Sept 28, 2014 Translating

Even though I've never been in an accident, I'm kind of glad they make us wear bike helmets out here. Sometimes I'm biking around at night and a branch just wacks me in the head! See? Helmets are useful." -Elder Martinson

Zone Conference  September 2014

Translating is kind of hard. You would think that once you know two languages you could just say whatever you want to in either language and just go with it, but it's not quite that easy for some reason. This last Tuesday we had Zone Conference and Elder Martinson and I were asked to translate. I'm happy to help of course but every time I do live translation I feel like I get nothing out of what is said. In one ear and out of my mouth with no time to process the meaning. For example, I was asked to translate for President Moon as he was doing training on how to teach new converts and help them grow in the gospel and I feel like I don't remember anything of what he taught! Too bad...

My companion was translating near the beginning of the conference, and almost missed it when President Moon made a very important announcement. We are opening new proselyting areas in the provinces of Porsat and Prei Veng! For a number of years our proselyting strategy in Cambodia has been all about staying near centers of strength. In the last few months we've been moving further out and opening new areas (like when I was in Baku all those months ago) and now missionaries will be heading to two new provinces! It's a pretty bold step. Everyone is kind of hoping that they are the ones that get to open the new area, we'll see next week!

I saw a cat catch a mouse this week. It's not a myth, cats really play with their food before eating it! Weird. I felt pretty bad for the poor little mouse. There are a lot of rodents around here, some bigger than others. Sure, we have your regular house mice like in America, but we also have huge street rats. Those things are literally the size of cats. On Sunday one of our members told a story about a time when her family was raising dogs to sell and one of her chores was to guard the puppies and make sure that the rats didn't eat them. That seems to go against the natural order of things...

Had another funny experience relating to Zone Conference. We got a last second assignment to set up the catering for the event. Usually that wouldn't be a big deal but because the Conference was being held on the day of a major holiday in Cambodia, many businesses were closed. Elder Martinson and I went casually to our first three choices and found that none of them would be able to cater the following day. We continued on to two other restaurants, but were starting to get a little worried. We kept teaching people like normal and then in between teaching activities we would check a couple of restaurants and see if they would cater for us. We finally found a caterer and agreed on a deal 10 minutes before we needed to tell the Assistants what was going to be for lunch at the conference. Looking for a caterer is number 193 on the list of things I never thought I'd do on my mission. Number 194 is tying balloons to the ankles of 13 year old children.. I feel like I've accumulated a lot of random experiences and skills on my mission. Some are weirder than others :P

Eating lunch with a member

Just one last thought on food. I've found that pretty much anything is edible if you fry it and put soy sauce on it. That's it for me guys! Sorry the email is a little short today. Love you!

Elder Vore

It flooded this past week...this is the lower road down by the railroad.  It used to be a road--now it's a river.  Wading through black water was disgusting!