Sam sent the following email and pictures on Sunday, Nov. 2, 2014:

From: Samuel Christensen <samuel.christensen@myldsmail.net>

Subject: Hi Guys, I'm fine so don't worry too much about me

Date: November 2, 2014 11:38:33 PM MST

Heyo,

Yeah I know that my email last week wasn't as upbeat as sometimes, but I'm fine. 

I got the group letter and it was fun to get accounts of their families from each of them. That's so crazy that Emily is going to BYU. By the time I get back, she'll have been there longer than I was.

Halloween was normal. No one celebrates it here. One guy thought it was Thanksgiving.

There's really not too much to report out here. We have a couple of solid investigators, and a lot of not solid investigators. So there's that. 

At sacrament meeting yesterday I decided that I'd do something for the good of the ward and tell the little girl who pushes the button to make the piano play itself to go to the slowest recommended tempo. Because every single time we sing a song, the tempo is automatically set too fast and it sounds horrible because they can't keep up with it. So I told her to go to the lowest one, because when I've controlled the organ I've found that that's best. But when the opening song came and it was playing through the introduction the first few notes I heard i was like ohhhhh crap. It's wayy too slow. But shoot, she didn't know that. I don't know if she went slower than the recommended or not, but it was pretty dang slow. The lady conducting did, though, and she decided to speed it up on her own and take it at her own pace. So she was trying to lead everybody and go fast while the piano was going slow and it sounded so bad. I just sat there in shame. Eventually the conductor lady went and turned the piano off and they made an announcement that they were going to sing the last 3 verses without accompaniment. The other two songs were fine though. But sometime this week I'm going to find out the ideal tempo for all of them and write it down on the page that we've already made for them that has correlating page numbers. Sometimes it's like the law of Moses here where they're not ready for the higher law, so you've got to spell out every little thing for them.

And fast Sunday meetings here are the same as they are in America where certain people get up every single month and as they're walking up you're thinking "no, no, no, sit back down"--those people that you can take to the bank because you know there's no way they're not going to impart of their wisdom to the congregation. Like, the 2nd counselor's wife always gets up and goes forever. She thinks she's so funny. And people like her here love to say how they've been members for so long, and it seems like they're bragging about it. They're like "yeah, been a member since 2005. long time." So honestly everyone in the congregation is shuddering when she gets up and the bishop you can tell is getting agitated, and the only person smiling is the second counselor either because he's scared of her, or he thinks that what she says is actually worth something. But I timed it and she only went 6 minutes, so it could have been worse.

I can't think of much else to say other than don't worry about me, I'm doing fine. I told Ross I probably complain more on this email thing than I would in real life.

Thank you guys. I miss you and love you.

This is a water label that Elder Yorgason and I always used to laugh about.

That's supposed to be a cheesy smile, but instead I just look like a maniac.

 

One more label:  Serve well, everybody.

This is typical Cambodian construction.