Thursday, August 25, 2016

What Lack I Yet?

For some reason I always felt like you were going to be a seminary teacher. [Editor's note: That's my new calling/responsibility at church--an early morning bible study.] Just to let you know maybe 3 or 4 of my companions came on a mission because they had a good early morning (not from utah) seminary teacher. So if it ever gets hard, just remember that the one or two people that are listening are going to be very thankful and tell their future mission companions about you.



I have been thinking about what I want to major in my whole mission. With Elder Cook in two of my areas, I decided that I want to own my own business and that college is going to be just for what I want to learn. I have been pretty drawn to Economics for a while. Even when I tried to pretend to understand that Austrian theory economics book, I still wanted to learn more about economics. Then when I took the Econ class at BYU (even though I got a C, all of my test grades were pretty high) I thought the class was super interesting. So I think I'm going to do Economics when I get back. I haven't gotten a chance to really talk to Elder Spencer about it, but I think it will probably just seal that desire. I also read in my patriarchal blessing about it a lot.


I talked to President Christensen in my interview yesterday about what he feels like the direction of this area needs to be. Since there are so many internal problems, he wants us to focus on helping the members to trust the district leadership and help them love Elder Spencer. It's been interesting to meet with a lot of the local leadership here and how almost all of them have very little trust in the church. It's not discouraging--just a little shocking. 



This week I get to apply a lot of the teachings that Pres Christensen helped me with in his interview. I got to tell him some of my concerns, and he helped me to figure out how to solve them. He recommended that I apply the "What Lack I Yet?" talk to kind of help with some of the complacency that always makes its way into older missionaries lives. I will follow that counsel this week and figure out what it is that I lack. 



Yes, the KC accent is pretty easy to pick out and Elder Khiev sometimes gets laughed at when he says stuff that's pretty blatantly "accented," so I'm working on getting all those into my vocabulary. My language goals for the rest of my mission are basically to just be more and more fluent every week. 





Sorry this is all I have this week. 

Elder Hall

Sofie: Have you seen any monkeys lately?
Wyatt: Yeah. Sometimes when I go to hills on pday I see monkeys. But they are scary. I don't like monkeys. Sometimes people train them to steal stuff like in Aladdin. I've never gotten anything more than a shoe stolen, but sometimes people get their phones stolen.

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Working on my Accent


Wyatt is on the far right.


Elder Kheav is so cool. He is from KC so he has the same sort of accent that I have been trying to have my whole mission, so now I can really have that accent. Especially because he doesn't really speak that much English. [Editor's note: I take it as a sign that his language skills are adequate if he is working on an accent.] He is really laid back when it's time to be laid back and a really hard worker when it's time to be a hard worker. He's also really influential. He teaches like MLK gives speeches. 

The house for the Branch 1 elders (I'm in branch 1) is out in the middle of nowhere; branch 2 & 3 elders are in closer to the town, which is mostly just for white people to come look at. I don't really know why any white people come here; it's not really that cool. Maybe I'm missing something. But anyways there are definitely a lot more trees than the city. 



The investigator pool is disappointing. The new area is a lot more focused on less actives because of how far away from the church it is and how many less actives there are. I think I just want to spend most of the time here reactivating and strengthening members. I don't really know yet, though. We will see what happens. 


Well I would love to tell you about how virtue is now garnishing my thoughts, but I actually forgot my scriptures in Phnom Penh, so they're sending them up on a bus today. I'll tell you next week after I spend a substantial amount of time studying it. 

Wasting and wearing out my life has consisted more of actual physical biking everywhere this past week. The places we go are all far away from each other.


Elder Hall

P.S. Sorry these are the only pictures I have for this week. My camera is in a bag that I left in Phnom Penh that will be sent up shortly. [Editor's note: Haha!]