We Are Blessed With Family and Friends

We seem to be on a roll with unique schedules for our days. This morning started with our normal wake-up time, followed by internet phone calls instead of our walk or going to the office. We had called a family counsel, which turned out to be a good chance to have everyone together even though we were miles apart. It was good to be with our family and to feel the combined support.

The office was quite an interesting place today. There was quite a variety of people who came through and stopped to visit at our desk. One visitor was Sitha Heang who is visiting from the U.S. Last August Sitha and her family moved to Utah for her husband to pursue a Master's Degree. She has come back with their two children to visit family.

Before Sitha left our office, Elder and Sister VanBrocklin came to give their replacements, Elder and Sister Dowd, a tour of the Service Center and introduce them around. The VanBrocklins are down to their last 24 hours before heading home to Utah. We will miss them, but we also are looking forward to getting to know the Dowds better.

Visitors left and we managed to retreat to the conference room for a Self-Reliance Team staff meeting. We have found those to be very important in moving forward with what needs to be accomplished in Cambodia for the Self-Reliance Services.

As we finished our short meeting and headed back to our desks we found more visitors. Elder and Sister Jones, the Family History couple, had stopped in. We had a good visit and shared treats and language study tips. They are just getting started on learning a bit of the language, so we shared some of what we had done when we were new to Cambodia. We hope what we shared will be of help as they work on increasing their vocabulary and Khmer language skills.

As we headed for home, Rathana who works at the front desk and attends our Institute class told us she had brought some Curry soup for us and Elder and Sister Thurston. The Thurstons, whose apartment is just across the hall from ours, had taken it home for us. This gave us the opportunity to get together with them for dinner. They have been our neighbors for over two months and it took having someone make Curry for all of us to manage to eat dinner together. We had a good time, and we all enjoyed that we didn't have to cook dinner for the night. For dessert we made sure to share from our stash of chocolate, which Brenda and Marla brought when they came to visit.