Aug 26, 2013 Week 30 The Back Roads of Baku

     It has not been an easy week out here. We had 3 families decide to stop learning with us for various reasons relating to their previous religion. Learning with the Elders is always a choice, we don't force anyone to listen to us, but that doesn't keep us from feeling sad when they exercise their moral agency and choose not to accept the gospel of Christ. And then there was the lady whose husband committed suicide and then his ghost came back and told her that if she kept learning with us she would get sick and die. That was pretty weird.

     We moved houses back into the city. It was kind of relief as we were without various basic commodities (Hot water, power in half of the house and no running water at all at the end) for a number of days. We moved into the city a couple of miles and are now living with the other 4 Elders in an apartment next to the church. The apartment is really skinny and has 5 stories, like a lot of buildings here in the city. Since we were the last ones in, our room is on the fourth floor. Climbing up and down four flights of stairs to get to our room is a little frustrating but we're taking it with good humor. I have suggested installing a fireman's pole to make going down a little easier but I don't know how well I explained it in Khmer. My companion told me it would probably be easier to use the stairs anyway.

     One nice thing about living in a house with a lot of guys is that Elder Sin is making food for all of us essentially 2 meals a day. We have to force him to accept our help in doing the dishes and cutting vegetables and stuff like that. What a great guy. He makes good food too. We're trying to get him to open a little restaurant after his mission. He's not so sure. Speaking of food, I had some fried frogs the other day. I've had frog before but this time it wasn't skinned or anything like that, it was just fried, bones and all. Actually pretty good. Frog is kind of like a mix between chicken and fish. I was not however, brave enough to try the fried bats (see pictures).

     The trip from Baku to our house takes about an hour and fifteen minutes to bike. The beaten stretch of highway between Ta Khmau and Baku is over traveled, has no lines or speed limits and is full of pot holes. The trip is dark and the large trucks are intimidating. Sometimes it's nice to see a car coming because the headlights illuminate our path but as the car comes closer we are blinded and when it passes we are plunged back into darkness.

 Saturday night we left Baku after a very fun activity. Our warm hearts quickly cooled as we set out on our long journey back. For the first 5 minutes or so the traffic was normal, which is not a good thing. Riding on that road is scary! However, after a few minutes a very interesting thing happened. A very large, very slow moving semi-truck pulled up behind us and began to follow us. At first I tried to pull off to the side to let him pass but it soon became clear that if anything, he was actually moving slower than us and simultaneously acting as a fantastic flashlight. The road in front of us was bright and the pot hole strewn highway was suddenly very easy to navigate. Even more, oncoming traffic that would usually come to the middle of the road (and uncomfortably close) to avoid the patchy edges of the road stayed far from us, intimidated by the 20 ton truck behind us. The truck traveled with us for over 30 minutes before passing us and moving on. I had a lot of time to think about this (there just isn't much to do when you're riding your bike for hours on end) and my thoughts kept turning to our life on Earth.

 Life is a long, dark, harrowing journey, full of pot holes and oncoming traffic. When we travel down this road alone, it is difficult and even dangerous. However, we have been promised that when we follow the example of Jesus Christ, we will be blessed with His Spirit, who will guide us. The Spirit is the third member of the godhead, whose purpose is to ''testify of [Christ]'' (John 15:26), ''teach'' us and ''bring all things to [our] remembrance'' (John 14:26), and ''guide [us] into all truth''. I testify that as we follow the promptings of the spirit, we will be protected from danger and guided to ''the narrow [way]... which leadeth unto life'', even life eternal (Matthew 7:14). I know that Jesus Christ was the perfect example, the master teacher, and I believe it is significant that on the last day of His mortal life He taught his disciples about the importance of His Spirit (See John 14-16). Follow the spirit! He will not lead you astray! That's all I've got for today. Pictures on the way!

-Love Elder Vore

                                         And me biking through the flooding

All of my pant legs are filthy!

Ruub Tot tiat! (More pictures)

                            Weird foods (snake eggs, bats other stuff that I'm not too sure about)

                                          A family we have been teaching.

Aug 19, 2013 Week 29 "Time"

Time is a funny thing. It's constant but sometimes seems to pass more quickly than normal. At other times it passes incredibly slowly. When we wish that we had more of it, it always seems that we run out of it even more quickly than normal. I have a somewhat limited time at this computer, and it always seems to pass very quickly. Ironically, I've spent several minutes of this time talking about time. Maybe I should stop..

On my first day in Baku I met a girl. She asked me my name and introduced herself as Selaing. When we go to Baku, there is one girl that we can count on greeting us. She is not a member of our church and neither is her mother, but she goes to church with her grandmother every week, and quite often beats her grandma there. She learned how to pray when she sat in on our lessons with her uncle and grandmother. She insists on praying at least once every time we visit. When I visited Baku this week, she was singing about how Heavenly Father would help her if she asked for it. The lyrics were her own. She has never once forgotten my name and announces with great pleasure when we come biking around the corner, ''The Elders are here! Elder Vore, Elder Vore! Hi Elder Vore!'' Selaing is 4 years old. She is the cutest most precocious little kid ever. I think shes better about attending sacrament meeting than nearly all of the adults in our congregation. Next week I'll send a picture because this week my time is pretty limited. We love her.

While in Baku yesterday, the group president, Pov, expressed concern because the speakers from Ta Khmau that were expected to come couldn't. I told him this was his show, and suggested that he ask members to bear testimony or if that didn't feel right, he could ask the Elders to speak as well. He nodded and penciled something in. About 30 minutes later after I played the piano and then sat with the members in the front, Pov was announcing the speakers. I was fairly surprised to hear that Elder Vore was speaking last, and would be speaking about love.

 Because the two speakers in front of me spoke for about 2 minutes each, I was expected to speak for the rest of the meeting. It is amazing what you can do when you really have to do it. Being a missionary has really prepared me and helped me learn how to speak. I remember just before leaving Odessa I was asked to speak for 20 minutes in sacrament meeting. I spent so much time working on that talk and when it came time to deliver it I didn't say what I had intended to or how I wanted it and it wasn't quite long enough. Just a couple months later I can whip out a sermon in a matter of minutes and my thoughts are more organized and coherent, well, assuming they understood all the words I was saying. Blessings of missionary work. Cool stuff.

Got into another bike wreck on Saturday. I was riding on the shoulder of the road and a parked car opened their door suddenly. I had just enough time to realize I was going to fall before impact. The impact was hard but my bike took it all. I dismounted onto the asphalt with great skill (practice makes perfect right?) and after deciding I was OK I walked away. The bike was a little beat up but I didn't even get bloodied. However, my shirt was ruined from some oil on the street and my backpack tore. Elder Sin was riding a little in front of me and didn't know that I had fallen. He got all the way over the next bridge before someone on a moto told him I was laying in the street ''back there''. No harm done. I'm a little sore from this one and riding to Baku was a little bit of a challenge but all's well that ends well! I intended to enclose a little spiritual thought but that will have to wait until next week. Time to email the Mission President. Love you guys!!  -Elder Vore

Aug 11, 2013 Week 28 Another Day, Another Fried Bug

Honestly, I don't even really like eating the bugs they give me and I really don't even eat them that often, but it makes for fun email subjects. Also, today it looks like I have a lot of time but I don't really have a whole lot to say. Funny how these things go sometimes.

We were biking to Baku on Thursday when I saw a guy fishing in a rice field. All rice fields have about two feet or so of standing water that the rice grows from so I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised but I thought it was really strange. He had a bamboo pole, hook, worm and all and was fishing in the rice field. I stopped to talk to him and he assured me that yes, there actually were fish in there, and then, as if to prove his point, he caught one and threw it back in saying it was too small. That kind of surprised me because the fish was hand sized, plenty big enough to eat, and surely the fishing can't be that good in the rice field right? He explained that most of the fish he caught were well over a foot long.

Eventually the conversation turned to Christ and he shocked me again when he told me he was already a Christian and when he lived in the city some years before, he was very active in his congregation. We, of course, invited him to come with us and worship at our ''church'' in Baku (We meet at a member's house so I guess it's not a church in the strictest sense of the word but it works). We gave him a pamphlet and he called us later that night with questions and then he actually came to church on Sunday. The vast majority of Cambodians require a little prodding to change their ways but Puu Hat is awesome and is quickly falling back into the routine of following Jesus Christ. In missionary jargon they call people like these ''golden investigators''.

In places where the church isn't firmly built (eg places that don't have wards, stakes, 3rd and 4th generation members etc.) the missionaries keep track of converts through CBRs. I'm pretty sure CBR stands for convert baptism record but I'm not totally sure. On these CBRs the missionaries who baptized the convert fill out important information about the convert or family like names, birth dates, when they were baptized and where they live.

 That being said, these are being filled out by 20 year old boys, who sometimes have a tendency to do ''unimportant'' things like paperwork halfway. So, when we go out looking for those who we don't know and try and help them come back to church, occasionally we do so with pretty limited information. Especially maps. Addresses are totally useless in this country unless you live in the middle of the city or have a really nice house, so we use maps to find people. Because nobody knows what streets are called, we use landmarks to figure out where we are. Unfortunately, some people's definition of what landmarks are include ''the big tree in front of the blue house'' or ''small rice field'' or ''place that sells stuff''. Walking through rice fields in the middle of nowhere asking people if they know someone with nothing to go on but a name, a ten year old picture and a map that references ''that big rice field'' is quite the adventure. CBR work, it's the best.

I was studying in the scriptures the other day about life and trials. After my studies I went to write my thoughts in my study journal and recorded the following: ''Life is a test, and not just any old test but a really hard test. And not only is it a really hard test, there's a lot riding on it. Fortunately, it's an open book test, we're allowed to share answers and the teacher is working out the problems on the board''.  I go back to my high school days and remember that it seemed like it was the very smartest kids were the ones that went in for tutoring in the mornings.  It seems obvious now that the very smartest kids were also the ones who would be taking advantage of all their resources. Life is hard but we have all sorts of guides! We have the words of prophets and the teachings of Jesus Christ that are recorded in the scriptures. We have teachers and pastors and Bishops who can and will help us. We have families! All of this stuff is great but if we don't look up from our test and look for some help, we won't get any. Use your resources! Love you guys.  Elder Vore

Aug 5, 2013 Week 27 Over the River and Through the Jungle

First things first, thank you so much Mom for the package and the letter! Mail doesn't come very often out here and it feels so great to get stuff from home! The chocolate lasted about 15 minutes because I opened it when we were sleeping over at another house for a meeting and was obliged to share with the group. Pretty funny, but more than funny, it was delicious. I got it last Monday and it's probably 3/4 done. The mints and drink mixes should last a while though. The package actually took a bit of a spill when I was heading home. I was riding my bike next to a moto that was dragging a trailer and underestimated how big his trailer was. When he moved to pass me his trailer took my out from behind and I ate it.

He was actually really nice about it and stopped and apologized profusely, which is really uncommon for traffic accidents in Cambodia which are nearly all hit and run. No real harm done. I was a little bloody on my hands, elbows and especially my knees, and my pants were torn, but the most irritating thing was that my package fell and smashed the Oreos! It happened right in front of the church and a couple of members came up and had a few words with the driver. I pretty much told them to chill out and that it wasn't a big deal. Invited the guy who hit me to come to our free English class. He said he'd be happy to come but I haven't seen him yet. Pretty funny. When we got home my companion insisted on taking several pictures. The weird face is because I was laughing and he told me I couldn't laugh for this picture and needed to stop. The only thing that has really resulted from the accident is that I've been standing for a lot of prayers that I would normally kneel for.

The person who owns our house just sold it to someone else who is planning on doing some renovating to attract people who will pay a little more. I asked him about a hole that is in one of our rooms (it's probably the size of my fist, about a foot over my head and goes straight outside) and if he was planning on fixing it. He looked at it and back at me and said and I quote, ''It's only a little hole'' and walked away. I thought it was pretty funny but my companion didn't seem to see the humor in it. I suppose it is just a little hole. Really, my only problem with our new landlord is that he hasn't given us our electric bill yet. He said he would talk to the old landlord and ask if they had the bill. The only problem is is that if we don't get it then our power gets shut off. No warning letters in Cambodia.

Elder Sin and I were walking around in Baku talking to people about our English class when he stopped me and said very seriously (in English), ''Elder, how much could would a wood wood chuck chuck?" Spouting random slang or things like tongue twisters in a heavy Khmer accent will make anyone laugh. He's a funny guy. The difference between the sound e (bEd, mEt) and the sound i (sIt, mIt) totally escapes him and our language study sessions occasionally fall into him saying a word over and over again while I repeat it correctly until he says it right. It's pretty fun. He gave the white handbook thought in English at our Zone meeting the other day and ended up just saying random stuff in English until we laughed and he sat down. What a character.

I am just finishing the New Testament again and ran across a verse in 1st John 2:6 that I really liked. The verse reads, ''He that saith he abideth in Him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked.''  Now I don't know what y'all get out of that verse but I wrote it down in my study journal and labelled it as ''If you're going to talk the talk you've got to walk the walk.'' Isn't that so true? In every aspect of our lives, our words must be backed up by our actions, otherwise our words are empty.

This is especially important in the case of the gospel of Jesus Christ because there is so much riding on it. Our eternal salvation is riding on how well we apply gospel principals in our lives and follow Jesus Christ, not just with our mouths, but with our hearts and our actions as well. I got an email from a missionary serving in California today who explained it like this.  ''I like to think of it as our parents paying for college. Christ, through his Atonement, paid for us to come here to earth to learn and to grow. It's like our parents paying for us to go to college. Either way the college and education is paid for but it's up to us with what we do with the funds. We can either use it to learn and to grow and work hard and try to be the best we can be or we can waste it away goofing off and partying. Eventually we will all have to come back to Christ and He is going to ask us what we did with His Atonement, what we did with the money He gave us. At that point we can either say to Him that we did everything He asked: learned, gained an education, was obedient in following the commandments and because of that we are able to continue to progress. Or we can say that we didn't do anything and we didn't use what He gave us- what He already paid for so our progression stops.'' (Props to Sister Parkinson for the cool comparison) 

We have been given the wonderful gifts of life on Earth and the Atonement and simply stating that we believe and expecting our belief to cover us is marvelously unjust. I echo the words of James who said, "Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.
 Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works." (James 2:17-18 KVJ) Let us show our gratitude to Christ through our works, and do more than just talk the talk.

That's it for me, love you guys!     Elder Vore

Jul 29, 2013 Week 26 Crazy Week in Cambodia!

Well, it has been quite the week. I'm pretty sure I say that every week, but even for being on a mission in Cambodia it has been a crazy week. Before we start, I'm going to share some background information. I want to tell you a little bit about Ranyaa. She has been our investigator for just a short time now but has a desire to follow Christ and so it's been easy to teach her a lot. Her older sister is a member of our church, but Ranyaa and her mom go to another church because they pay for Ranyaa's education. Going into this week she had a baptismal date for Saturday July 27.  Also I've been having some stomach aches and this Sunday is elections.

Our investigator Ranyaa being silly

Our story begins last Thursday. In the morning we had weekly planning so we didn't manage to get out of the house until almost 1:30. Rainy season is just beginning, which means that it rains every evening for 3 or 4 hours until the sun goes down. Not too hard, mostly just drizzling. When we set out it was the middle of the afternoon and it was hot. Really hot. To make things worse, it was windy, which in our area means that dirt roads just become little clouds of dust that you drive through. After about 10 minutes of this, the wind suddenly turned really cold. The temperature probably changed by 25 degrees in a matter of minutes. Every temperature change like this is immediately followed by rain, but this storm hit unexpectedly hard and right in our faces. The wind blew hard enough that it felt like we were biking uphill, and the raindrops felt like hailstones on our faces. Totally blinded. It was pretty crazy, but it died down after about 10 minutes to a normal drizzle.

 Once in Baku we were talking to a woman who wants to learn but owns a restaurant and is really busy. While I was talking to her, Elder Sin took a phone call from Ranyaa's older sister who told him that Ranyaa was reconsidering her baptism and might just move to Kompung Saom (A province by the seashore) for a few months. Elder Sin was understandably concerned and I didn't know what was going on. Our hostess offered us some food but I declined because I was feeling a little nauseous and we went to prepare for our very first English Class in Baku. We spent a few weeks talking about it and finally we were opening up; a momentous occasion! English went well, but I started feeling sick about halfway through and when we were biking home I began to get tired and sick. Eventually my companion got a little ahead of me. I called out to him but started coughing and then fell off my bike and threw up in the gravel. No fun at all. On arriving home I collapsed on my bed and slept for 15 hours or so.

It is now Friday, and I am sick. In addition, we are having training today so one of our zone leaders is here at our house ready to go out proselyting with us. Unfortunately, that looks as if it is not going to happen, as I am still having some fairly intense stomach pains. He stayed with us all day and we talked about our Area and updated our paperwork. On the positive side, I read the New Testament for like 3 1/2 hours! It was great. Meanwhile, other Elders in our area went to visit Ranyaa and her family and had a miracle! After everything had been said they were all in tears and had a renewed vigor to follow Christ's example through baptism! 

Saturday started with us visiting Ranyaa and talking about her concerns and then visiting some members who were having a hard time. Around 2:30 we set out for one of our furthest areas (without actually going to Baku) to meet with a new member. He wasn't home but his mom told us there were probably some people who wanted to learn in the next Pum (village/neighborhood thing) over. We had never been in that direction, but following her instructions we crossed the bridge and headed out to contact.

I'm not so sure about their interest in the gospel of Jesus Christ, but they sure thought it was cool that a white guy who spoke Khmer had biked out from Ta Khmau regardless of why he had done it. We promised to return and then hurried to the church for Ranyaa's baptism. Hurried means biked quickly, not that it didn't take very long. We were a long way from the church but once we got there, everything went very smoothly. Nice to have people who actually speak Khmer perform the service. After the service we did another companion switch for all the Khmer missionaries who had to go all over the country to vote (they have to vote in the province they were born in). 

A word or two about voting. Cambodia is holding elections every 5 five years and abiding by the results of those elections but they are far from politically stable. We were not allowed outside except for our church services. Later in the evening we got a panicked phone call from Sister Kung, who is serving in Ta Khmau with me but had to go back to the city to vote near her house. She told us a police car had been flipped and set on fire near her house and she was scared. Apparently there was a little violence in her area because some people who showed up to vote weren't on the voter registry lists. Elder Sin was also in the area. They were all picked up in a van by the mission president early this morning. 

And that's been my week. I'm exhausted. One parting thought. Khmer women think that if they are wearing a towel they are fully dressed. People will invite us into their home where their aunt is drying off from her shower in the corner. Really weird. It's even more prevalent among men. They just walk around wearing nothing but a towel. That's all I've got! Love you guys!  Elder Vore

Jul 21, 2013 Down by the Bay out in Baku!

Today's email might be a little short due to some computer problems, however we should have pictures! Don't feel offended if pictures don't actually work. Today our email place is full to capacity and all 16 computers are using the same wireless connection, which doesn't actually work very well. It is election season! Wow, election season in America is nothing compared to this.

 I saw 7 parades yesterday, including two for rival parties that managed to kind of combine (I assume it was an accident) and ride down the street waving flags and screaming with their face paint and party flags and such. They were all pretty normal, flags, matching t-shirts the big truck in the front blasting propaganda and telling everyone it's their duty to vote except one. This was one of only two I saw yesterday that were for the opposition party.  They were not all on motorcycles or in cars, rather, they were in columns like something out of a military movie. The lead car would shout something and all of the several hundred people would yell in unison "Never!" or something of the sort. All of this wasn't super weird, other than how well organized it was all the way until I had almost passed it all and I saw that the last car had a very large picture of the current leader, Hun Sain, that was being burned. That was a little chilling. Fun stuff, elections.

We have a coconut tree in our back yard. I don't know if y'all know this, but unlike depictions in movies, paintings and popular culture, coconuts do not grow on palm trees nicely carved into little brown wooden spheres like you buy at the store. Before you peel a coconut it is about 3 times bigger and usually green. It takes 10 minutes of hacking at it with a cleaver to get it to the point that we recognize as a coconut. Really good though. Coconuts here have more milk than the ones we buy in the states and it's more refreshing and less sweet. I'm actually not a huge fan of it but I can eat coconut meat all day. Delicious.

Ever since I got here to Ta Khmau I've been sick. First it was cold like symptoms but it turned eventually stomach problems and then managed to get back to cold stuff again. One funny thing the Khmer people believe is that hot water is healthy for you (I've been told it's a Chinese thing so it's probably pretty common throughout Asia). Every time someone sees me sneeze or cough they tell me that I need to toss out the cold water in my water bottle and drink hot water.

We're not talking lukewarm or 100 degree water, we're talking sear your tongue hot chocolate water. They're crazy! And every time I tell them I don't think I'm going to do that they almost take it personally! It's pretty funny. My companion explained to a few people that drinking hot water for good health isn't part of my culture but later in private he told me, "really, they're right. You should be drinking hot water." What a funny thing. Speaking of water, our sink is broken. That's not a super huge problem but it does mean that we are using a large, cement pot filled with rainwater from our roof for our water in the kitchen. Makes me feel more authentic. This is how all the Khmers do it. 

The rice fields of Baku

Elder Sin, my companion

Jul 14, 2013 The Best Mission in the World!

It's 6:15 in the morning. I am sitting on a bike that is loaded with about 3 kilos of vegetables, 2 of meat, 4 of rice and one companion, who's sitting on the back because his bike is being fixed. I have just purchased 3 dragon fruits for 75 cents and half a kilo of some other fruit that is really spiky and difficult to open but pretty much tastes like candy once you get through the skin. I am waiting on my companion. He's buying a cupful of fried crickets to augment his breakfast. I am in Cambodia.

Crickets! Yum, they are actually pretty good.

Being with a native is a little different. I have eaten some really weird food this week. Among other things I have tried for the first time, snake, crickets, weird smelly minnows, and a couple of fruits that taste like bitter orange peels. He really likes cooking, and honestly, most of it is pretty mundane. I really like all of the stir fry and other things, but when we head on out of the house we eat the weirdest things. Fun though. I am going to learn the language really fast speaking 24/7 like this. Except for our twice a week sleepovers in the city, I pretty much don't speak English at all. It's pretty weird. I feel weird speaking English. Occasionally my companion will bust out with something really random. For example, we were preparing to leave the house when he stopped me and said, "Elder, Elder. It's hammer time." So funny!

Oranges are really big in Cambodia

I met one investigator for the first time the other day. She insisted on knowing my first name, so I asked her, "skoal loke Adam dte?" which translates to "do you know Adam?" (loke kind of means sir so when you say it like that it's clear you're talking about Adam, the first man on Earth). Her response was really quick. "Yeah, he fell." I cracked up. We meet her a lot and she has a lot of questions. Hard questions. Questions like, "Does God have a wife?", "Why do we meet on Sundays rather than Saturdays?", "Why don't we use unleavened bread for the sacrament" and "Why did God make all women suffer through childbirth because of Eve's sin?"

 For all of these she was not satisfied until I had a scripture to back up my answer. When we talked about life before this life she asked so many questions and demanded so much proof behind each answer that we spent over an hour just teaching about what happened from the war in heaven to Adam and Eve and reading scriptures from Genesis, to Moses, to John to 2nd Nephi to Revelation. It was exhausting. In addition, it was really challenging. I can usually find the scripture I want if I pull open my scriptures and skim through the chapter or the chapter headings but everything was in Khmer! She is really great though. 

In Utah, they celebrate July 24th as Pioneer Day, the day the first wave of covered wagons arrived in the Salt Lake Valley and Brigham Young said, "This is the place". In Cambodia, they like parties. Our pioneer day celebration out here will last from 2 to the end of the night. It will include a 30 minute play of events that happened in church history such as the martyrdom of Joseph Smith, handcarts, a deathly ill Brigham Young determined to go forward and, of course, square dancing. Cambodians square dancing. It just doesn't get any better than that.

In continuing with my study of older General Conference sessions I recently read President Uchtdorf's talk 'Your Potential, Your Privilege' in which he shares the following story. 

There once was a man whose lifelong dream was to board a cruise ship and sail the Mediterranean Sea. He dreamed of walking the streets of Rome, Athens, and Istanbul. He saved every penny until he had enough for his passage. Since money was tight, he brought an extra suitcase filled with cans of beans, boxes of crackers, and bags of powdered lemonade, and that is what he lived on every day.

He would have loved to take part in the many activities offered on the ship—working out in the gym, playing miniature golf, and swimming in the pool. He envied those who went to movies, shows, and cultural presentations. And, oh, how he yearned for only a taste of the amazing food he saw on the ship—every meal appeared to be a feast! But the man wanted to spend so very little money that he didn’t participate in any of these. He was able to see the cities he had longed to visit, but for the most part of the journey, he stayed in his cabin and ate only his humble food.

On the last day of the cruise, a crew member asked him which of the farewell parties he would be attending. It was then that the man learned that not only the farewell party but almost everything on board the cruise ship—the food, the entertainment, all the activities—had been included in the price of his ticket. Too late the man realized that he had been living far beneath his privileges.

As Paul taught in Acts, "We are children of God" and as such are entitled to everything that the father has. A comparison that I use almost every other day here is that of a prince. When a prince grows up, who does he become? We, as children of the most high, have infinite potential to become like our Father in Heaven but it is up to us to apply that. There's an old saying that says, "God is voting with me and the Devil is voting against me, but it's my vote that counts". Choose the right!

Elder Vore