Dear Family and Friends,
Well, I survived another week! First of all, I want to give a shout out to my sister, Megan. Happy Birthday last week!! Also, it is good to hear that everyone is doing well and having a great summer!
So first of all, we teach so many lessons every day. It is a blessing because it keeps me somewhat distracted from the culture shock I have been facing. This last week we spent an entire day at a ward activity (I will get to that), and we still had 27 lessons. I dont really know how that compares with work in other places, but we were pretty happy about it. Right now we have 7 investigators with baptismal dates in the next month or so and they all seem to be progressing well (from what I can understand).
The language continues to be a huge barrier and I think that I actually understand less in each lesson, but I try and focus and just understand the main idea of the conversation. One lesson this last week with a less active was about 90 minutes (i timed it) and I didnt understand a single word. All I knew was that she was talking about some illness with her knee (because she kept pointing to it and it looked swollen). Haha.
One little miracle that I would like to share was with a recent convert and her husband. Her name is Om Phaney and I don't know what her husbands name is. We just call him "Om" because that is the respectful title for someone of his age (old). So he has never really shown interest in the gospel before and always says he is too busy to learn with us, but he randomly came to church last week and then when we went to teach Om Phaney, he wanted to sit in on the lesson. We decided to switch our lesson plan from Family History to lesson 1 and from his facial expressions, i am pretty sure he was interested. At the end of the lesson we asked him to pray and he didn't know how, so his wife prayed first and then he prayed after. It was a simple prayer, but very beautiful.
My favorite investigator to teach is a 17 year old girl, Vitchikah, that I talked about in my last letter. She speaks a little english and wants to learn more so I teach her in Khmanglish (cambodian/english). She asks very deep questions and remembers everything we teach her so well. She loves reading the book of mormon and wants to be baptized.
On Saturday we went to a ward activity in the province. Our mission president approved us to go. It was about an hour outside of the city and honestly I had no idea what we were going to do. When I asked my companion, she told me that we were going to "hang out". Turns out, it was a Pioneer Day activity. The bus we went on, dropped us off 5 km from our destination and we walked in the scorching heat/humidity to get to a cambodian style pavillion. Once we got there everyone just talked and then we had "lunch". The meal consisted of ant stir fry, fly soup, carp looking fish (with all the guts), and every part of the chicken. I opted out of all that and just had a small portion of rice. All the member kept pointing at me and saying eat, eat! I just said no thanks and then my companion would tell them I didn't like their food so now I am pretty sure they all hate me. Hah. After "lunch" it started pouring rain, as it usually does each afternoon and so we all just waited for it to stop and then went to a nearby zoo. It was really dirty but we saw elephants, tigers, lions, and fed monkeys. Between not eating much that day and the heat, Saturday night was rough! I felt like death! I told my companion I needed to sleep early and turned in at about 8:30 (we usually go to bed at 9:30 and wake up at 5:30).
Oh, one other crazy thing was that one day last week it rained a TON and we had to get to a lesson on the other side of town and so we rode our bikes through about a foot of water for about a mile. I didn't even know that was possible, but trust me, it is. It was nuts!
Also, I have 27 mosquito bites on my legs/feet! I swear the church is infested with them!!! oh and we got exactly 100 people at church yesterday (that was our goal). Usually we have about 70 so it was a miracle.
Anyway, I love you all. Thanks for your support!
Love,
Sister Lindley
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