Sister Zoe's Cambodacious Journey: Happy New Year (third one this year) am I even a missionary?

Dear Family and Friends,

Well, this past week was very very uneventful. Literally nothing happened. We had two lessons. TWO. That’s it, in a whole week. And I hate to say it, but they were both with the same lady... haha oh, the joys of Khmer New Year. Everyone leaves and goes to their hometowns to be with their family, so no one is in the city. It was literally a ghost town. All the shops closed. It was ridiculous.

President and Sister Christensen tried their hardest to help us out and give us things to do, but we still had a lot of free time on our hands. Tuesday was a mission wide "clean your house until it's clean day". Sister Leng thought that we would only need two hours to clean our house, typical Khmer for you. (: I told her we were going to need to whole day. Our house is 4 stories and we had to deep clean everything. Well, needless to say we cleaned from 9 in the morning to 7 at night. It was ridiculous. I am really learning the joys of having a clean house on my mission, which is super interesting because before my room was ALWAYS a mess... but not anymore. I am the most organized in my house. One way the mission has changed me. I went a little crazy with the raid... every house I’ve lived in has had a problem with ants. This house is no different. There were ants in all of our cupboards... climbing all over our dishes and food... super gross and no one else really seemed to care, so I took initiative and took out all the dishes and cleaned them and sprayed raid. It lasted for about a day and now they are back... super annoying. Also, after cleaning we all just kind of passed out on the floor and then ended up massaging each other for a good 45 minutes. It was a good reward. Also, Sister Sheffield, one of the sisters I live with, made us some bong im and it was delicious. (:

Wednesday we had weekly planning, went and found a less active recent convert's house that got in a car accident and broke her collarbone, her ankle, and her knee is super super bruised. They looked like she was in so much pain. That took us literally four hours to find her house, but we had no other work to do, so it was okay. haha It would have been a lot easier, but Khmer’s aren't good with directions... hahah After we went to the church for English class, but because it was New Year’s none of the kids wanted to learn, so we just talked with some of them and then got some pizza to celebrate the New Year. We took it home and ate. We ended up making a music video, and then got in a water fight. For New Year’s they always throw water on each other, so Sister Sheffield dumped water on Sister Gallahad and then Gallahd threw some on Leng and I quickly grabbed my camera so I would stay out of it, but our whole front room was soaked. There was water EVERYWHERE!!! It was super super funny though. A very happy New Year. (:

Thursday we had lunch together with all the missionaries serving in the city. That was really fun. We ate at a restaurant called tonle bassac 2 and it was super good and nice. It looked like a Vegas hotel; you know super blinged out and all the jazz. I was reunited with my MTC loves and we reminisced. I also ate frog. Surprisingly good!! I ate and ate and ate. I was so full and then I had to bike back to my house and it was not good. Super stuffed. Thursday night, because there was no one to meet, we came back early and watched women’s conference. Always a good time. We were all going a little stir crazy from not really doing missionary work in a few days, so Sister Gallahad ended up doing Sister Leng's make-up and it was the funniest thing. Sister Leng didn't want her to do it at all, so she made a deal that if Sister Leng could do Sister Gallhad's first then she would let her do hers. Well Sister Leng did Sister Gallahad's, super super bad, she looked like batman, Khmers don't know how to do makeup, and it was the funniest thing ever!!! And then she ran away. We tracked her down and got her back in the room so Sister Gallagad could do her make-up and when it was all said and done she looked to pretty!!! She looked like Mulan. It was so funny because she was so unhappy. She just had puppy dog eyes the entire time. But…we found out why they don't let missionaries have a ton of free time... because we end up doing stupid things like that.

Friday we had zone conference. We really focused on the Book of Mormon; super cool because that's what I’ve been studying in my personal study for the past couple days. There’s just so much power in it and we, as a mission, are trying to figure out the best way to use it. Members just don't read it... if they don't read it they can't have a solid foundation. We are really making that a focus in our area right now. I’ll get back to you on that when our investigators and less actives comes back and we can finally meet them. I've been serving here for 2 weeks already and I only know 4 members... quite pathetic really. hahah The Lord better help me skoal (get to know) this area quickly!!! We also focused on family history work, something that is really hard to do here in Cambodia, but we are getting a senior couple here in June that will focus on that, so over the next few months they are really going to push it here. I’m super excited to see what happens!!!! We talked about mission culture as well. We are cowboys with digrity. (Dignity and integrity) that one you kind of had to be there to understand, but it was good!!!

Saturday the missionaries and two members cleaned the church. It took a really really long time... and that's about it...

Sunday. I was supposed to give a talk in sacrament meeting about the Book of Mormon but I woke up and was super sick... like I couldn't leave my room. I slept all day. Once it was past, it was like 5 and we just studied language. Sister Leng taught me the first lesson in her very broken English. She committed me to baptism. She did a great job. haha. As I was listening to her, I was filled with the spirit and could only hope that the people I taught could tell how hard I was trying to speak their language and recognized the truth of my message. It was a really cool experience.

Love,

Sister Loftus

Double D