Sister Fields in Cambodia: In Which I Pick Up My Koon Pov (the baby of the family)

Our trio!

Hey,

Well friends, we've have reached that point. It's the FINAL TRANSFEEERRRR (cue music: doo doo doo dooo do dodoo doodo). Yes, that is where we're at. How did we get here? I don't know. It's a weird place. I don't like to think about it too much. But I've already decided this transfer is gonna be a good one. A party, one might say. Thanks to my new koon.

Yes, this week we picked up Sister H's little sister. Sister Thoun (kinda sounds like town), and it has been an interesting ride so far. Trying to train two missionaries at different spots in their training has proved to be interesting. But luckily for me, they are both very capable. For real though, if it were just the two of them running this area, they could do it. They make my job easy. So I've decided this transfer I'm not going to stress. Not even once. It's not worth it. "Let it go" is my new anthem.

Speaking of Sister Thoun, we got to go pick her up from the mission home Friday morning. She is from Phnom Penh and has a mission call to Idaho Nampa Mission. She is serving what they call a mini-mission here in Cambodia while she waits for her visa. She's a great missionary already. She's very passionate. When I met her at the mission home, she gave me a huge, long hug, and then grabbed my two hands and looked into my eyes and said, "Why you go home in six weeks, my trainer?" I can't escape everyone acknowledging the fact I'm cit slap hauy! or in other words, "almost dead". Regardless, Sister Thoun is way funny, and I need to start a quote book for the words that come out of her mouth. Her English is pretty good, and we're speaking a lot of English to help get her ready for Idaho! She asked me this morning on the way to the psaar if we have markets like that in Idaho. I told her the Smiths and Wal-marts are a bit different.

Other news. This week we spent a lot of time CBR hunting. Sister H. is becoming quite the adept hunter. CBR hunting can actually be way fun. It's the closest thing I will ever feel to being a detective. We bike around with a picture of a less active from 2001 and a very poorly hand-drawn map, trying to figure out street signs and asking everyone on the street if they skoal (know) the person or not. Then when we find the correct house, we sneakily take a picture of it and try and get the very less active member to warm up to us. We've had mild success. A few days ago we were after one with a wrong address. So went up and down the street a couple of times. One woman doing her laundry eyed us suspiciously. We asked her neighbor if she knew the woman in the picture and she half glances over to her next door neighbor (with the suspicious eyes) and the woman screams ot tee, ot tee! (no, no!) and runs into her house. Sister H. and I did not know what to do about that one. But I think we found her....

We had a mini-miracle this week. A woman from the Vietnamese branch called us with a referral she wanted us to meet. Sounds simple enough, but it was the most difficult process in the world to first figure out who she was and second figure out where she lives. She kept saying Borey Keilaa which is an apartment complex with people that sell things on the ground floor. So we went there and called her again. She said she had a restaurant, but I could not for the life of me figure out where. We walked around the whole complex asking everyone if they knew her or her place. Turns out there's actually a separate psaar with the same name. We finally found someone who took pity on us poor white girls who can't really speak Khmer all that well (this was before Sister Thoun came) and she gave us directions that we were remarkably able to follow. That was definitely a miracle. I was sure this woman didn't actually exist, but after walking for about 20 minutes, which feels like ages when you're used to the bike life, we found her! Did I mention her Khmer is way hard to understand because she's actually Vietnamese? In the event, the referral did not really want to learn, which turned into quite the awkward few minutes as the member pressured us to pressure the referral into learning. But it's okay. All in a day's work.

That was kind of the week. Not much else is new. Kim Sia is still doing awesome. Even when we have awkward lessons, she still eats it up and wants to learn everything she can. Here's an example of an awkward lesson. This email is full of awkward situations (welcome to missionary life). We (read: Sister H.) have started teaching a piano lesson. A few members and nonmembers attend. Two who came to the class wanted to learn about the gospel, so Sister Thoun invited them to learn with us and Kim Sia right after class. Which is great. But we were teaching about the temple. The other two members of the class wanted to join in. In addition to the member we had invited to be at the lesson and meet us at the church. So there were nine of us in the lesson. We tried to give the newbies a bit of background, so they didn't think we were totally crazy and baptize dead people. It ended up working out okay. Sisters H. and Thoun planned and taught the lesson primarily on their own (thought of that one in comp study--best idea I've ever had, I do nothing! jkjkjk) and it went well. Then all of them joined us for the elders' baptism right after. So it all worked out well.

So things are going well over here in Tuk La'ak. It's been nice to be here so long because I feel like I'm really starting to love and get to know people here. The ward can be a little rough around the edges, but I feel like things are really going well now. Less actives are coming back, our members are all doing well, and we've got some investigators that are moving along. All is well.

I didn't prepare a spiritual thought this week. But I'm a missionary, so I have lots of spiritual thoughts running through my head at all times obviously. Something I've really been thinking a lot about lately is service and selflessness. The key to happiness is to turn out. Not just happiness, but confidence, less stress, more personal fulfillment. When I learned to stop thinking about myself so much is when I started to really like my mission. Now let's be real, I still think of myself all the time. Like 95% of the time. But I hope that it's a little bit better than the 99% of time I might have been at at the beginning of my mission. When you lose yourself, you find yourself. That's one thing I've learned.

Okay that's all for this week. Love you all!

Sister Fields