The King's Birthday, YSA Activity and Studying at Our Apartment

May 13th through the 15th is King Norodom Sihamoni's Birthday celebration. That means that the next three days are a holiday here in Cambodia.  King Sihamoni was born in 1953, and is the current King of Cambodia. Strangely, he is unmarried. Who will he pass the throne to?  

In Cambodia, as in a lot of other countries, the king is more a figure head leader. The first few years after becoming king he was also Prime Minister, but that changed.  Cambodia is a multiparty democracy under a constitutional monarchy.  Which means that they have a Prime Minister and a legislature, similar to other democracies.  The big difference is that the same Prime Minister has been in power for more than 30 years.  They do have a minority party that claims they will take power next election, which it sounds like they have been saying that for a long time. Most of the church members that have talked with us about politics are members of the opposition party.

With the three day holiday the Church decided to hold their annual YSA conference today and tomorrow with all the Young Single Adults in the country invited.  Today's activities started at 3:00 p.m.  They were expecting about 650 at the YSA Conference, which is a huge group, as of this evening it was over 550, there will be some that come tomorrow that were not there tonight.  There are two stakes and five districts here in Cambodia and the first event was a cultural activity put on by each of the units.  Some were really well done and some had been put together at the last minute.  The two that were the most interesting to me were, a harvest, clown, and Peacock dance by the Steang Mean Chey Wards and one that was put on by a big group from the Siem Reap units about the history of Angkor Wat. 

The evening ended with a dinner and dance.  In Cambodia the people do not date, and even in church at times it is hard to know who is married to who, because they do not always sit with their spouses.  Dancing is alright if you don't have to touch the person you are dancing with.  Still you see groups of males dancing together and groups of females dancing together.  That physical contact is just something that they do not do here.  In fact when we arrived in Cambodia President Moon let us know that couples do not hold hands here in Cambodia, and he was right.  That was so hard for us at first, because we have held hands our whole marriage.

What was really interesting was how many of the YSA wanted to take pictures of and with the Senior Missionaries.  There were a lot that we did not even know that wanted a picture with us. There were some we met one time when we first were here who came up to us as asked if we remembered them.  It is very humbling who we represent.