Sam sent the following email on Monday, June 23, 2014:

Hello Family,

Wow, Skibby is almost out of here [Skibby is going to Peru for 2 1/2 weeks in July to do humanitarian service with a youth group]. She'll be eating third world food and living the third world life before I am. Too bad that I have to miss out on the World Cup fever when people who have never in their lives cared about soccer care for about 3 weeks. That's fun to be a part of.

Yeah, I don't know for sure what to do with the pictures thing. Emily said she just keeps hers on her card and hasn't run out of space yet. A back up probably would be nice though. I would be worried about banking on being able to use a cloud dropbox thing.

We are going to do a skype TRC tonight for the first time with a member in Cambodia. It's going to be so impossible to understand what they're saying. The old Thais leave today, so we'll officially become the elderstatesmen of zone 30. There's a guy in here from Thailand and he's taught us how to say a few things, so next time you see Kelly you'll have to tell him kon bobappobo, which means crazy person and ahhhluaahhn, which means "let's fight." So if I run into any Thai people in Cambodia I should be set.

They're having mission president seminar here right now, so the main building (1m) is pretty much on lockdown. They've quartered off the cafeteria so that the rich can't see the poor eat. (We are the poor). Which means the lines for food now take about 20 minutes to get into the cafeteria sometimes. On the flip side, I was in 1m for singing yesterday and I got to see how they'd set up the cafeteria for the luncheon, and it was amazing. Fine glass dining ware, table cloths, little pastries sitting out waiting for the arrival of the mission presidents. It's truly "how the other half lives." Jk, it's fine.

But for the choir we practiced from tuesday-sat last week for an hour and a half to 2 hours. We sang in the special sacrament meeting yesterday the "Have I Done any Good" song. As far as I know, all of the Q of the 12 was there and the first presidency was there except Packer. Yesterday I distinctly remember seeing Richard G scott, Monson, and Uchtdorf. But since you're not supposed to stare, I only got about 10-15 seconds worth of looking before we filed out. And today this morning we sang for their meeting that Eyring spoke at. This time I was on the stand and was about 12 inches from Holland and Anderson. When we finished singing, Holland gave us two thumbs up and a "Terrific!" We sing the next two days, too. M. Russell Ballard spoke to us last tuesday.

Zierenberg and I have little tie competitions in here every day where we ask some pairs of sisters to say which tie they like better. I was destroying him until they started giving him mercy victories. But I still win most days.

We hosted again last week, but that'll probably be the last time. Everything in here is about the same as always. Janice Kapp Perry and her husband spoke at last night's devotional. I know they came last year and that Emily really liked them. They were very funny, especially the husband. 

Finnish is a much harder speaking language than Cambodian, I'm sure of that. But according to a book we have, Cambodian has the hardest alphabet in the world. But I guess it's like Bompa said to me once that an old guy told him when he first got into Mexico that Spanish wasn't hard because all the little children could speak it, and even the dogs could understand it.

Peace and love you guys!