Zone Conference in Kampong Cham

3 Oct 2015

What a wonderful experience this was to attend the Zone Conference in Kampong Cham on 26 September 2015.   There are 12 Elders and 4 Sisters in Kampong Cham.  16 missionaries for a city approximately 120,000 people.  They are on the streets every day "contacting" which means they are striking up a conversation with people, if they will give you the time of day!

President/Sister Christensen, the 2 AP's, and 2 Sister Trainers taught some wonderful principle of the gospel.  President Christensen brought forth his Mission Vision, which is "To Be a Deliberate Disciple of Jesus Christ".   It was inspiring.

They all ride bad, old bikes, but if you get them new ones they would always be stolen and possibly hurt to get it.  New bikes would make our missionaries bright big targets. 

                                   The first missionaries we saw were Elder Hall and Elder Slavens.

                                                    Elder Lauritzen doing his part to help.

                                   President Christensen with his "let's get to it stride".

 Awww! Good man, Elder Hunt (on the left), handing over the receipts for Elder Leavitt while Elder Lauritzen looks on.

 Our marvelous Sisters!  Sister Sheffield, Sister Ren, Sister Semones, Sister Harris, Sister Uresk and Sister Spangler.  

                              A one on one conversation with Sister Christensen is always uplifting.

Eating ice cream with chop sticks was a challenge worth taking!  Even President and Sister Christensen took up the challenge! 

                                     Lunch was great but we all LOVED the chocolate ice cream!

 

And the day is over.  Everyone a better person for having been to the Zone Conference in 

Kampong  Cham.

On the Way to Kampong Cham

2 Oct 2015

Saturday 26 Sept 2015.... Elder Leavitt and I drove to Kampong Cham for a Zone Conference.  These next pictures were taken out of my car window on the way to Kampong Cham......

 

The women wear these pajama like clothing.  They feel very fashionable. 

Just a moto driving on the wrong side of the street.   Its common.  It seems to bring out the "road rage" in us!!   We were driving down the 4-lane highway when Elder Leavitt had to quickly swerve into the right hand lane when he realized that he wasn't pulling up to the back of a truck... he was coming head on with a truck.  Well, after all, what is a guy supposed to do?   Stay on his side of the road?  He needed to make a left hand turn!!!

Those are 5 bed frames stacked on each other that are in the back of the truck (the man is sitting on the tailgate of the truck).  

A fast food store.  Most of these are on movable carts.  This one is a little more "up town" .... it is stationary.  

It is so trashy everywhere.   They do gather it up in one spot but it stays there all day.  The trash wagons come around at night.  They never bag it up or anything like unto it.  It just sits there and rots all day.  That is one of those things that will "forever be foreign".  

A couple of carts on the sidewalk selling their wares. 

The children seem to be happy and loved.  They just don't know how dirty it is here!   And that there is education out there somewhere..... that the gospel of Jesus Christ is at their fingertips.... our missionaries just have to find them.  Door knocking is against the law (no doors anyway)... the people just have to bump into the missionaries on the street and make a contact.  It is a different kind of missionary work here.

This is a pharmacy with the blue cross.  Not like we have in North America, it really is only a DRUG store.

                                                               A Cambodian Cowboy

Just another mode of transportation.   The people living in the Khets (kites) are very poor, but they keep plugging away at life and making the most of it.

                                                                    Local vendors

On the road home I saw some of the skinniest cows I have ever seen.  These cows pull the machinery  in the rice fields.  Just like all the humans, they work hard for very little return!

The trip to Kampong Cham is very interesting, very sad, very humbling yet it inspires gratitude, and motivates one to want to help and bring the gospel of Jesus Christ to a people who have nothing to lose and everything to gain.   It has changed my prayers. 

Helping me remember....

3 September 2015

The purpose of this blog is to help me look back.   I want to look back and feel again what I felt while here in Cambodia.   I want to remember what I saw, who I met, and those with whom I worked.  I want to be able to recall the goodness of the people and their stories.  The stories are incredible.  Just recently, one of the men that I work with from the Service Center told me about his beginnings on this earth and his mother.  

My friend is the manager of the Service Center.  He is a wonderful man.  A very diligent and faithful man.   He and I were discussing the Tuol Sleng Prison, which is in the middle of downtown Phnom Penh.   It was originally a school until Pol Pot and his regime of evil invaded Cambodia in 1975.

This is inside the prison looking at homes that now quietly line its borders as if Tuol Sleng and it's horrors never existed.   Those home could have been there in 1975, I don't know.   The Khmer Rouge took over the entire country and began to torture and kill any and all who had had affiliations with the former government and also anyone who had an education, or anyone who wore glasses (Pol Pot thought they looked smart ).  People lied about being able to read or write just to stay alive.

The last 14 people who died were buried here within the prison walls.   It is a very solemn place.   I felt sadness and grief.  I also felt like those that suffered and died here needed to be honored.   I have a hard time wrapping my head around "why".   I just can't see any purpose in this brutality other than to build evil.... and it did.  

When the prisoners were being beaten or given electric shocks one of the "rules of the prison" was that they were not to scream out.  If they did, more vigilant beatings or more shocks were administered.

My friend told me that he was born during this time of Pol Pot.   His mother and grandmother were forced workers in the rice fields.   This was hard labor.  The two women worked in a field of food yet they were starving.   His mother was pregnant with him as she labored everyday from sun up to sun down.  If you complain or let those with authority think you can't do your work, they would just kill you.  Sometimes they would kill them just because they wanted to.   Frail and starving she worked in the fields.  Quietly one day she gave birth to her baby boy right there in the rice field.  The grandmother held the baby in the palms of her hands.   They gave him a Khmer name which means "lucky".   Lucky to be alive.  She continued to work in the field that day out of fear that they would kill her and her baby.  She never skipped a beat.  This woman is a modern day Esther, Ruth, or Naomi. Her son became an educated man.  A kind and gentle man.  He found the gospel of Jesus Christ and now serves as a Bishop today.  I never want to forget him.

I never want to forget the children.  They are beautiful children.  

This is a family of 6 traveling through town on their family vehicle, the moto!

No seat belts, no helmets for the children, just hang on and don't fall out.

Sister Hollenzer at Trash Mountain. Trash Mountain is just that, a mountain of trash where families live.  The city dump is their home.   The entire family will all scrutinize through the daily trash that is dumped in their living space to find things to re-cycle to sell for their day's wages.  I never want to forget just how blessed I am.

I never want to forget the every day people that I see trying to eek out a living.  Most live on around $200 per month. 

I never ever want to forget how fortunate, privileged, blessed, and honored I am that my home is only 3 blocks from a temple.   I never want to forget that President Doung (member of the District Presidency) has been saving for 15 years to get to go to the Temple with no signs of that happening anytime soon YET he still has hope that he will get there one day.   I hope I get to see that happen when I am here.   I never want to forget the 5 local missionaries that just came from the Manila Temple beaming and glowing.   They were able to go to ONE session.   They will most likely not go to the Temple again until the Thailand Temple is built (aprox. 5 years). 

There are so many things I must not forget...  

Now That's Entertainment

11 August 2015

Saturdays are our Preparation Day, otherwise known as a P-Day.  We need a P-Day to mentally prepare for the Sunday!   We are on the go from 9am-5pm every Sunday, so our REAL day of rest is Saturdays.   Last Saturday we decided to go to the movies.   Senior missionaries can do that you know!   Unlike the young Elder and Sisters, who are a bit restricted in this area.   I guess they trust us to make a good choice.  Well, Elder Leavitt and I decided to go see the new Mission Impossible movie.   We have seen something interesting advertised at the theater called VIP tickets.   Curiosity killed the cat and we bought the VIP experience.  HOLY SMOKES!  This was spectacular!

Unsuspectingly we left the loud lobby "riff-raff" and the endless line-up for pop and popcorn to walked through those glass doors into what has become our most amazing movie experience that we have ever had.  It was a beautiful, quiet reception room.   It was as if someone flipped a switch off of the loud, pushing crowds.  We sat in stately leather, high-wing-backed chairs.

It was like a posh hotel lobby.  There was the reception desk where two lovely young women were perched ready to serve and make sure you got the seat you wanted.   In the "'peasant" seating as well as the VIP seating it is sold by assigned seating.  So Elder Leavitt carefully chose our seats.  

While waiting to go into the theater one of the young servers approached with a menu.   She asked if we wanted to order our treats.   We said absolutely YES.   We ordered our pop and popcorn and then she explained that it would be brought to us while in the theater!   This kept getting better and better!  Five minutes before the movie began our little girl told us we could now go up to the theater.  So we went up to the special VIP Theater.  

It was a small, little private theater seating around 30-32 people.  NO sticky, I-have-to-be-careful-or-I'll-lose-my-shoe kind of floors.  Instead... fully carpeted!  There were distinct seats of two throughout the theater.  Our usher directed us to our designated seats.  And this is what we found...

Two, all leather, Lazy-Boy recliners including lumbar pillows and blankets! If the movie is bad at least you can have a good rest.   We had no sooner gotten settled when our server came with our pops and popcorn.  We had our own pop and our own popcorn.... NO SHARING!!!  All for the price of $15 each.  

Our seats were right together but I could stretch my arm out to the right never even come close to the couple next to us.   I could not hear them chat nor could I hear their phones.   Unbelievable!  This was an airliner's 1st class movie experience.   And on top of all of that, we weren't sure if they didn't bleep out all the swearing because there was NONE in that movie.  I find it hard to believe that that is the way Hollywood made that movie.  

 NOW THAT IS ENTERTAINMENT WORTH PAYING FOR!  

Teacher and Student

5 August 2015

After having experienced these last two weeks I re-read my last post and felt somewhat embarrassed. I'm still teaching music but this week with a different attitude.  It is not even close to what I thought I would be teaching when I came to Cambodia.   I quickly came to realize that my least favorite activity is being humbled!   Yet it seems to be God's favorite thing to do.

I think God and Jesus Christ conferred,  "She's complaining about how hard it is to be a music teacher.  We should help her understand."

Elder Leavitt and I went to all 3 Branches' Pioneeer Day Heritage Programs.   They talked a bit about the Utah pioneers but mostly spoke about themselves being pioneers in Cambodia.  One of the older sisters told about when she was a much younger woman, early in her marriage her husband was an alcoholic.  It had gotten to the point that she needed to make a decision whether to stay with him or leave him.   Due to his abusive nature escalating, she decided to leave him.   While in the streets of Ho Chi Minh City feeling lonely and much despair, two young North American males dressed in white shirts and ties crossed her path and greeted her with a smile and hearty welcome in Vietnamese.  She asked her friend who was walking with her a string of questions, "Why do they speak Vietnamese?" "What are they doing here?" "Where are they going?"    Of course, the friend could no more answer the questions than she could.   It's interesting that questions are what filled her head.   The missionaries are not to proselyte or approach anyone in Vietnam.   They can teach only if someone asks the missionaries questions.

This sister and her friend dogged those missionaries for several hours to see where they went and what they did.   Finally, they came to the conclusion that they were just spreading their religious examples of good.   This lead her to asking more questions and ultimately baptism.

Another sister told of how she could not read before she joined the Church.   Then she expressed her gratitude for the great blessing it is that her husband could read now because he now can bless the Sacrament.  

Another Cambodian sister that we associate with at the office admitted that she can read but she hasn't spent much time reading since she was a little girl.   As a child if the Khmer Rouge found out that she could read they would have killed her.  

My music teaching challenges seem pretty trite.   What I have learned with clarity is that I came here thinking I was going to be the teacher but really I have been the student! 

I Have a Terminal Case of Learning Curves

23 July 2015

In 1972 when I first joined the Church, I LOVED Sundays.   I could hardly wait for the next Sunday to roll around.   It was a time of new learning.   My learning curve at that time was in a full explosion mode!  And every day in between, Mondays through Saturdays,  I couldn't read enough.   I would have a million questions all poised for Sunday when I could ask them to the only church scholars I knew, missionaries and some members.   A whole new world had opened up and I couldn't learn  enough.   I had been a starving child for 18 years and now a table of food was before me that stretched beyond my own vision.   I felt the food was on a fast conveyer belt and I couldn't catch up.  But I tried!   I LOVED Sundays.

That lasted about 2 years.  Within that 2 years I got married and started having babies.   Another new learning curve!  Listening intently for a full hour in each meeting of  Relief Society and Sunday  School and then a full one hour and a half in Sacrament Service was a thing of the past.   Now I just got bits and pieces.  Instead of "listening intently" soaking in every word, I now had to master the "stop and start" listening method.  Tending babies and toddlers during church didn't change my learning curve, it just changed my learning curve focus!  The children were in their own little learning curves and that was important.  I continued to learn about the gospel it was just in a reverse fashion that I was used to learning.   I now received my questions on Sundays and would find my own answers at home during the week. This lasted about 20 years.  Numerous callings helped but always stepped up the learning curve into different dimensions and intensified my Sundays.  I realized about 4 years ago I started really liking Sundays again.   I was teaching and working with the sisters in Relief Society.   My Sundays were back.

Here I am in Phnom Penh Cambodia.   My learning curve has surpassed comprehension!   Sundays have become so very difficult again.  We are assigned to support the three Vietnamese Branches in Phnom Penh.   We go to 2 meeting blocks every Sunday, one at 9am and then at 1:30pm.   We have to have one of the Elders as an interpreter.   The missionaries are very good at doing that difficult task.   My problem is that the missionary is only there for me during Sacrament Service.   They then go teach one of the youth classes during Sunday School and of course the Elder then goes to Priesthood where Elder Leavitt benefits from that interpreter.   The saints always want us to comment on what they are talking about but I don't even know what they have been discussing.   It is very challenging.   Sundays are just not that fun anymore.   I never feel like I have gone to Church.   I have resorted  to having my own church in my head but that still is just one person's opinion!

The people are sweet, caring, and love us being there.   They run up to us when we arrive at the Branch.   They are so welcoming.   Their love is so transparent.   We have learned a few greetings and niceties in Vietnamese which thrill the people when we try to verbalize them (I'm sure my southern tongue butchers their language although, it sounds pretty muddled already).  Learning their names is no picnic either.   Huyen, Kha Ai, Hien, Binh, Tra, My Hoa, Nhi, Thuy, Dinh, and Hang.  I never know who I am talking to.  

They have discovered that I can play the piano.   Believe it or not, my weak skills on the piano sound like a concert to them.  One branch has a young woman who can play one hand and that same woman travels to another branch to play, the other branch has no one.  So I found a Simplified Hymn book and have had to play in Sacrament Service.   This stress has not helped my Sundays!

Now I have been asked to teach a beginner piano class.  I agreed.  This takes place on Tuesdays.  I am being stretched to the limits.  But tha'ts OK.   I knew that would happen when I signed up for this mission.   What I am learning is where my "comfort zones" are NOT.   The District Presidency counselor came to me and said he had a list for people that wanted to learn to play the piano.  I looked at the list......28 people were on that list!   I was flabbergasted!  I could not possibly teach 28 students.  I have had 2 classes so far and the max that has shown up is 9 although, they were 9 different people each class!   We will see who shows up next week.

Sundays and Tuesdays are a struggle for me.  I want to be able to say "I love Sundays" again.  I'm working on that.   I have prayed that I would feel like I am useful.  I have prayed that the learning curve would lighten up (don't think that can really happen here).

Elder Leavitt came up with somewhat of a solution.   We are going to use the Sunday School time to teach 3 students, chosen by the Branch President, to conduct the hymns each Sunday.   I think this will work.   They need all sorts of music skills in these branches.  When I envisioned myself on a mission I could see me using all my strengths and well-honed talents.  After all, that's what I had developed all those strengths and talents for.    I promised over 40 years ago that I would give my time and my talents to do my part to help build the Kingdom of God.   I just had no idea that "everything with which He has given me" meant that  He would require my piddley, little, ill-harvested skill at the piano too.  

So my learning curves seem to never cease.....thank goodness... that seems to be one of my greatest blessings.

I Thought I Knew....

7 July 2015 

Several months ago (pre-Cambodia Mission) if I had been assigned a talk on Faith, I would have said, "No problem!".  I would have then gone to favorite prophets and most expected scripture mastery of the past.   I would have created a talk that would have possibly stirred your heart and mind to better examples of faith.   All this because I thought I knew what faith was.   

 Most of the scriptures that I have relied on about faith just tell me what faith IS NOT!  It is NOT things I can see.  It is nothing that I can put my hands on.  (Heb. 11:1)  Power, understanding, and testimony are results of faith but still no clear "faith is..." statement.  Faith can show a long, narrow trail of evidences that it was here.  (Helaman 10:5)

 What I have learned is that I have been living on the surface of faith.  What I have seen and witnessed is faith beyond my comprehension.  

Faith is the Sr. Couple who while planning and preparing for retirement and to serve a mission was suddenly a victim of "down sizing" and he lost his job.   In the middle of all that it was very clear that they needed to continue their plans for the mission.   They weren't sure how that would happen but they went forward.   They sold everything... their home and most of their belongings.   They now serve in South Carolina.   After 2 years of service they will go back to their home town to a 10 X 10 storage crate and figure out the rest.  They understand, far better than I do, about seeking "first the Kingdom of God"  (Matthew 6:30-33). 

Faith is the newly arrived 19 year old missionary who  was already overwhelmed just by getting off the airplane and seeing Cambodia for the first time.   In this mission the missionaries arrive at 10:30am.   If you even let them get site of a bed they would crash.   ( It would take weeks for them to get their internal clocks turned around.)  So as soon as they get off the plane the AP's load up the luggage in the van to be sent to the Mission Office. The Assisitant's to the President and the new missionaries begin street contacting with their new found language from the Missionary Training Center.   They come and have lunch at the Mission Office/Home.   Mission training is next for these "greenies".   (I now understand why they call them"greenies".   Some of them really did look sick!)  I will never forget this one new Elder.  He taught me lessons on faith that 40 years in the Church could not.   Elder Leavitt told the group that today they each have to pay $75 for the bike they would receive.   All reached into their wallets and began dishing out the money.   This one Elder counted and re-counted his money.  He took everything out of his wallet, leaving himself with zero money, and apologetically said, "I'm a bit short can I pay you later?"   This modern-day Stripling Warrior was willing to give everything.  He had no idea when or how he was going to get his next dollar.  He was just doing as his mother had taught by being obedient with exactness and giving his all.   Now that is faith.   (Just to let you know,  Elder Leavitt couldn't take it.   His heart broke for this young man and told him to keep his money and to come pay him the $75 later.)

One last example of faith that just astounds me.   When the 2 stakes were created in 2014 one of the first callings that took place was for the new Stake Presidents to call Patriarchs.   I met one of these 5'4" giants this week.  (Having heard the story I was surprised as to how small his statue was.)  As this man was called to be the new Patriarch he said "yes" to the calling.  But he had a few problems..... he didn't have his own Patriarchal Blessing, he had never heard a Patriarchal Blessing, nor had he ever read a Patriarchal Blessing.... so what is it and how do I do it?  To me, he is a giant of faith.  

This week Katey Sudo posted a great quote regarding faith.  Good for you Katey for learning this long before your 61 years old!  

"Faith does not mean God meets our expectations.  It means we cling to God's character, knowing that God will always accomplish His purposes.   God wants to forge in us a faith that is far greater than our circumstances.   Faith means knowing God can, believing God will, but clinging to Him even if He doesn't.   Faith is not an assurance that everything is going to be OK; it is the assurance that God is in control.  That's the only way to live, knowing that some of the pains and confusions of life will remain mysteries even to our graves."(author unknown)

Thanks Katey.   I have always taught that faith is "knowing that Jesus is who He says he is and that He can do what he says he can do'.   I am seeing real life size examples of that in Cambodia!