What Happens When: Animals are Angry

Hey Hey Everyone!

We had a fun week full of run-ins with animals! Like I promised in my last email, there were some monkeys at this hill called Phnom Bro we went to on P-day. Let me tell ya, monkeys really are mean here! I thought people were kidding when they warned me to look out for the crazy creatures... but they weren't! They climb up your leg and steal your stuff out of your bag and grab food out of your hands and they get all defensive if you walk behind them on accident... but they're still monkeys nonetheless, so they are fun to see! Another animal run in happened when we got home Tuesday night and there were spiders and little black bugs literally covering EVERYTHING in our room... I guess they all came in during the rain through the glass door on the balcony and were dropping from the ceiling on top of our heads and beds and clothes. I didn't even cry. Not once! Ha, you know I hate spiders. Luckily the other 2 sisters that live in our house were in the city for the night, so Sister Nit and I slept on the floor in their study room after we "raid sprayed" the entire room and shut the door. The next morning we had quite the time knocking spiders off the ceiling with a large pole we found outside. One comp on ceiling-sweeping duty and the other person was on spider-stomping. It was quite the unity-building experience :) Don't worry, all the little bugs are gone for the most part and the spiders have left us alone for almost a week. Kampong Cham has a lot of animals. Last night during our lesson at a member's house, my companion became best friends with the most rascal cat I've ever seen. Goats are getting herded along the streets more and more these days I swear! With biking in between the goats and the cows and horse-pulled carts, sometimes I think I'm in Heber again! English class contacting was way fun this week. It was during a lightning storm! We figured if we have faith to contact in the storm, people would show up to learn English. And they did! And we got 2 new potential investigators from our contacting efforts. Not bad! We took the Curtis's, the new senior couple, with us to visit some less-active members out in Phuum Taneng. That's the super poor neighborhood of shacks just outside the town. Hearing the stories of why some of these people are inactive was quite a shock to the Curtis's I think. One lady said she can't come because she is too old and can't afford the $0.70 moto-dope ride to church. Elder Curtis promised that if she has faith and kept the commandments, Heavenly Father will prepare a way for her to come. We were lucky to have them with us and the spirit they bring to the lessons for a day. A few members from Phuum Taneng that I have never actually met came to church on Sunday. That was quite the shock, but really good! Mission Tour Conference with Elder Wong from the 70 was a great meeting. We talked about temples, eternal families, and being prepared as missionaries. Learned so much from him and President Christensen as well. I got to have the opportunity to interview personally with Elder Wong (I think he liked that I've studied accounting haha) He is such a nice guy and was so aware of our struggling branch and the work we do out here. Even though we are in the middle of no-where, he still cares so much for everything going on in our work and was so willing to do anything he could to help us out! Pres and Sis Christensen have started a new thing where we will give a large picture of the Manila temple to everyone on their baptism day and to all the members to remember that baptism and confirmation is only the beginning of the path. Receiving ordinances in the temple is the next crucial step to obtaining eternal life! We have taught quite a few lessons about the temple already and we have had some great miracles! One in particular, we finally met with the Relief Society president in our branch. She's been in-active for quite some time, but she still let us come visit her and her two young sons. She spent the first while telling us about all the problems she has with going to church and the members in our branch and the lesson got off to quite a rocky start. But, after about 20 minutes, we started our lesson and read 2 Nephi 31:18-20 about the straight and narrow path and how to continue to receive eternal life. We gave a picture of the temple and as we testified the spirit was so strong. Her kids were like "we will be at church tomorrow for sure." and this lady just started crying and telling us how she will take our commitment to prepare for the temple. It was a great lesson, but we didn't think it had that much effect on her. After like 5 hours, after we had returned home and were making dinner, we got a phone call from the same lady and she said she had 2 referrals for us! YES! She was our member help in the lesson with these two ladies that she lives next door to. She shared all the experiences when the gospel has helped her in her life and she even came to church on sunday! She stayed all 3 hours, taught RS, and her kids even stayed and attended young mens. Pretty cool. I was so happy to see her smiling at the front of sacrament meeting yesterday. Zone training was on friday and was super good and motivational as always. We talked a lot about the importance of unity. It's true! If you're not unified in the work, the works probably not getting done! We have been teaching a whole lot of lesson #1 lately, but it seems like everyone's moving away or too busy to come back for lesson #2. I see this as an opportunity to set up some super good investigators for who ever serves here next year. Calling people after they started learning a year ago is always a good finding technique! It's worked for us before! I hope we can find some super interested investigators soon. We think our referrals from members will help us the most. That's all I've got for this week. I miss you all dearly! Happy Father's Day next weekend. I love you all! Love, Sister Haddock