Sister Zoe's Cambodacious Journey: February!!!!!!!

Dear Family and Friends,

Can you believe that today is 01 February 2016??? That's how they write the dates here in Cambodia.... It was so hard to get used to. I messed up a lot, like on our CBR's, it takes a lot of brainpower for a date that says 06/07/15 because naturally I want to say June 7th, but really it's July 6th. I just have to sit and stare at the date forever until I’m 100% sure that I got it right... haha Time is flying. It feels like just yesterday I got in country... Ah, time needs to SLOW DOWN!!!!

We literally have no work to do here in ToulSenGuy, but the time is still managing to fly by. Don't know how that is possible, but it is, so that's cool. This past week we dropped two investigators, so we are down to 10 instead of 12 and we are planning on dropping a few more. These people have been "learning" with the sisters since September and are still on lesson 3, not keeping their commitments or anything. We've got to clean out our teaching pool, so we can start focusing on those that Heavenly Father has prepared for us. We found out yesterday that two of our investigators, a couple, have split and are now living in different houses and aren't really in a good place, so we were counseled by our Ward Mission leader to give them about a month to work things out between them and then we can get in contact with them again, so that's another two down for now. We've really only got 3 promising investigators currently. There rest of them just don't understand our purpose as missionaries. We got a referral from some members is Tuek La'ak (my old area). She is a 73-year-old Om with some health problems. All of her family has left her, so she's really lonely. We've gone to visit her twice and she just feeds us food and talks with us, but doesn't understand that we’ve come to share about the gospel. We are trying to get members involved with the teaching, so that they can make up for the lack of our language and really help us understand each other because she uses a lot of words that we don't know... haha but she really has a strong desire to come to church, but because of her health problems, she can't ride a moto, so we have to find a member that has a car that can take her. That is the current situation with our investigators. (:

Tuesday I got to go on an exchange with Sister Young. She is such an incredible missionary and her Khmer is so beautiful. I want to be able to speak the language like her. She has so much confidence. I love it! I learned so much from her, kind of hard to put it all in words, but going on this exchange with her was such a huge blessing. We were able to teach piano Tuesday night and I realized that quitting piano is one of the biggest regrets thus far on my mission... Sorry, Mom. I should have listened to you. When I get back, learning isn't too late, right?? Who wants to teach me?? (: She made me some Khmer food for dinner. Really it was just an omelet that we ate over rice, but because we ate it with rice it counts as Khmer food. (: haha that's the rule.

Wednesday we woke up at 5:15 and went to their church and played basketball. So fun!! It made me really want to serve in an area close to other sister so we could do that, but for now it's just me and Sister Xiong chilling in ToulSenGuy all alone...

Thursday we went to visit some less actives that live literally so far away. We biked on this one road for like 40 minutes... it is ridiculous. We FINALLY got there and.... THEY WEREN'T EVEN HOME.... We had to make the most of our trips, so we took a little stroll down to the river front and talked with these little kids, sang the ABC's with them, laughed with them, had them call me Barang (french, that's what they call all the white people here, it's getting really annoying. Probably happens like 9 times on average every day) like 15 times by this boy. I just had to laugh. On the way home, we bought some friend bananas. Mmmmm, so so delicious. (:

Saturday we taught a lesson to a recent convert. We reviewed the 10 commandments and following the prophet... it was probably the worst lesson I’ve ever taught on my entire mission. The spirit was not there at all. Her family was watching boxing and the kids were going crazy... We just read about them in Mosiah, but then neither of us knew how to explain them, so we just kind of mumbled some stuff and moved on... then when it came to talk about the prophet I couldn't focus to save my life and completely butchered that... it was so bad. I walked away feeling like I had completely let the Lord down. I just don't know how to teach the 10 commandments in a simple way. Any advice?? I received some revelation for it yesterday, but i still need all the help I can get. (:

Church was really really good yesterday. The members in ToulSenGuy are just so good. The Young Women President (a 17 year old girl, yes welcome to Cambodia) gave a talk in Sacrament meeting on the difference between weaknesses and sin. It was really really good. I got so much out of it. Weaknesses help us draw closer to the Lord while sin drives us far away from Him. She shared the famous Ether 12:27 verse. Then for our 5th Sunday meeting the Bishop taught and he spoke so much English... It was weird at first and I wondered why he was doing it, but then I realized that half of our ward understand English, so why not?? haha

That's all for this week. Sorry nothing too exciting happened. We're just getting through the days. Hopefully this week we can find some less actives that actually accept us and want us to come back and teach them, because the ones we've found recently have not been very nice!!! But we are trusting in the Lord and because of that things will work out. (:

Love,

Sister Loftus

Double D