started to teach her she was very frustrated with her life and with her family. She was not even that receptive to the members that tried to help her. It was really rewarding to see her start to pray and to read the scriptures and then to start to have more peace with her family and to start to feel happier. We are really trying to work with her parents. Both Mealea and her sister Leap are now members, and I feel like the father and mother are very close to learning with us.

 
After the baptism, Mealea was given the time to share her testimony and she explained how she had seen a miracle that day. Her parents are not opposed to the church, but they are not yet learning with the missionaries. That Saturday one of their relatives came to town and her parents told Mealea that she would need to stay home and watch over the house while they went out. Well, that meant that she would not be able to be baptized, because it was already 4 PM and they would not be back before 5 PM, which is when the baptism was starting. In her testimony she said that at the time she did not know what she could do. She said that she prayed and asked that Heavenly Father would help her have a way to go and be baptized that day and that she would fast the next day and keep all the commandments. She said that about a minute after she prayed her dad came home unexpectedly with the moto and told her she was free to go and do whatever she wanted to do that night. I know that the Lord provided the way for her to get baptized.

Pretty cool experience with Mealea. Just to clarify, it is often very difficult to get entire families/households at church because they feel like there always has to be someone at home to watch and protect it from robbers and such. It is a common problem. Even the District President made his son-in-law stay home in the morning and then go to the other branch at night in order to have someone home to protect the house.

I think that I told you last week that Viraneath got the Aaronic Priesthood. We got him to bless the sacrament this past week. He did a really good job, but had to do it two times. He did a good job though. One tiny mistake. His dad then received the Melchezidek priesthood later that day. Their family is doing really well right now. The key is just to keep getting Viraneath involved with his responsibilities at the church to help him to keep coming to church.

I have been doing a lot of work with the branch. Home teaching, attending branch council and other things and giving suggestions to keep everything running smoothly. I love our branch presidency and Relief Society presidency. They are very dedicated, and it is showing. We are getting a lot of people to church, but it is because they are doing a great job in getting out there and helping the members. I love this branch so much. There are so many awesome members here.

We had a pretty good week. As the pictures show (all the rest of the pictures in this post) we had some really fun service. We went to our first counselor’s house and we were led to the back of the neighborhood which is just a HUGE area of rice fields. Many, many rice fields all together. Well, we took off our shoes and rolled up our pants and then jumped into the rice fields that are flooded with water. The areas with the deepest water made it to my knees, but most of the time it was to my skins. We had little curved knives which we would hold in the right hand while we grabbed a bundle of rice stalks in the left hand and then cut it. It was really fun, and it is in a really beautiful area.

The past month or so we have been teaching the fiancé of our district president’s son. He used to be inactive, but has come back ever since we have been teaching his fiancé. He is actually a really good guy and has a lot of potential. Our District President has told us that his fiancé and soon to be wife is the only way that his son will come back to full activity. She has been doing really well and went off for about 10 minutes about how awesome Nephi was. She went on and on about how he had all these problems and trouble, but he kept following God and then he received blessings. She told us that about a month ago she had a dream where she was riding in a really nice car across a really beautiful bridge. On both sides and all around was just mud and tons of people were swimming /walking in the mud. She said that she thought to herself that she was so grateful that she could stay out of the mud and just be clean. She told us that she believes that it was an answer that God can help her stay out of sin and cross the mud safely. She told us right after we taught her about the Plan of Salvation and talked heavily about the Atonement. I am excited for both of them, and we have a goal that he will baptize his fiancé in the coming weeks.

The wife of the crazy man should have been baptized this week. Like I said, she is not the most polished person in personality and characteristics, but she comes to church every week despite lots of persecution. And like I said before, our RS does a great job encouraging her. We have been sharing more about showing your love and being patient when others do bad things to you because we want her husband to see that our church teaches her to show her love. She was not able to be baptized this past week because we were not able to finish all the lessons. She will be baptized next Saturday. Her husband is doing better. He is actually pretty friendly to us. She has a difficult time understanding tithing, which causes her to think she needs to pay more than is really necessary. She is doing well though and she is going to be baptized next week.

I continued my study on patience this past week. I came across two scriptures that I love. Hebrews 12:1. “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us.” When I first read this I did not understand because I only thought about the word race and that how do you run a race patiently. Then I figured that this race is more of a long distance endurance race where it does not matter if you finish first; it just matters that you finish. So it makes sense that if the only goal of the race is to just finish, that you can do it patiently. I really like this verse, but I need to think about it some more.

I also liked D&C 67:13. “Ye are not able to abide the presence of God now, neither the ministering of angels; wherefore, continue in patience until ye are perfected.” That first just changed my whole idea about life. We are just not good enough or ready to go to heaven yet. But we continue with patience, meaning that we improve every day until one day we can become perfected in Jesus Christ. Really awesome. I love the scriptures. I have been continuing my reading in the New Testament, and I love it all. When I find a really good verse I just get this pump of energy and desire to go and do work.