Photos from the Field (my height doesn't make me stand out at all)

So this week, we had our first Baptism! Her name is Sokha, and she's about 60 or so. She's been taught for over ten years, but just recently decided to get baptized 3 weeks ago! We taught her a lot, and she seemed so stubborn, but when we shared the first vision with her one more time she finally accepted the invitation.

We had a great activity at the Park Ward.   Here you can see our sarongs.  Pretty sweet!

On Saturday we went to the LA Temple.  There we witnessed two families being sealed together.  The kids were so cute all dressed in white.  We had a great turn out.  I even ran into some friends at the temple.  What an awesome day!

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF THIS LB/CAMBODIAN MISSIONARY

  We get up each morning around 6:30 and go for a run.  "Running for Jesus", as some locals would say.  We then have about an hour to get cleaned up and make breakfast.  I usually eat cereal and a banana, but sometimes I make eggs.  Next is study time.  We do personal study, companion study and language study.  After all of that it's time to make a quick lunch and head out by 1:00. 
  We hop on our bikes and ride 15-20 minutes into Cambodia Town.  We visit with people or go tracting.  This takes most of the day.
If someone is feeding us dinner, we go to eat at 5:00.  If not, we ride back to our apartment and make some dinner.  After taking about an hour for dinner we go and teach.
   I'd say right now about 60-70% of our lessons are in Cambodian, and the rest of the people we contact on the streets.  There are plenty of people to teach, and we usually teach a lot of Cambodians every day.  I have met some Laotian and Thai people as well. 
  We lock our bikes up pretty well, and have things taped up to look pretty ragged.  Biking is fun, but pretty tiring.  When we have a member with us we can take the car, so that's even more motivation to get members to come to our lessons!
  Our ward is named the Park Ward.  It's pretty interesting.  There are a lot of really strong members, but pretty much everyone in the ward is a convert.  So, it does have some struggles.  Our missionary work involves bringing a lot of people back.  About ten years ago there were tons of baptisms, but over time a lot of people left of were never super converted, so they stopped going to church.  There are still some Cambodians coming form Cambodia.  They are really humble and willing to listen, but the older Cambodians are committed to Buddhism. 
  Speaking Cambodian is really hard.  We get to speak a lot, but it will probably take me until next summer before I am fluent.  It's only been three months, and two years seems like a long time, but everyone says is goes pretty quick. 
  That's a day in the life of this Long Beach- Cambodian Missionary.  Take Care.

Sarongs and Death Tacos

Okay,  so I first want to write a little bit about what has happened this week . I think the most important thing that happened is that a woman by the name of Om Sokha, who has been taught for about ten years, has finally accepted a baptismal date! She had probably been invited to be baptized 10 times, but the last lesson we taught her was different. We wanted to try something new, so that she would accept our invitation. What we did was pretty different than what we usually do. We started off the lesson by showing the Joseph Smith Restoration video, and the spirit was so strong in the less. We all thought it was going so well, and write before the first vision part, Sokha went and got us water, so we paused it, until she got back. It seems like something like that always happens right before the most important part... We then watched the first vision, and again read the words from JSH. Then when I invited her to be baptized in my broken Khmer, before I even finished the question she said "When?"  So, we set a date for the 22nd of this month. The spirit was super strong, and she was one of the many miracles I've seen this week. We actually have 5 investigators total with baptismal dates, but I don't know how many of those will actually be baptized. I'm guessing 3 or 4.  Anyway, the work is going great in Long Beach.  I haven't had any time really to take pictures, but I will soon.

On P-Day we always hear songs while out running errands. We've heard a lot of good songs and it's funny to think that I haven't listened to music in about 3 months... We wear our sarongs on Sunday mornings to cook breakfast (which are basically Cambodian man skirts).  We also like to make jokes with the old Cambodians in the ward. 

I also did one of those food challenge things, that dad always wanted to do. There is this thing called the Death Taco, where you have to sign a waiver and stuff to eat it, and I ate the whole thing. It made my arms tingle and I felt way sick later, but I did it! I know dad always thinks those kinds of things are funny, and wants to do them. Anyways, that's off my bucket list, so I never have to do that again! 

I don't know what I've eaten. I have eaten Octopus, that baby duck thing from the Philippines, chicken curry, and I don't really know what else. Nothing has been absolutely horrible, except the death Taco.

Everything's going really well.  Tell everyone hello from me!  

I Ate Balut!!!

Because of Labor Day, we only had a short time to email today.  It was really hot last week, but it's a different kind of heat.....the air has been really gross.  But, enough of that! 
I have a companion Elder L__, and he is from Canada and attended BYU.  My other companion is Elder C____ and went to BYU-I.  He's from Texas.  They're awesome.  Our district is full of awesome Elders.  There are 7 of us until the Elder from Cambodia arrives in October. 
 It was honestly really weird coming to Long Beach, but I realized that the area of my mission I'm going to be in for the entire time, is WAY different that Huntington Beach. It's so  much different in the Ghetto, and having SO many people is kind of overwhelming, but we get to see some pretty funny and weird people so that always is awesome.
Oh, I ate the Filipino dish Balut, or whatever with the baby duck inside yesterday, it was pretty nasty... but it tasted good.

 

We ride our bikes everywhere, all day long-just going straight heroes! We don't mind though, we are leading in our district and have two baptismal dates set.  Lots of amazing things happening.

Thank you for the letters!  Love, Nick