Hello Family

Dear Family,

"I don't know about you, but I'm feeling twenty-two!" <---Thank you Taylor Swift for those more than appropriate lyrics on this my 22nd birthday. Thank you all for the Birthday wishes!! I hope you eat cake or something for me. Also happy birthday to Dad tomorrow and Shawn on Thursday!!!!

This week was a good week, pretty normal, but good!  Bong Elle was bapitzed yesterday, and I am so happy for her. Of all the investigators that I have been baptized so far, I would say she is just the most sincere and understands the big picture more than anyone. So I am really excited about that and I just love her!

Also, yesterday we got a call from our investigator Moiraine. She said she is already back in Kampong Cham!!!! woohoo!! So we will start teaching her again this week! That is awesome!

This week is really going to be awesome. Sister Payne and I decided we could fit in 40 lessons. So that is our goal. It really will be dependent on whether people are home and available, but we are going to work so hard to make it happen!!! I know it can though.

This next sunday will be transfer calls. We assume Sister Payne is transferring as she has been here for 6 months already. I will be sad for her to go, but also excited for something new and different. I got fun email from President Moon today, he said:

"I know at some point I am going to have break you two up, but I'm really going to hate doing it because you are such a dynamite pair together!!"

Haha, so yep he nailed it. We work hard and we play hard together! It's just been great! Dad asked about my interaction with the mission president. Every week we email him a short email, he will sometimes email back. If we ask questions he definitely will or if he has other random thoughts to say, I don't know. He's a busy man though. He is a really good mission president. Just this week he and Sister Moon came down to Kampong Cham and had a breakfast with all of us and we did a group study in the morning about conversion. It was awesome! They care so much about the growth of the church here as well as the growth in their missionaries.

Mom asked about a typical p-day. It usually goes like this:
5:30 wake up
6:00 market
7:30 personal study
8:30 companion study
9:30 clean house and wash vegetables
10:30 go email
12:00 grab some sort of lunch/do other shopping errands
2:00 free time (usually a nap or going somewhere cool, today we'll play monopoly)
5:00 back out teaching
6:30 Home
7:00 dinner
8:00 Language studay
9:30 BED!

Dad asked about the missionaries in my group. The only one I see these days is Elder Garrow who is also here in Kampong Cham. I really don't know how anyone is doing on the language anymore. I assume they are all progressing! I think it will be fun when we are all together for Christmas and we can see how eachother have progressed!

Teaching Cynthia is going well. (She is the deaf one). It is definitely interesting. We make up hand sings. The other day we took the Restoration video to her house and have her watch it. We're not sure what she understood, but afterward she got up and found her sisters Joseph Smith Pamphlet! So she obviously made some connection!

Mom asked what percentage of people can't read... Sister Payne and I would say maybe 30% read with comprehension, 30% read without comprehension, and then maybe the leftover 40% really can't read much at all. But that is at least what we would guess from our area. I'm sure in the city more people can. It definitely makes asking them to read the Book of Mormon hard! And yet it is so so so cool to see the members who are in the group where they can read with no comprehension, and yet they still diligently read the Book of Mormon every day. I just am in awe by them. So cool!

Lookpuu Dore did receive the Holy Ghost yesterday! He said he's been smoking free since last Sunday! So, we'll keep praying for him! Ugh smoking. It's killer here.

This week I also tried this food that everyone here loves. It's called Brahak. Actually when you read that it won't sound much like how it really is pronounced, but... sorry. Anyway, they call it Khmer Cheese, but what it really is is fish that has sat out and rotted for like 4 months, ground up into a paste, with other random stuff mixed in. They dip really really unripe mangoes in it. As you might imagine, the taste really resembled vomit. But hey, when in Rome!

I guess that is all I have this week!! I love you all!!

Thanks for the emails!

Love,

Sister Homer

Typical scene 

I may or may not have broken the bathroom door off this week...it makes life more interesting

So our laundry machine doesn't work so much... this is the water I rung out of my clothes. Haha, you can't tell, but that water is BROWN. It good to know that I sweat a lot and then it never really just comes all the way out does it. Sorry if I permanently stink when I get home!

Elle!

The cute Caneet

A turtle!!

Road to Wat Balang

Beautiful area

Finally: The dynamic duo!