Our Christmas Present

Christmas in Cambodia was busy with attending meetings and gathering with missionaries. Because our time here will be finished in less that three weeks we had our family keep any gifts they may have for us to open when we return home. One gift we bought for ourselves to take when we return home is a painting of the Oquirrh Mountain Temple, specially created for us by an amazingly talented artist, Sopheap Nhem. In 2015 she submitted an entry into the Church’s art contest, and was a Purchase Award Winner. [Here is a link to see that painting.  https://history.lds.org/exhibit/iac-2015-tell-me-the-stories-of-jesus?lang=eng#mv63.] Sopheap's brother-in-law works at the service center, so we worked through him to have this painting created.

Most missionaries are able to make two calls home during the year, one on Christmas the other on Mother's day. The "gray hair" seniors are not restricted to the two call limit, but that doesn't mean our Christmas calls are any less important. We were able to call two of our children for their Christmas morning and the other four in the evening (which means opposite for us as there is a 14-15 hour time difference.) It was wonderful to talk to each of the grandchildren and see their excitement for the day.

While our family gave reports of 8-10 inches of snow back home, we woke to a tropical winter of mid 70*'s and sunshine, and the high of the day was 89*.  When we fly home on January 13th someone will have to bring us a coat to the airport. Our summer clothes just may not be enough as we transition to our first cold winter in two years.

With time getting short we recruited a friend as a translator and went to the Olympic market. This was our first time to this market, which is more of a wholesaler market. It seems much cleaner than the more tourist oriented markets.  There were things we still needed from one of the other markets.