What Happens When: You get a lotta Good, not too much Bad, and the Beautiful
Chomriabsua my friends!
This is has been one of the best weeks in mission life. IT STARTED RAINING. EVERY DAY. We are finally overcoming the hot season and stepping into rainy season, and I couldn't be more excited. There are so many pros and cons to rain. Actually, the rain effects our work a lot. For the good and the not so good! Therefore, this week we witnessed much good, a little bad, and not-so-ugly out here in Kampongcham! And we had a blast! The GOOD: - Transfer Calls: Since I am training Sister Nit until she leaves to serve in Portland Oregon (she's a mini-missionary AKA visa wait-er) we are staying the same in KampongCham branch 2. Good, because we just started over in this area. And have finally gotten a hold on finding members and making friends with the less-active members. We have also contacted a TON this week. which leads too... - New Investigators! We have been in need of finding new people to teach. Since our other investigators all moved away, our area's been a little slow. But after praying a whole lot and applying faith to find people to teach, the Lord prepared a path for us! We contacted a ton by the river this week. There is a big side-walk that runs along the river that is packed with people in the evening so we park our bikes on the curb and just talk to everyone in sight! We met a lot of really nice people that actually were interested in meeting with us! A few of them aren't in our area or have to learn with the elders, so we got a lot of referrals to help out the elders too. Success! - Member Help / Visiting Teaching: We used the extra time when we didn't have investigators to teach to meet some of the active ladies in our ward and invite them to go on a teaching trip with us to some less-active ladie's houses. They ride their moto along with us and visit members for a couple hours. Ming Peara came with us to visit some less-active ladies and she shared her testimony that really brought the spirit to the lessons. Hopefully after they get some of the callings and kinks worked out in our branch, visiting teaching might start up. The members like Ming Peara are starting to see the positive effect it could have on retention and re-activation. - Ming Ravi's (investigator) son named Hiang started learning with us again! Ravi was our only investigator for a few weeks, and she is so good. She can't really see well enough to read, but she comes to church and loves to learn with us. She will be baptized soon. Her 10 year old son started learning with us before, but didn't seem too interested. When we showed up to teach Ravi this week, he quit playing with his neighbor friends across the street, invited them to sit and learn with us, and came ready to learn about Jesus. That was so unexpected, but we were happy to teach Hiang and his mom together. and THEN, Hiang invited his friends to come to church and all 6 of them showed up to church. We can't teach all the little boys, but if their parents want to learn with us, we will have lots of new families to teach! The BAD: -the rain makes everyone go inside, so they don't want to learn or talk with us -our house flooded sewage water every time it rained for the first few days. BUT ITS FIXED NOW. NBD. - PSYCH. NOTHING IS TRULY BAD WHEN YOU'RE DOING THE LORD'S WORK! :) The Beautiful: The island and backyard lotus field is even more beautiful because of the rain! The rain makes the fields dark green and everyone is happy, and Cambodia really is a beautiful place! Not to mention, there are still mangoes. :) Ok, I'm outta time. We have to ride back up to the khet today, so our p-day is getting cut short. I love you all and wish you a great week! I will try to send pictures next week! Love, Sister Haddock