FINALLY! Update from Cambodia!

I know I haven't updated Taylor's blog since the end of April - many changes since then but it's impossible to post every email since that time. So to catch you up, Taylor served in Ta Khmau until his transfer June 17th. He is now serving in the 2nd Branch in northern Phnom Penh and is companion to Elder Jason Howell. Here are a couple of his most recent emails from his new area:

July 8, 2009
Hello devoted readers!

This week was super hectic and super wet, to say the least. The hot/wet season is going strong now. In fact, I can hear rain on the roof as we speak. I hope it stops before we leave!

So to start off, I'll tell about one lesson we had last Thursday that was great. There is a family who are all learning, the brother and sister learning with us, the rest of the family learning with the Vietnamese Elders. Well we were pretty sure the two we were teaching would have a problem with law of chastity and word of wisdom, so we were expecting the worst. We started the lesson and before we knew it, they were accepting them as commandments of God and agreed to resolve any issues they had and to stop drinking alcohol and tea. It was incredible! Their Vietnamese cousin lives with them (she was just baptized in the Viet branch this Sunday) and I'm pretty sure she is being a really good example to them. It was a great experience and it was obvious the Spirit was working on them. We have another investigator named Hon but I can't remember if I told you about him yet. I'll tell some more about him. He is the dad of a sister missionary and is the only member of the family not baptized. Well, we've been teaching him and although he is really quiet and does not talk much, he's a star. He is such a stud! We recently gave him a Book of Mormon and asked him to start reading it and he is now almost to Mosiah. We were blown away when he told us! He reads with his wife to, which is really weird for Cambodia. There isn't a whole lot of stuff like that going on in Cambodia, as in a husband wanting to do something constructive with his wife just to grow closer. He is doing amazing and progressing like crazy.

We have so many investigators in this branch that we don't even have time to teach most weeks. It is a huge blessing to have so many investigators but you sure feel bad when you can't visit all of them. We get a lot of referrals here to, which is so great. The members really care.

So we were at Pizza Company the other day (the only place we do finding) and the person sitting in the booth behind us was very curious, and giving all the signs saying we should talk to him. Our waitress would talk to him, he'd tell her to come ask us a question, she would and then go back and tell him. After a bit we got up and sat by him and started getting to know him so we could try to teach him a finding lesson and see if he was interested. It didn't take long to figure out that he knew a lot about the church because he knew 'Mormon' and 'LDS'which no one here knows. Wouldn't you know it, he's one of the higher-ups in the Ministry of Cults and Religions. Obviously he wasn't interested in learning, but he said he was very impressed with how respectful we were and our grip on the language. So, we were able to set a good example for the church that will maybe help open a door to that man learning the gospel one day.

Well, the language is coming along really well, which is a huge blessing but at the same time something I have to be careful of. President Winegar gave us some advice that I try to keep in my mind all day. "Praise is Poison". Well, for a missionary it is at least. People praise me because of my ability (more like inability) to speak the language but the problem is not knowing if they're being honest or not. It is also very easy to become prideful in such situations, so I am trying to constantly be aware of how little of the language I actually know lol. I am very grateful for the gift of tongues though. It is truly such a blessing in my ability to teach. If we cannot speak the language how will we teach?

That's about all I have to share for today. We are SUPER busy all the time and are teaching lessons like crazy. Elder Howell baptized two of our investigators this past Sunday and they are both AWESOME. They already want to be sister missionaries. Ok, really now thats all. Until next week, Love you all!

Elder Donnelson