Oops... late post!

Sorry everybody! I left on vacation this week and forgot to post Austin's latest email home. Better late than never, right? Thanks so much for all your love, prayers and support for our missionary :)

Love, Mindy

Hello everyone!! I hope that everyone has had another very good week over in the good old USA!!! I had to laugh because for two years in a row now I completely forgot that it was the Fourth of July!! Haha where is my American pride!? Anyway, I hope that you all had a great Fourth of July and lit lots of things on fire!:) As for us over here, we celebrated our Fourth of July day by trying to spread the light of Christ to the wonderful people here in Cambodia!! :)

This week nothing special really happened… it was just one of those super busy weeks, but not really a whole lot of crazy things happened to us. Just full of missionary work!! Most of our investigators are progressing very well!! The guy that we met last week at that shack is super awesome! We taught him the second lesson this last week and he really loved it! We invited him to come to church and he said he might be able to… I guess he has to wait for this truck to bring in his shipment on Sunday mornings, but he said that if he got done with that in time that he would come. Unfortunately we did not see him at church this week, but we are hoping that maybe he will be able to change his schedule around a little bit so that he will have the opportunity next week to be able to come to church and partake of the sacrament! Then we also have an investigator who will be getting baptized next week! He is so awesome! He has been super busy with school, but has really tried to make time to meet with us right when he gets out of school and then after he meets with us he goes straight to work! We can really see his great efforts in following Christ! He also has been coming to church every week, so he is definitely ready to get baptized this next Sunday! So if you wouldn't mind, please keep him in your prayers that everything will go according to plan and that he will be able to get baptized next week! His name is Bora!

I also had the chance to be able to teach in second hour on Sunday this week! It was kind of a last minute thing! Haha I was just sitting in the class and then the teacher just never showed up so the adults in the class said that I had to teach it! Haha so I opened up the Gospel Principles book and the first thing that I opened to was fasting so I figured that was as good a thing as any to be able to share with them considering it was fast Sunday! I was surprised that in that class of like 15 adults, only like 3 or 4 of them had ever fasted! So I really stressed the importance of fasting and the blessings that come from it and also the opportunity that we all have to be able to help people who are worse off than us through our fast offerings! I felt pretty good about the lesson! At the end the whole class agreed to fasting next month so I will have to give them a reminder here in a few weeks so that they don't forget!:) Also, when we were at church we heard the sad news about President Packer passing away. As soon as I heard the news I was overwhelmed by the Spirit, just like how I was when I heard that President Perry had passed away. I know that he is in a better place and that he is now teaching the gospel to those who have not yet had the opportunity to accept this wonderful message! He truly was a great man and was not even the slightest bit afraid to stand up for what he knew what was right! No matter how difficult the topic he was given was, he was never afraid to stand up in General Conference in front of all of us and invite us to repent and become better people! He will be greatly missed, but I am so happy and full of hope knowing that we will all see each other again some day! What an amazing plan our Heavenly Father has set forth for all of us!

Well I'm sorry that it's short this week, but that's pretty much all that I have got for you all this week! I sure do love each and every one of you! Especially thank you to all of you who take the time out of your busy weeks to shoot me an email and let me know how you are doing! No one besides a missionary or a returned missionary will ever know how much an email from a loved one means to a missionary out serving!!:) So thank you all!!:) I love you and will talk to you all next week!!:)

Love,
Elder Steadman:)

Elder Medley... his new companion!

Pics from a scenic bike ride with the elders in Kampong Cham...