60 - Cambodian Charm

Sister Lamborn Helped Us Clean. Thank YOU!

We cleaned our old apartment aaaaaall day last Monday. 

And we owe more thanks than anything to our awesome relief society president.

She was the only one that showed up to help us clean! And she brought all the necessary supplies. We could NOT have done it without her!

Old Apartment All Cleaned Up.  :-)

We turned in the keys this week and it's all squared away! 

Good Bye Ol' Apartment.

We don't need to worry about it anymore! 

Yes!!

We retired the apartment with honor.

Off with the Jesus picture on this door and on with it on our new door!

Just Because Everyone Loves a DOUBLE Rainbow!

There was a tornado warning on Sunday, but nothing actually happened, except for a bit of rain and an awesome double rainbow!

Super cool.

This Week's Planning Session

This is what weekly planning looks like. 

Snacks and planners and area book and papers everywhere. 

We had an actually very effective weekly planning this week. 

Yay!

We have been trying an approach that one of the young women leaders used for dinner appointments on her mission. We bring a map that has our area marked on it and we have the family we are eating dinner with choose for us what street we should tract. Maybe they know someone on it or maybe it's a random street, whatever. Well, this family chose the street right behind their house and when we tracted it, one person became a new investigator! We set up a return appointment for this same week. We took the mom of the family who chose the street out with us to come and teach him, to meet the guy who we ran into because they suggested this street. Well, the appointment fell through, and all of our back-ups fell through too, and all of her less active sisters to visit teach just moved out of Williston. But she suggested that we go see her friend. So we did and she explained to her friend that we had had no luck with other people and if we could share a message about Jesus Christ with her and she said yes and let us right in and it was a great lesson and she is now a new investigator!!! Members are awesome!

Now the crowning story. I seem to have a lot of 'crowning stories' lately. haha. Regardless!

I wish I had pictures to go along with this story, but I don't have any yet.  (There's a picture at the end from the next week's blog...a "sneak peek"  :-)

It was about a month ago. It was Sunday evening and we had JUST figured our who's area was what at this point and were JUST getting done organizing our area book, so we hadn't really tracted at all. We had just gotten done of dinner at a member's house, and we decided it was time to tract, especially since the area that we were eating dinner in what now our area when it wasn't before!

We went down the street, knocking on the doors of the houses. Met a few people. Had a good contact at one door. Another few doors down though and this man answered.

"Hello?"

"Hi, how are you doing tonight?"

"Good. ...Sister Barrett, and Sister Sanderson. So where are you from."

'Hm, well, you, Mr, are a less active member of the church, probably from Utah!' Sister Barrett and I thought. Sure enough, that's exactly what he was. Super nice guy. He works not 'in' the oil field, but the stuff he does directly effects the work in the oil field. And he and his wife commute back and forth from Utah. He wanted us to meet his wife!

She was short, darker skinned, quiet, though when she did speak you could tell she had an accent.

"Where are you from?"

"I'm from Cambodia."

Woooooooooooooah! So cool! Seriously, soooo many people here in Williston.

We asked if we could come in and share a message. And thus began our teaching them. They have beautiful paintings of Cambodia, all of them having a temple in them with five main tall towers which looked all too familiar to me!

"Is this Angkor Wat?"

"Yes! You know our temple?"

"Yes! Wow, I really want to go there someday."

I didn't tell her however that I only know about Angkor Wat really because of playing Illusion of Gaia. haha.

I will call her Korwa. :) They met because of his cousin actually. He married someone from Cambodia and he was watching the marriage tape and he asked, 'who's that?' and he went and married Korwa! They were married nearly five years ago in November, and Korwa has been here for almost two years, so they had a long distance marriage for awhile. They had a traditional Cambodian marriage and she showed us pictures and they are absolutely beautiful, and holy cow does he have a crazy sideways smirk smolder face! So I will call him Flinn. haha.

Korwa comes from a Buddist background, but Flinn has taken her to temple square before. Flinn knows all about the Mormon culture, but he knows very little about the doctrine. He asked us what the difference between the old and the new testament was. We are excited to teach them! They are both open to learning!

We have invited Korwa to church, but we were afraid she wouldn't come because she was feeling sick when we called her Sunday morning. She sounded sick, everything. She has some sort of medical thing that has been going on for awhile that she gets sick spells randomly. 

Picture from Korwa's second week at church

BUT MIRACLE! SHE WALKED INTO THE CHAPEL BEFORE THE SACRAMENT WAS PASSED!! She was THERE! She CAME to church!!! And she enjoyed the people, you could tell. And she enjoyed the last song. I honestly don't know how much she retained of what was talked about at church, but you could tell she had a great experience! (Flinn always works on Sundays, so that's why he didn't come.) It was sooooo special. She started feeling sick again right before relief society, so she went back home and was sorry to leave, but when we texted her to make sure she was safely home, she said:

"Yep I'm now and thanks for teaching me."

YAAAY! I love her so much! I'm so excited for her!

That's it. Till next week!