Raising The Dignity In Our Mission

One of the biggest issues with holidays that last all week is a large percentage of the population of Phnom Penh head out of town, usually to their home province or just out of the city. That leaves the a huge void in what the missionaries are able to do. Contacting is hard to do even when the general population is around, so it is impossible when there is a long holiday. And most of the investigators are either gone or celebrating. 

Each month there is a Mission Leadership Council where they discuss pressing issues. In the one earlier this month, "President Christensen raised the idea of raising the dignity in our mission and asked the missionaries what ways they thought that could be accomplished.  The immediate response from them was that they could polish their shoes! And the discussion centered for a few minutes on issues of dress in appearance. . . .President was then able to broaden the discussion and they began to suggest to him that maybe clean apartments were part of increased dignity." It was decided that they would have a, "Tuesday April 12 – Nationwide Missionary Don’t-Leave-til-Its-Done Apartment Cleaning Day!" Our role is to go inspect the missionary apartments to make sure that they caught the vision of raising their dignity.

Today we went to two apartments for Elders in Steung Mean Chey. We had inspected one of these apartments in the past and the other was a new one they had moved to since the last inspection. The one that we had previously inspected was definitely improved from last time, but they still had some items that we asked them to tidy up. The other apartment was very good and they did an excellent job, there was one minor issue that they need to call the landlord about. We decided to treat them to donuts, which we had bought on our way for the inspections. Our granddaughter told us if they did not earn the donuts that we should eat them in front of them. Gratefully it did not come to that. 

As we were out and about today there were a couple of interesting things that we observed. One of the decorations that we saw carried by several on motos and in the markets, was large broad leaves in an arrangement with incense. We do not know the significance, but in our apartment building the main lobby also has some. We also saw a unique way to carry a group on a moto full of boxes, a board crosswise behind the driver with three passengers.