Aug 4, 2014 My Name is Vore, like Vine

You know, some people have really cool names. Because we all go by our last names around here I think it would be kind of fun to have a last name with some meaning, do you know what I mean? What if my name was Lion, or Masters, or King? I guess that would be fun. I've actually never had any problem with my last name actually. I'm quite proud of being a Vore, it's just a little harder to remember for some people. For example, there was an Elder here whose last name is Bridge (he actually just went home a few weeks ago R.I.P.). Bridge is next to impossible for a Khmer to say correctly, so he went by Elder Spean (bridge) for a good part of his mission.

 Another Elder, Elder Satterthwaite, has a name that plenty of Americans have trouble with. No problem, he just shortens it to the first syllable and goes by Elder Sat (animal). Me? My name doesn't really have meaning in English or Khmer, and even though it's fairly easy to remember, I still have people that have problems with it. Recently, I've just started introducing myself by pronouncing my name a little bit differently. Imagine, if you can, an older southern man saying the word "war". I don't know if that's exactly what it sounds like, but it's what I imagine when I hear it... Basically if you don't pronounce the letter "r" in war and say it really slowly. Vwoa. In Khmer it means vine. It makes for a pretty ridiculous introduction. "Hi, my name is Elder Vore. You know, Vore like vine?" They think it's really funny. It's especially fun when they start naming different types of vines they know, because invariably the first one is vwoa paom, or the fart vine. Apparently it's some type of vine that smells really bad.

Elder Martinson and I are really busy here. It's kind of hard to explain how busy we are and we were just talking about our schedule which Elder Martinson explained like this: "It's like you're riding your bike down a steep hill and then your brakes go out. You're still having a really fun time but it's kind of out of control and hard to tell how it's all going to end up." We're certainly not accustomed to turning down opportunities to teach the gospel so anytime we get chance to set an appointment we just set it and go with it. Well, there are only 24 hours in the day and we can't really just end our personal morning study of the scriptures early and go out to teach people and basically it's exactly how Elder Martinson said. Super fun, but kind of out of control.

We had a special training meeting with all the missionaries in our zone and in the Vietnamese speaking zone this past Friday morning. Elder Martinson and I thought it would be great if we got out to meet somebody before the meeting so we left the house a little early to go meet with an excited new investigator, the friend of a recent convert. It was a really fun lesson and ended with her asking a lot of great questions about the scriptures and about church. We left the lesson with about 10 minutes to get to the church for the meeting, plenty of time. We wanted to get there a little early so we started biking over there at a pretty decent pace.

 We weren't even halfway there when my bike started doing weird things, the chain was skipping and making strange sounds. We stopped to see what was wrong and couldn't see anything. After just a few more blocks I started holding onto Elder Martinson's backpack to get along because my chain kept skipping and wouldn't pedal correctly. This was costing us a little more time than we really had if we wanted to be on time to the meeting.

Got to a hill near the church, so I was standing up to pedal with all my weight and then my chain snapped. I almost fell off my bike actually. Elder Martinson had pedaled on ahead because we were late and so he didn't see my chain break. At that point I just started riding my bike like a scooter, pushing myself with my foot through traffic and half running, half riding to the church. When we got there they were waiting for us (kind of, not really, more like nobody know what was going on and so they were just standing in a group in the front). I must have been quite a sight scootering my bike along like that because the instant everyone saw me they burst out laughing. I felt pretty sheepish showing up late to the meeting, and I really wish I could have gotten a picture of myself scootering, red faced and out of breath.

I love getting on the church website and wandering around. I especially like all of the videos and the meaning behind them. I had been thinking about this idea lately when I saw this video and felt like it summed up my thoughts really profoundly.

http://www.mormonchannel.org/video/mormon-messages?v=1157711224001

When we do small and simple things God blesses us. It's that simple. Those who follow His path faithfully will see the difference.

Elder Vore