Curry and Rekindling Cambodia

[5/7/2015 update: I fixed the videos for this post and the last post for better viewing.]

 Me stirring the beginning stages of curry. The thing was FULL of curry by the end.

Ming Sokuntia Sunday right before her baptism.

I think this week could be best defined by curry, because curry is very common here. And we wanted to learn how to make it. It started because we visited a less active member's house and they gave us curry, and it was the best curry I had ever tasted. This curry tops any curry that a white person could ever make. I'm sorry to all of the white people that have made curry and thought it was good. Because it wasn't. You have to be Asian. That's the secret ingredient. But anyways, we asked this ming for all of her advice and tips and then we went and made some last Thursday, and it was so bad. Then on Friday morning we went to the church to help all the million women in our ward make curry together. Making curry is more of a party than a job when you make that much. Haha. We like stopped halfway through and ate food, (not curry lol) and then later we got some sugar cane juice, and all the while we were helping them, we were picking up on what they did to the curry and what ingredients they use and what proportions that we didn't. So now we have a better idea of how to do it, although we are still not Asian unfortunately. So we will never be able to create this perfect dish, but I will still try to taste it as much as possible. 

Me and some elders chilling on a bridge in Stung Meanchay

There is a new initiative that we are starting in Cambodia called "rekindle Cambodia," and it is basically all the missionaries diverting efforts from finding new investigators to rescuing less active members. Not completely quitting finding new investigators, but just taking a little less time. All this is due to the huge percentage of members in the church that are inactive in Cambodia. I think about 10% of the ward in Chaktomuk, my area, is active. So what Elder Gardiner and I are doing about it is we are going through our ward directory with sloppy addresses and poorly Romanized names and finding them all. We started by just picking a few and going to that address, but that didn't work well, because it took a lot of time. So on Sunday after church we spent about an hour putting every single household in our ward on a map. And we are going to start from the Northwestern part of our area and work down. We have a bit of time tomorrow to begin this plan, so I will tell you next week how it goes. So far in our efforts to find lost members, we have only been able to meet with one, but we have met a few potential investigators along the way! Which is really cool because rather than being a burden to carry and losing time finding new investigators, finding people that are less active has actually lightened our burden and given us a few opportunities to teach.

A lake in Stung Meanchay



Missionary work is really hard--don't get me wrong. But that's the thing about missions, I think. They teach you that hard work can be fun.

 The gate to the Killing Fields (which we visited Monday morning). Super sobering, but I just couldn't get over the fact that there were so many white people there.

One of the skulls that was inside of the monument at the Killing Fields. You can see how brutal Pol Pot's regime was just by looking at all the different ways these people died. It's insane--actually, he was insane.

More about the less active finding next week. I love you all!

 
 A video of an electrical pole catching on fire. Super Cambodian, because even the owner of the shop like walked out and started laughing and pulled out his phone to take a video.



Love,

Elder Hall