That Is Why You Came To Cambodia

Even missionaries need to be reminded why they were called to serve.  We were told a couple of times today, "That is why you came to Cambodia."  This afternoon Sameth, the Perpetual Education Fund specialist that we work with, said you are here to help PEF, Self Reliance, Institute and the South Stake.  He told us that we were very needed.  Also this afternoon we met with Samnang, the Service Center Manager, after the meeting he told us that he knew why we had come to Cambodia.  It is so nice to feel appreciated and to have Heavenly Father help us see why he needed us here.

We have not attended the Missionary District Meeting for several weeks, we have been busy with to many other things going on.  Today we had a very good reason to attend, we needed to talk about Thanksgiving.  President & Sister Christensen asked us to make sure that the missionaries in the South Zone got a good Thanksgiving dinner.  Elder & Sister Meinzer were asked to do the same thing for the East & Central Zones.  The Meinzers had found a buffet that they were going to take their Zones to and they had even found out that Friday was better than Thursday because of the Water Festival.  We asked the District Meeting if they wanted the buffet or to have something at the Stake Center that we ordered in.  They all wanted to join the other Zones and have a big group dinner, that should be fun.

We continued working on the project for Self Reliance Services with Phanna today.  We have to have the preliminary done tomorrow, because he goes out to the Kaits on Thursday and Friday.  Sister Oveson is a lot faster than Elder Oveson and Phanna, her spreadsheet is almost the same size as the other two combined.  We are lucky to have a speedster helping us.

Even though it is in the 90 degrees fahrenheit range here and only 3% of Cambodians are Christians, the Cambodians never want to miss a chance for a party.  We are already seeing signs of Christmas here in Phnom Penh.  We saw the first signs a couple of weeks ago in an office supply store where they were fully decorated with trees and displays, and playing Christmas music.  Tonights pictures are the Christmas tree in the office of our apartment building and a sign at a new coffee shop on way home.