I LOVE MY MISSION! I LOVE CAMBODIA!

Hello everybody!!:) This week just flew by!! Man, I feel like I have said that sentence a million times now! I can't even imagine how sick you all must be of all my super repetitive beginning sentences at the start of these emails! Haha so if anybody has any ideas on what I can say at the beginning of these emails that does not sound cliché I will be happy to take any advice!! It's been over a year and a half and I'm just running out of interesting ways to start out my letters! I'm sorry people! Hang in there… only a couple more months and you will be free of these retched emails!:) Ok, now to my week! It was a super solid week as far as progression and finding new investigators!!:) So one cool thing that happened this week was we got to go down to Kampong Cham (my old area) for training! Before we went I printed out a whole bunch of pictures of members from my old area and I wrote a little note on the back of all of them so that I could give them to the Elders in that area and they could pass them out to all of the people there! It took me forever to write all the notes, but I finally got them all done and when we got up to Kampong Cham, guess what!? I forgot all of them!! Haha I was so bummed! Oh well… I guess I'll just have to wait till transfers to send them all out!! Anyway, we went for zone training and it was super good! Our zone leaders are pretty cool so it was a good time! Then we all went out to eat together and then after that we peaced out to go back to our area!! It was a long day because it's a 3 hour drive there and back and we did it all in one day so we did a lot of sitting that day, but it was good overall!!:)

Another cool thing that happened this week was that there was a young woman in our branch who received her mission call!! She called us on Tuesday to let us know that she would be opening it up at the church that evening! Of course we could not miss that for the world so we went to watch her open it up! It was super intense because she opened it and then just started laughing/crying for seriously like 5 minutes and would not tell us where she was going! Finally she just screamed out, “CAMBODIA PHNOM PENH!!!” Haha we all cheered super loud for her! She was so happy because I don't think she wanted to leave Cambodia at all! Haha I don't blame her either! This place is awesome:):) So we were super excited for her! The craziest part is that she starts her mission in 20 days!!!! Yeah, you heard me right! Twenty days! Ha so that means next transfer I am going to be seeing her in the mission home and she will be a missionary! She was freaking out! Ha she said she thought she was going to be able to party it up till the end of the year and then go, but I guess God had other plans in mind for her! She will be an amazing missionary and I am super excited I get to have a couple transfers with her!

Ok, the other exciting thing that happened this week was that we had another baptism! His name is Sok Chiet and he is so awesome! He such a humble kid and has such a strong testimony already! He is also just one of those genuinely nice people that you come across every once and a while! This week we were teaching him at his house and his house is in our furthest away area and by the time we got done teaching him it had gotten dark. As we were leaving his house he begged us to let him follow us behind our bikes with his moto and light the way for us all the way to our house! Our house is like a 45-minute bike ride away at least and he was completely serious about it too! We politely declined, but man he is just so nice! :) Anyway, the baptism went super good and he bore a great testimony afterwards as well! He also invited two of his buddies to the baptism and I contacted both of them before the baptism and they both told me that they would love to learn with us as well! How sweet is that!? He is getting baptized and inviting all of his buddies to learn too!! What a stud! I will keep you updated on how things work out with that! Then after church we had interviews with President on Sunday evening as well! He is so awesome! The interview was great! He is one of the coolest guys I have ever met! You can truly see that he really does care about you and genuinely wants the very best for you! I love him to death! And his wife is equally amazing!! They compliment each other perfectly and both just love to make each other laugh! I really do love them both so very much!

So as far as this week goes, I think that that's pretty much all that I have for you! But before I go I just want to share my “ponderize” scripture for this last week! It's in Alma chapter 26 verse 12 and it reads, "Yea, I know that I am nothing; as to my strength I am weak; therefore I will not boast of myself, but I will boast of my God, for in his strength I can do all things; yea, behold, many mighty miracles we have wrought in this land, for which we will praise his name forever." I love this scripture because I have seen the truthfulness of it throughout my mission! I have come to see that as I have humbled myself before God and given Him the credit for the amazing miracles that I have seen and had the opportunity to be a part of, he has always continued to bless me with those miracles! I know that the people that I have baptized or the people that I have been able to help on my mission are not from me just being good at communicating with people or anything like that, but instead I know that it is by the power of God that I have been able to see all of the miracles that I have seen out here on my mission! As the scripture states, I cannot boast of myself, but I can only boast in my God because through Him and through His power I am able to do all things that He would have me do! I love my Heavenly Father so much and am so thankful that He trusted a punk kid like me to come and teach His beloved people here in Cambodia! I am sure without a doubt that these people have a very special place in His heart, and for me to have the opportunity to be able to come and interact and live with these wonderful people for two years is a blessing I will never be able to come close to repaying my Heavenly Father for!! I LOVE MY MISSION! I LOVE CAMBODIA! And I love every single sweaty, hot, rainy, sticky, smelly, dirty, nasty, humid, funny, sad, hard and priceless experience that comes along with this mission! I would not trade these experiences for the world! I love you all and hope you have a great week! Talk to you all next week... which I'm sure in the beginning of my home letter, I will say something about how fast it's gone!;) Maybe pray this week will go slow for me so I'll have something different to write about!;) Or maybe I'll just wait two weeks to write you all and then it will actually feel like a long time since we have talked!:) Mom, I'm just kidding! Put the telephone down…there is no need to call my mission president! You will be hearing from me again next Monday!;) Love you all so much!!:)

Love,
Elder Steadman:)