My beloved family

Dear Family,

First, before I forget, I want to wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving!!!! You can't imagine how grateful I am for you and for your support and your love and examples. I think about you often and although I try not to miss you, the truth is I miss you all terribly. You probably will never quite understand. But I know the reason I miss you so much is because you are all so wonderful, so thank you for being my awesome family!

This week I actually told Sister Davis all about things we do/used to do as a family like daily scripture study, daily family prayer, dinner as a family, FHE, and then I even told her about the Sunday Chart. I had so much fun telling her about all these things. I never thought that these things were out of the ordinary, especially the sunday chart, until I was telling her about them. haha, oh how I love the way I grew up! I can't even tell you how excited I was to talk about all of these things! Thank you mom and dad for incorporating all these things into our lives!

Along the lines of scripture study, this past week Sister Davis and I went and met with our recent converts Bong Diana, Om Babe, and Cynthia. We decided we would just read the scriptures with them a bit and talk about them. This turned out to be one of the best lessons ever! We were reading in 1 Nephi 18, I believe. We just read the first 9 verses or so, but I learned so much that I had never even learned before! We talked about them building a ship and how they were going to cross the sea. Of course we compared the waves to our trials and temptations in life, and then Bong Diana said that she thought they could also be caused by our own sins, which I think she definitely had a point. And then this is where they taught me, they talked about the ship being our faith and also devoting our heart to Christ. I know this is really simple but I had never thought of that! That if we do build our ship of faith and devote our hearts to Christ, we will be able to cross the stormy sea! I love how the scriptures can be interpreted in so many ways, and they are pretty much always right!

Yesterday we had 1 investigator get baptized, her name is Shoelie. She is just the sweetest. We were actually supposed to have 2 people, Ming Laundry, being the second. But she didn't show up to church... but I hear that's because someone in her house (her child?) was really sick. So that was too bad, but I'm not too worried about it. Mostly because after her interview for baptism on Friday, she was just GLOWING! She was so so so happy, I can't even tell you. It was one of the best things to see.

Another fun thing this week was that one of our investigators Srei Chia (who is like 10 years old) brought like 8 friends to church yesterday! Haha, it was great! She is the daughter of a member, but was never baptized so we are teaching her. Lots of her friends always sit in, and so yesterday she brought all of them, plus some others I had never seen. And they stayed all three hours! It was so funny too because Srei Chia was like totally just loving being like the one who knew what she was doing. Right before the prayers she would be like "oh everyone be quiet, we're praying now!" It was super great. I hope we can actually start teaching some of those other kids, but the hard thing is that we can't teach them without their parents. But I hope their parents want to learn too! We'll work on that this week.

We had some other fun and random experiences this week too that really just make being a missionary fun! On Friday we were just riding our bikes and we heard a voice from behind say "Miss! Miss!" and usually I just kinda ignore those because they are usually impolite men trying to be funny, but I looked who it was and he seemed like a nice looking man, so we let him catch up. Turns out he legitimately was interested! He asked us if we were missionaries and he asked us about a lot of other stuff that we believe, including polygamy in Utah! Which let me tell you, for someone to even be aware that Utah is a place is CRAZY! So let's just say he is one educated man! But we answered his questions and gave him a pamphlet about the plan of salvation. I'm not sure if anything will happen there, but it was really neat at the time!

Just a few hours after that we went to teach another investigator Bong Baa. We taught her the plan of salvation in this lesson, but she wasn't really focusing, which was kind of frustrating. But she randomly had a friend there who sit and listened the whole time and even read a scripture when we asked her too. So we got to the end of the lesson and Baa didn't really have any questions, but we asked the friend if she did, and boy did she! She wanted to reconfirm about the three kingdoms, she asked about the spirit world, and then she asked more about Adam and Eve. This is like maybe the 2nd time in my ministry (haha, can I call this my ministry?) that someone has presented REAL questions. It really is not a thing here to ask questions. Anyway, I was loving how into it she was! She then told us that she actually had wanted to join before but was too scared to ever ask questions about it. But then she also told us that she is going back to Phnom Penh soon... so I guess she doesn't live here. But is sounds like she is from Stung Mean Chey and I really encouraged her to look into it more up there! Super cool though!

Now, let me tell you just one of the greatest stories of all time. This actually happened like a week and a half ago, but somehow I forgot to tell you last email. One night Sister Davis and I were sitting in our room doing language study. Of course sitting on the wall was just one of the usual little lizards that are always to be found. Well, we think nothing of that. Fast forward 20 minutes, out of no where we hear a massive THUMP on Sister Davis' desk. I'm sure you can already see what is coming. We look over and of course there is the lizard sitting on her desk starring at us. Well that just didn't sit right with either of us. We decided we needed to somehow get it off her desk. But we didn't just want to get it off, we decided we wanted it out of our room. After so many attempts and literally probably like 40 minutes, the best we could do was trap it under a tupperware and decide that we would deal with it in the morning. You can't imagine the efforts that went into trying to get this lizard out of our presence. Somewhere in there I decided that Satan was the most appropriate name for this lizard. So the next morning we get up, and we manage to slight the tupperware onto a notebook and we ran the lizard outside. Really anti-climatic. BUT fast forward like 1 more day. I come downstairs getting ready to leave for the day. I go to my shoes. What do I find hiding right in between my shoes? SATAN!!!! This lizard is the worst! And we know it's him because not only is he creepy but he looks creepy, and he's totally recognizable! Literally that first night he was just staring at us with his mouth half open like he wanted to suck our blood! So creepy. So back to the shoe incident. We decided we didn't have time for him right then, so we trapped him under the tupperware again so he couldn't escape. Well that same day our landlady decided to come and clean our house. So we get home and our house is really clean, and satan is nowhere to be found. But the best part is that I really bet our landlady had quite a laugh when she lifted up the tupperware and found a lizard underneath. She probably thinks we are nuts! Haha, oh it was the best. And no we blame satan for everything.

Sister Davis is still doing really well! It's interesting because it really is hard to be here especially that first while, but she is doing really great. I also feel like it's good we are together because I had a really similar experience to what she is having as far as how she is with missing home and stuff. I'm glad that I understand her and can tell her that it does get better. But honestly, she is super awesome! It is just the two of us in the same house as before. I haven't moved beds since I got in KC 5 months ago. We used to have all 4 sisters in a house, but they still haven't brought more sisters back here so it is just the 2 of us sisters here in KC. It's not so bad though. We have a lot of fun together. Sometime I'll probably go serve in the city and I think I'll be overwhelmed by how many missionaries there are, haha.

The other funniest thing that happened this week was during a lesson. I was teaching a recent convert in 2nd branch, she is like 14 years old. I had mentioned that someday I'll bring my husband back here, to Cambodia, so that she can meet him. So then when she said the closing prayer she was like "please bless Sister Homer to get a boyfriend really quick!" hahaha, it was super funny. You probably had to be there.

Anyway, that is pretty much my week! It was pretty normal. I just love Kampong Cham. I think I probably won't ever leave 'til the end of my mission, so that is good! (That's actually totally false, but I don't want to leave!)

I love you all! Happy thanksgiving!!!

Sister Homer

This is what I call Rooster Sauce. It is just the most essential condiment on the planet. You should start searching Asian markets for it now. I eat it daily, usually with a fried egg on bread. It is incredible.

Some of the YW in 1st branch who I love SO MUCH!

Shoelie