What Happens When: "you corner some gangsters and sing em a song"

Hello friends and family! I hope all of you are well, and enjoying the Holiday season! I have been here in Cambodia for a whole week and half now! feels like 5 years and also 5 seconds, no real sense of time as a missionary! This week was really fun meeting new people every single day. We have a few investigators and a whole bunch of Less Actives here in Teuk La?ak. We are always so busy having so many people to meet. It's really good. So to explain the subject line, there really is no explanation... that's really what we did! I don't know if cambodia really has gangsters, but I felt like they could've been. Haha! All the new missionaries in cambodia got together at the mission home this week for a training with our trainers and the mission president. We learned a lot about our goals as a mission and the importance of truly becoming converted ourselves in order to serve those around us. I really like the term our President used, "Deliberate Disciple". It was really nice to see everyone back together after a week. everyone from the original district is doing well, but they all look so different to me now, and it's only been a week! It will be so funny to see how everyone looks when we come to the end of our 16 months here. After our training, we went with the office elders and APs to a "park" to carol. In my head I was imagining your average utah mormon park with a nice swing set and grass field, but OH NO. that is not what they meant. this "park" we went to was actually this HUGE Block in the middle of the city with tons of cool structures on it like in the picture. it was also covered in fun christmas lights! that part of the city is the festive part... also where all the mansions in Cambodia are. So we get to this park (after darting across a busy traffic filled roundabout because we can) and we just start singing and walking around in a HUGE group of like 40+ missionaries. Everyone around us just doesn't know quite what to think about it... even the security guards were probably weirded out as we were passing out our christmas contacting cards to them. We decided it would be more fun to just corner some people and start singing to them... so we tried it. So awkward to say the least. but hey, it's only awkard if you make it awkward right? haha so we would walk up to some group of teen-young adult groups with their skateboards and baggy pants and we would be like "hey can we sing you a song?"and they would be like... "uh.... sure....."" so we sang them some christmas songs out of the hymn book and they actually listened to us. (like they really had a choice) haha. It was actually really funny! The missionaries of cambodia are probably now on 50 random phones across the country because the kids didn't know what else to do but to film the whole thing. We tried singing to some Mings (40s ish) and they mostly just didn't react at all... So fun!

So church here. It's quite the experience. yesterday was my first time at our ward, and it was fast sunday. Church and Fasting. My two favorites :). Let me tell you about church here. We have a really nice building that EVERYONE hangs out at during any given time in the week. the chapel is upstairs, and half the size of your average utah chapel. it's actually really fun because you can go to the church and there are always people just chilling, playing basketball in the parkinglot, or pumping jams in the foyer. super funny. they leave all the doors unlocked, so anyone and everyone just hangs out together. Also they have really powerful ACs. thank goodness. BUT the building is super duper mosquito infested. I guess that is the norm for that church building. I don't quite understand it. But now it looks like I'm wearing polka dot tights... gotta remember to bring my bug spray with me next time... anyway, the ward has like 40 people in it on sundays, and my favorite part is singing the hymns. for some reason, you can't just sing how you would read the words like you do in english. They put some sort of scoop-slide inbetween notes so they never really differentiate the notes, and the pronunciation of the words is just odd. Everyone sings however loud they want, but no one actually knows the hymn melodies because the hymn book is really new to cambodia. SO interesting. I was enjoying it far too much. everyone wears basically whatever they want to church here too! if you show up in a t shirt and pants, even for the ladies, I don't think it would be weird. Everyone in the church here is a convert because the gospel has only been here for 20 years, so it is really fun to talk to everyone, they tell you when they got baptized as part of the normal introduction small talk! Everyone in the ward is really nice, we had the first ward FHE here on saturday and we even played fun games together that I doubt would be taken seriously in any utah ward. I really liked it! and then we had some rocking good food because that is how it works here. Sticky rice, pineapple, some good meat.. it's all so fun! There was a super shy sweet girl that was there. turns out she used to be an investigator and stopped picking up the phone in about june. But for some random reason, she just showed up at the church on a saturday night and happened to come to FHE! We talked with her for a while, and it looks like she is interesting in learning more again! so random, and such a blessing, because it is so odd for that to happen! Her name is Darling, and I hope we can meet with her soon. The only super difficult thing about teaching people in Cambodia so far is that EVERYONE MOVES. The city is usually a temporary living place. not many people live here and call it home. they are all from the kites (provinces) and come out here for school or work, and go back to their kite a lot. they also never tell anyone when they are going back to their kite... so sometimes you plan on teaching them and when you get to their house, you learn they have moved away for a while, and you have no clue when they will be back. People also move around the city quite a bit, and all we have is a hand drawn sketch of the member's houses. So if we want to find them, we have to pray real hard for some help to find their location. even if we know the general location, it is illegal to knock on someones, door, and everyone has these big gate/garage things so you can't get to the door anyway! So that has been fun for us this week. deciphering the maps and trying to find past recent baptism members and their houses. The city is crazy as usual, my bike skills are improving each day. lucky enough though everyone is super nice and alert on the rode, even when we all go into the intersection at once, you can usually get right to where you want to go. all controlled craziness :). I think some people can tell that I am so talented at riding my bike, that they literally part like the red sea in the street to make sure I can get to where I'm supposed to be. It's pretty hilarious some times. Especially while riding in a skirt. We get so many weird looks, I always just smile and wave at the kids. They're my favorite. All the kids know "hello"and they always wave when we drive by. and if we saw hello back they get so excited and spazz out. It's the cutest!!! ok I'm about out of time now... I hope you all are having a great holiday season! enjoy the cold. Caroling and sweating under christmas lights all at the same time was a new experience for me this week. Have a wonderful week! soksabaay! Comriabliah! Love, Sister Haddock

My zone in the MTC right before we left!

Sisters at The District reunion after one week in the field. excuse our baldness and sweaty. that is the look of a cambo missionary.

Sister Fields my trainer, giving Omlinaa (our less active old lady) a "dope" ride on the back of her bike. I thought it was the funniest thing! and it's so normal here! my bike riding skills obvi got a lot better because I pulled my camera out from the back of my backpack and took this all while riding through the street.

One of the big structures at the park we caroled at. So beautiful there at night!