HEFY
- By Alexa Nguyen
- •
- 30 Jul, 2018
- •
This was such a fun week!
HEFY
An HEFY program was started in Cambodia and they asked us to tag along as they visited some members for Family Home Evening. They did not have enough translators so Sister Stratford ended up translating for one of the groups. SHE KILLED IT. It was way impressive. #goals
Also one of the youth from the HEFY group started singing Come Thou Fount, but high-key forgot the words so he made them up because he knew the family we were visiting did not speak english. IT WAS SO HARD NOT TO LAUGH IT WAS THE BEST THING EVER. And then one the family members asked to sing a song to us that he only knew in English. We said yes, and he starts singing We Are The World by Michael Jackson!!! It was awesome. He knew every word.
Fasting
This week I fasted for an understanding of the Gift of Tongues. People kept telling I need to pray for it but I didn't understand how just praying for it helps you receive it. You need to study and do your part too, you know? Literally as I was fasting I got my understanding of how to obtain it. One of the counselors (who is an returned sister that served in Cambodia) of the HEFY group explained it in a Q&A session at church. She said we obtain spiritual gifts like the gift of tongues when we have a holy purpose. Learning the language in order to invite others to Come to Christ is literally the holiest purpose for learning a language. Basically, when I do language study I need to think first what I need to learn in order to accomplish my purpose to specifically invite other to come unto Christ, and god will help me. I already understood this concept before, but the way she explained it helped me understand how I needed to apply it and what I was doing wrong. THIS WAS EXACTLY WHAT I HAVE BEEN PRAYING FOR. The timing was not a coincidence. Literally got the exact answer I was fasting for WHILE I was fasting. I hope all of that made sense.
Bus
We meet some way cool british people on the bus to Phnom Penh. They had visited Vietnam and I told them I wanted to visit there so bad. The girl let me try on those classic rice harvesting hats she bought in Vietnam. She was so sweet! We helped them understand how the bus trip works since we are basically pros at it at this point lol. #TooManyBusRides They were super impressed we spend such a long time serving without taking breaks to go home and see family.
My tan.
The pic above is my arm compared to my calf. I am literally half asian, half white. I am pretty sure I will never be this tan again ever after my mission. Hahahahaha!
Ties
We visited this 11 eleven year old that recently got baptized and he is so cute. We asked an elder to teach us how to tie a tie and then we went and taught it to the 11 year old. His name is Sombat. He is so excited to get the priesthood and he was so happy to learn how to tie a tie so he can wear his ties to church. We showed up to church on Sunday and he was teaching a few other kids and even some of the adults how to tie a tie!!! SO CUTE.
Language
I have a goal this transfer to get really good at reading, especially from the scriptures. Also, me and Sister Stratford are doing an English Fast which means we will not speak english to each other until we come home at the end of the day. We accidentally speak english a lot but we are doing pretty good at it!
Love,
Sister Nguyen
Me and my old companion, Sister Peterson, got to go back to an old area to see the baptism of Jack Nith! She is so prepared! It's amazing seeing how the work continues without you and it's even more of a blessing getting to see the fruits of your labors (in combination with other missionaries' labors.) She is so excited to serve a mission, too! SHE'S AMAZING.
Me and Sister Peterson walked into the church for the baptism to see an awesome surprise. Our RC's daughter was there and she was getting baptized the following week! Me and Sister Peterson tried contacting her but she was so busy with work and couldn't start learning with us.
Lo and Behold she just got baptized! We didn't even know she had started meeting with the sisters! It was a wonderful surprise. Seeds really do grow after all!
We got smartphones now!
Having smartphones in this mission is going to be an absolute GAME CHANGER. All future missionaries who get to serve their whole mission with smartphones will never know the Nokia life. But Alas, many missionaries are starting to get their phones and it's so awesome! I, unfortunately, am not going to be getting one because I'm too old in the mission. Sigh. It's okay.
In order to receive a smart phone, all of us have to do a ton of training about all the new rules that involve smart phones and how to deal with all the temptations that come with it. Which means everyone has to watch a video that I filmed for the church 4 years ago! I've gotten many texts and phone calls and it's way funny. I play a waitress that serves a set of elders that come into a restaurant. :)
Facebook
All the members say, "Sister you're famous!"
I give them a confused look and they say, "I saw your facebook video!"
I made ANOTHER video explaining an English idiom in Khmer for the English Class Facebook page and the senior couple in charge of English Class liked it and promoted it so it appeared everywhereee! English class is one of our many ways we are able to find people who want to know more about Jesus Christ. So many prepared people find us through english class. So I was super honored I was able to help the Facebook page out so we can continue to be blessed with new students. But boy, all the members come up to me and say, "WOULDN'T BE CAUGHT DEAD!" (That's the idiom I taught)
We were doing companion study at a donut shop (because the power was out which means we had to find a place that had a generator and AC) when all of a sudden we get a call from the Senior Sister Training Leaders.
"Are you free in 30 minutes?" They asked.
"Um...we can make ourselves free," we replied.
"Cool, because there's a government official coming to tour the church and they want us to sing to him."
WHAT.
We rush home to look good and to grab the sheet music for Sister Saunders. We were singing a song in Khmer but she doesn't know how to read Khmer yet so she has her own version of "Come Unto Christ" with all the khmer words written in Vietnamese letters #LooksCanBeDeceiving :)
We get to the Church sweaty and gross and start practicing. There's 6 of us Sisters and thankfully all of them already knew this song.
AND THEN IT WAS SHOWTIME.
They come into the chapel and we greet the government official. One of the Sisters says, "Hello, Bong!" Bong is a word used for people who around your age/Not old enough to be parent.
IMMEDIATELY after she said, "bong" one of the church officials walks up to us and says, "You can't used the word, 'bong' because he's technically considered royalty, so you have to say. "asdkjf;" <--Some word I don't know BECAUSE YOUR HOMEGIRL IS NEVER AROUND ROYALTY.
Anyway, Mr. Royalty was way chill that we accidentally used the wrong word for him and was super nice. We sang for them in the chapel and we made a Senior Sister cry! Mission accomplished.
CATCH UP TIME! A LOT OF CRAZY AND GREAT THINGS HAVE HAPPENED, YOU READY?
BUCKLE UP, FOLKS.
Okay. Imma start in chronological order. FIRST:
Me and Sister Binns celebrated our one year mark
in country the khmer way! We bought khmer cakes and wore our khmer kramaa's like the old people here. Kramaa's are basically light weight scarves that khmers use for SO MANY THINGS. The main use for missionaries is to wipe up the good ol' sweat. :)
I'm training the one and only Sister Obeng. This girl is straight on fire! She loves talking to people even though she can't understand their responses, she don't let that stop her though. It's going to be a very easy training because she hit the ground running. Let's gooo!
The theme for our mission is "Expect Miracles"
and it has been awesome!!
Literally so many miracles this week. And last week, too (sorry I didn't write anything last week...hahaha).
We've been visiting this one less-active family for a while but the parents just simply don't come to church. Their faith is there and they love the gospel...they just don't come to church. Well surprise, surprise, the dad came to church this week!! Sister Obeng recognized him and said, "Wait, do we know that guy? He looks way familiar."
"Nope. Don't recognize him."
I LITERALLY DIDN'T RECOGNIZE HIM BECAUSE I WAS NOT USED TO SEEING HIM OUTSIDE OF HIS HOUSE MUCH LESS INSIDE THE CHURCH. Hahaha :)
Also, a former investigator from out of the blue called us and said she wants to be baptized and is willing to do whatever it takes to come back to church every week. She dropped off the face of the earth over two months ago because we couldn't find her new house that she moved into, and her phone was kind of broken so it was way hard to hear directions, and she stopped coming to church.
I thought, "Alright. Here we go again. We're going to find her house this time." AND WE FOUND IT. A lot of it was because her husband had come back from a different province and she used his phone to give us directions instead of hers. It was niiiice and clear. She wanted us to teach her husband as well who also is literally one of the most prepared people ever. I'm way excited for them. It was a joy to call Sister Chanthakhoun and Sister Olivas to tell them the good news. They were WAY happy.
Fun fact: We went without water, electricity and a working AC unit several times this week. In Khmer, we call this
ទុក្ខវេទនា (Rough translation: Straight suffering, bro.)
I think my sweat glands will be broken by the time I get back to America.
Love,
Sister Nguyen
P.S. I love Cambodia
I'm sorry I haven't written anything in forever. I've been doing school stuff...
Anyway! We got transfer calls last night, I found out that I am training which means I'll be doing a total of 6 months in this area. I'm excited to show the ropes to a new missionary!
Random Fact:
If I had to describe my area in one word, it would be BIKING. So much biking. It's mainly because we don't live in our area. I'm not complaining, it's keeping me from gaining weight. Love the food here. :)
There's too much to catch up on, but the one thing I want to talk about is our BAPTISM!
Hello! I'm not sure if I have ever said this but I get to do one more transfer with Sister Chanthakhoun whom I absolutely adore! I'm way excited. I'm really loving the mission. Not going to lie, I had a hard time loving the mission for a really long time. There were a lot of days scattered through out mission where I absolutely loved it, but in general I struggled. I think a big part of that was the language barrier. I'm still not perfect at the language but I'm never afraid to talk to people anymore because now I can understand them and they can understand me :)
Last night was way fun. We got a call from the young women's president asking us to come over to eat some food. She was celebrating the fact the she got a new calling to be the District Primary President! Hahaha, the food was SO GOOD. It was like an omelet thing that you put in a piece of lettuce and you dip it into a really good fish sauce with peanuts.
Last week, my favorite investigator came to church. She's super old, but so so so cute. She loves what we teach her and she says every night she hugs the restoration pamphlet after she says her nightly prayers. She's so funny. MIRACLE:
She came to church for her first time and it turns out she's related to some really good members and has a really good friend that's a member. It was awesome to see all that unfold!! Where are we, Utah?!?!
Members for the win!
Story Time
We went to go exercise outside, and we lost our keys! It had the keys to our house AND the church. This is way bad because the church keys are way hard to replace. You can't just make a copy of the Elder's key, you have to get it specially made from another country.
We went back immediately and didn't find it. It was gone. We went back again a few hours later to where we had exercised that morning and I saw about 10 little boys playing with each other. I called them over and I told them we lost our keys. They immediately started looking without me having to ask! Then one of the boys leads us to one side of the Wat where a random guy pulls up on a moto saying, "You're looking for a key, right?" YES. He points us to a groundskeeper who walks into a building and then walks out with our keys! Random little boys for the win!
Our area is AWESOME
I was sad to leave my last area because it was hopping full of investigators. Then I came to this area that I'm in now, and it has always had the reputation for being a hard area. I asked people what made it hard and I never really got a really solid answer. So I decided that's it's just an attitude issue. If you believe you have a hard area, it WILL be hard. So I chose not to believe that I had a difficult area. One of the ways I changed my beliefs about this area was by saying, "This area is about to blow up with investigators, sister!" all the time.
Blow up it did.
When I got here we had 3 investigators. 6 weeks later, we have 18! When I left my previous area that was hopping, I left it with 17 investigators. This supposedly difficult area surpassed
it!! Our investigators are all quality investigators, too. I'm way excited.
If things aren't going how you want them to be, just change your attitude, man.
Cambodian Kids Are The Best Kind of Kids
Me and Sister Chanthakhoun were riding our bikes through a village and there was an 8 year old kid dancing by himself with a bucket on his head.
We were dying.
AND THEN
We were all winding down for the night when we heard a strange and really loud sound outside that we at first thought was a cat. We opened the balcony door from our bedroom to find a kid blowing into a bottle. Then he runs into his house and comes back out with a trumpet.
So loud.
So funny.
I love Cambodia.
Sister Nguyen
So they power went out 9pm on Christmas Eve. #ClassicCambodia
Usually the powers comes back on at one point so we didn't fret. The power goes out all the time in Cambodia. We went to bed at 9:30 as it slowly got hotter, and hotter.
I sleep in a room with 4 other sisters and one of them got way sick and was stuck in the bathroom all night in the heat and complete darkness.
At 2am after sweating like a beast for hours, I said, "Alright ladies. This is the worst." We get up and sit on the balcony because there was a soft cool breeze. I called a senior couple AND THEY PICKED UP! And told them our situation and they came and saved us!! They put us in this empty apartment by the mission home that was SOOOO NICE.
So we only got a few hours of sleep but we woke up in the nicest apartment ever and Sister Lewis fed us a Christmas Breakfast and we got to Skype home in the mission home, and spent our Christmas in the convenience of the city!
It was a blessing in disguise.
I love Cambodia. Power outages and everything.
Sister Nguyen
Christmas Show
I've literally done nothing but sing, sing, sing this last week! We had a super fun music concert/show thing for the members, and then another night for the public. It was so fun and really got me into the Christmas spirit. All the songs were in Khmer so let's say way I'm way grateful I know how to read Khmer script now.
ALSO So many members from my birth area (takhmau) were there participating and they all remembered me! It was so good to see them, I literally thought I would never see them again when I left.
