A Busy Stake Conference Saturday

When Elder Oveson was released as a Stake President he looked forward to being able to just sit with Sister Oveson and enjoy Stake Conference from then on. Well it worked for a few before our mission and the first one here in Cambodia, but definitely not today. The biggest part of our day was spent preparing for and participating in the Cambodia Phnom Penh South Stake Conference today.

Elder Oveson had to be to the Stake Center before noon for the meeting with Elder Khanakham, an Area Seventy from Thailand assigned to preside at the Stake Conference, along with the Stake Presidency. Sister Oveson stayed at the apartment and finished working on her talk and then caught a Tuk-Tuk to the South Stake Center. The Tuk-Tuk that Sister Oveson caught is one that we arranged ahead of time with a driver that we see outside of our building on a regular basis. His Tuk-Tuk is not a regular Khmer one, it is more like a three wheeled Little Tikes car with a back seat. Of course that had to be part of our picture of the night. The other picture is Elder Khanakham with Heng Ladin, the chorister and choir director for Stake Conference.

We mentioned before that Sister Oveson was invited to be one of the speakers at Stake Conference. She was the first speaker that introduced the theme in the Sisters portion of the Leadership Session of Conference. The topic was concerning improving Visiting Teaching. Those in the session said that she did an excellent job.

It would not have been a typical conference without some problems popping up. When Elder Khanakham arrived in Phnom Penh yesterday afternoon his luggage did not arrive with him. So he had to go to the Aeon Mall and buy two new white shirts and a new suit. Then when we went to do part of the meeting in the Cultural Hall the air conditioning did not work. Even with the problems overall it all ended up being very good sessions today. Elder Oveson was gone for more than eight hours and Sister Oveson was gone over six hours, but we want to make a difference.

This morning we had our Institute Class at 7:00 a.m. We were missing a number of our regular participants, but we did have three new ones and one that we have not seen in a long time show up. There were seventeen there today. We love teaching this class and look forward to it each week.