Khmae New Year

SO this week was Khmae NEW YEAR--the week where nobody does anything except for drink, throw water at people, throw powder at people, ask for money, turn on super loud music, and dance. If I had to choose a second on my list of countries to get born before this life, I would have put Cambodia as number 2. (minus the drinking)

This is an American returned missionary's business

There is this thing where everyone at the party stands in the road (well actually everyone just parties in the road) and if you want to get past them you have to pay them 1000 riel or get hit in the face with powder or get drenched in water. There are all these "moto gangs" that just ride around on these streets and then they get stopped by the roadblocks and they just stop and party with each other for a few minutes and then they go to the next roadblock. It's super cool because there is the national road that goes along the river and then in between the national road and the river there is another more residential road that all these roadblocks are on. In the course of a kilometer there are probably 7 or 8 of these roadblocks.

Bong Heem unfortunately couldn't meet with us for the whole week because he was busy partying, but we are hopefully going to meet him either tonight or on Wednesday. Bong Somrong is the first counselor's little brother, and he COULD meet with us this week. He has fallen in love with the concept of a remission of sins, and starts saying stuff like, "Ok. I promise to God that I will go to church next week" or "I promise to the Lord that I will not drink anymore" so there are definite signs of conversion occurring for him. He also finds us before we find him. Sometimes we will go to our first counselor and ask him where Somrong is, and he will tell us that he's gone to his hometown for the week and then Somrong will just walk up and say he was waiting for us. I get so confused when the first counselor does that, but whatever. Haha.

Also we had Zone Conference last week, city lunch, cleaning day, and branch party, so the proselyting took a hit, but this week is back to normal, and I really want to find a family to teach, so that is what I am going for. 

Elder Hall