Sam sent the following email and pictures on Sunday, Oct. 27, 2014.  Our comments/questions are in italics.

Hey Everyone,

This past week was better than last week. Still hard in plenty of ways, but missionary-work-wise it was a lot better. I think my companion is really sick.  He's taking medication that has some wicked side-effects. We had regular interviews with the president this week and he said my companion is very sick and to just do what he can do. So I have his OK, and we just do what he can do.

We saw Jessa and the Homers today at stake conference and it is a little surreal to think they were just in Cambodia and are now home.  Carol said that there is just no way to get the full impact of what you see there through pictures.   Yeah, the Homers are right. Like, you just can't capture everything here in a picture or a video or a letter. You've got to be here and live it. Sometimes it's awesome living it and sometimes it's not.

You said last week that you hadn’t had rain for about a week and a half.  It rained a bit more this week. 

We had 26 lessons this week and got 7 new investigators, so number-wise it was a very successful week. I did have a bike crash, and on the way to emailing today I lost my wallet with my church debit card and old byu id card and about 75 dollars in it. So that's a bit of a downer for today. Ughh. I never carry that much cash on me, but I put the 70 dollars in today so I could break the 50 at the grocery store, and then I must have dropped it on the ground, and when we came back to look for it 3 minutes later, it was gone. So someone's taken it and is 75 dollars richer. And I'm fine from the bike crash. But yeah, various things that just make life a little tougher. Like I get that it's all part of the plan, but sometimes I wish the plan was a little different.

I see Elder Yorgason almost every P-Day, and Elder Zierenberg is closer to the city now so I get to see him sometimes. We had an exchange this last friday, and it was good. On Friday and Saturday we got 7 lessons both days. 

Do you have much interaction with your mission president?   Sometimes I interact with the president. I try not to if I can avoid it because he is just such a big presence that no one really knows what to say to him. How is the ward doing at staying for the Sunday meetings? The ward still leaves by 3rd hour. But I've come to expect less from them, so it's not as big of a deal as it used to be. We saw a picture of you talking on a cell phone.  Wow, how is that speaking Cambodian on the phone? It's hard to speak on the phone sometimes, but now it's do-able. If I really can't understand what they're saying I hand it off to someone who can, and if there's no one there to hand it off to I just say, "so you can/can not meet at X time?" cause usually they just go off on an excuse for why they can't meet and they're always busy and can't find 30 minutes in their life. Yet they make it to English class.

English class has gotten a little bit more stressful, because now I'm the only English-speaking person in my district, so I have to teach the class all by myself. So every Wednesday I get to stand in front of a bunch of Cambodians and represent the only English person in the room and straight up teach all by myself for one whole hour. But it's not too bad if I get enough time to prepare for it. It is what it is.

Are you doing the magic trick with the three ropes? I do magic tricks when the moment is right. But then they all want me to teach them and they get upset when I tell them it's no fun if I show them how it's done. Are you having any trouble with mosquitos? I haven't had to worry about mosquitoes at all since I've been here. That's mostly a problem out in the kites--the city isn't too bad. There are tons of bats here though. 

That's all I have. I don't know. I'm a little down right now, probably because of the wallet thing. I know it doesn't really matter, it's just a little frustrating on top of everything else. I'm sure I'll be fine. I just miss home sometimes.

Sam

Mamy Poko Pants. We truly are witnessing the degeneration of society.

Sam sent us the following email & pictures on Sunday, Oct. 19, 2014.  Our comments/questions to him are in italics.

Peter told Sam about the Royals & Giants going to the World Series.  Wow, that sounds like a wicked World Series match up. I wish I could see what goes down.

I hope Bompa Lloyd is doing ok and give him my best.

For me it was a little bit of a rough week. It's been kind of a difficult transition companion-wise. I'm not going to write about it a lot here, but I did in my journal. There are a lot of things happening that aren't necessarily "ideal," but that's the name of the game. I mean, they always say that living with a companion on your mission is great practice for being married. If that's the case, then I'll be well prepared if my wife loves to smack her food, doesn't clean any of her dishes, doesn't shower for weeks at a time (and counting), and urinates all over the toilet seat.......Every time. Besides that there are things that I'd like to change as far as the work goes with Elder Um, but apparently he's very sick, so we have to do all we can.

How are your investigators?  Our progressing investigator pool is a little low, and we threw up a couple of goose eggs this past week. Kind of a tough time. Any more rats in your apartment?  No more rats because we're in the nicer place, but our apartment is getting dirtier than it was before. I'll let you guess why. I'm trying to keep it clean.

I heard that Cambodia gets about 10" of rain in October.  The wettest months are Sept., Oct., and Nov.  I'll bet you are feeling that.  Yeah, this is supposed to be the rainiest month of the year, but up until yesterday it hadn't rained for like a week and a half. But I don't expect that it will give up that easily. It'll probably come back in full force.

[Sam sent us a letter from a little Cambodian girl who wants to have an American pen pal.  We gave the letter to my 11-year-old niece, Isabelle.  Then we asked Sam who Isabelle should address her return letter to.]  If you send that letter back, yeah, send it to the mission home and actually just address it to "Teuk Thla Elders" then maybe inside it you can put a little sticky note that says "give to Ret, the school teacher, in Tuol Kouk Ward" and hopefully it'll find its way back even if I've left. Letters here are terrible. I'm not sure, but I think Emily has tried to send me two letters, but I've only gotten one. I've heard that a lot just get lost in the mail, but some also come like 4 or 5 months late. Don't ask me where they go.

Have you seen Meet the Mormons yet?  Do you know if it will be showing in any Cambodian theaters?  I heard all the missionaries in America got to see Meet the Mormons. No, I haven't seen any of it and I don't know if I will or not. It definitely will not be aired in Cambodian movie theaters. Maybe one day they'll translate it and give it to the churches or something. Movie theaters aren't typical entertainment for people here like they are in America. So they're not very common as far as I know.

One of the new missionaries that came in this last transfer is 6' 9". And people thought I was a monster.

Aside from that, yeah that's about all I've got. A planned baptism for this week fell through because the guy wanted to wait, but we were glad because he is actually legitimate. He's super cool.

[Now Sam briefly describes the following 3 photos he sent:]  

Statue of some guy, somebody's accident, and flaming garbage. Gotta love it.

Have a good week you guys.

Statue of some guy

somebody's accident

flaming garbage

John & Carol Homer arrived in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, last Thursday (Oct. 9) to pick up their daughter, Jessa, who has just completed her 18-month mission there.  The Homers were so nice to deliver a package to Sam for us.  They went to Teuk Thla on Sunday (Oct. 12) and found Sam at church.  They took the following photos and sent them to us.  John also called us on Sunday to tell us that Sam looks great and is doing really well--such a comforting report!

Jessa, John, Carol, & Sam outside the LDS Church in Teuk Thla, Cambodia

Sam with his new Khmae companion.  I think the bag Sam's holding contains ties
John brought from the US.  John had learned that many of the Khmae men don't own
ties, so before his trip, he gathered a bunch of them to donate.  I think Sam
is supposed to give them to his branch president so he can distribute them.

Above & below:  John snapped these candid shots showing Sam engaged in the work!  Isn't he precious?!?!?

Okay~Following are the email and pictures we got from Sam later Sunday night (Oct. 12, 2014).  As usual, I am inserting our questions to him, and italicizing them.

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

Subject: It's still hot in Cambodia

Date: October 12, 2014 10:41:58 PM MDT

Hey Guys,

Did you get the package we sent?  So yes, I got your package from the Homers. Thanks so much, there was a lot of good stuff. The little pouch magic trick especially will get everybody's attention. I don't know if Hi-chews are Asian or not. Have you ever had Milkita candies? They're all over the place here and are pretty good. John said the other day that this is probably the best 2 years...of Nate's life. He's probably right.

So yeah, I'm still in the same area, and it's actually pretty fun because now I'm the only one that knows the area and the people, so instead of being a little sidekick following along, now I get to actually do something that I feel has meaning instead of just tagging along. My companion is 23 years old and he's been a member for 13. He knows a lot of English, but his accent is a little hard sometimes. I think he's excited to have an American companion because then he gets to practice his English. And because he practices his English and told me that when I speak to him he wants me to speak English, my language isn't quite like I think you all think it is. Also, we live in a 2-person house so it's just the two of us. Not four. He does cook pretty good even though I think the sanitation is a bit suspect. I know you keep saying to do everything I know is clean and sanitary, but most of the time I just let him go to town and do his thing. He cooks and I wash everything.

Last Monday's front-page Deseret News headline announced, "Same-sex marriage now legal in Utah."  Is this an issue in Cambodia?  I haven't met anyone who's gay in Cambodia, so as far as I know it isn't really a thing. I don't know, maybe it is.

Do many Cambodians have TV sets and/or cell phones?  I would say about 50-50 have tvs. Even really poor people often have tvs. Their programming is terrible though! They have the lamest shows you've ever seen. And everyone has some type of phone, even if they don't have money on it.

When Elder Yorgason was here before, it was easy to not--I don't know how to say this--not be the one who was working hard, because I knew that everything was going to get done and be all right. Now that he's gone, it's more of a choice to work hard or be a little more lax. Kind of like when a kid goes off to college and makes decisions for him or herself, or a mother bird leaves the nest. So I actually get to choose to work hard and do everything that's good because it's better that way. Cause if I didn't push it and do it maybe now it wouldn't get done.

We just finished conference the other day. I was actually excited to watch it. The Saturday morning session was so good! There is no way that it is that good every time and I just sleep through it.....right? My favorite talks were Lynn G. Robbins, Christofferson, I think it was Uchtdorf. Then Holland's was also good in the later session and Bednar's was good too.

Have you heard anything about the new church movie, "Meet the Mormons"?  I'd be really interested to watch that movie. Hopefully it gets a lot of attention and a lot of good press. You haven't seen it yet?

Ok, I'm in a hurry and have to go. I don't want to turn into that lame, typical missionary that only talks about working on his mission and boring spiritual stuff. Don't let me become THAT guy.

"Here's our friend that heard the whisperings from the Spirit about tithing...

...and another classic sign. No grenades in grocery stores, people."

P.S.  Hey I just watched the trailer for Meet the Mormons. You guys should definitely go see that.

We received the following email from Sam on Sunday, Oct. 5, 2014.  Our questions/statements are in italics.  In his second paragraph, Sam talks about meeting a guy named Brian Melcher.  He was a missionary to Cambodia several years ago.  Peter and I met Brian about 6 months ago and asked him lots of questions about his mission.  He told us he and his family were going to be taking a trip to Cambodia in the fall and that they would try to look Sam up and see how he was doing.  So that visit is what Sam describes in paragraph two.  The photos at the end are some Brian emailed to us.

Hi

General Conference was great.  Some of the speakers spoke in their native tongues--Cantonese, Portuguese, Spanish.  I recall saying something about thinking speakers should speak in their native language. Uchtdorf is still speaking in English, right?

Yeah I saw Brian and his family. He certainly does love his mission. We were at a baptism for 3 people in our ward who just turned 8 and their dads baptized them.  When I first saw him it was pretty funny because I saw these 3 white people [Brian, his wife, & his son] walking up to the church and I was the first one to talk to them and then about 3 minutes later he asked an elder standing right next to me if he knew an Elder Christensen with red hair. The elder's like "ummmmm yeaahhhh."  I thought for sure Melcher was looking for someone else, but then he said no it's me and then I knew who he was.  I guess Melcher served with the stake president who I've previously said is a total boss.  After the baptism they had some little refreshments, but elder Yorgason and I had already started our fast so we told them we couldn't eat anything. But Melcher heard that and he's like "oh man, that's awesome. I'm so jealous of you guys right now." I'm like whyyy...cause we're fasting?

So we got transfer calls last night, but Elder Yorgason got the call to be the next AP on Saturday night. Right now I'm in a tripan and he's getting trained because APs go in a week early. I'm obviously staying in Teuk Thla, but before I was just in TT North. Now there's just one TT because they're taking both the south elders out and putting one pair of sisters back into TT. My new companion is Khmae, I don't really know him yet. We'll switch on Friday. And the two new sisters are both Khmae. I'll be the only one that knows the area at all. I have to learn sort of the south area in these few days I'm with the south elders. It's going to be really really hard. Like the guy who's in TT South right now was saying last night how stressed out he was because he has so many referrals and people he thinks he has to meet and he has no idea how to keep up with it all. Now I have that problem plus all the people in my area. It sounds like the work is just blowing up here, but usually these people wash out after a lesson or two. There were just a lot of contacts because we had a massive English class turn out last week. It will be nice to have sisters back in TT though to help because there are so many rules about meeting with girls that it makes it super hard to do it and since they had taken sisters out last transfer we had to tread water. So yeah, I have to try to find out everything that goes on in their area. My area is easy, I could do north no problem. Their area is hard and their organization of stuff is more than suspect. uhhhhh. I haven't said much about Elder Yorgason, but I'll just say now that he was the best guy I could have ever imagined to be my trainer. He was just a great, great guy. In a lot of ways he reminds me of Peter. He'll be a killer AP. Yeah so this transfer is massive.

When I get back we'll all have to take a family trip to California and we can go hang out in Long Beach for like a day or two and I can speak Khmae, and then we can head up to Mexico town and Emily can speak Spanish. Then we can go to Hermosa and Orange County. That would be super cool.

My final thought is this: If so many people that don't even know us think we're prophets, why do we get cut off on the road so often?

Sam and his companion, Elder Yorgason

Sam with Brian Melcher and family

Elder Yorgason & Sam

We received the following email and pictures from Sam on Sunday, Sept. 28, 2014.  Our questions are in italics.

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

Subject: Pchum Ben is Over

Date: September 28, 2014 11:36:30 PM MDT

Hi all,

That's great that you can go to some tourist destinations on your P-days. Yeah, it's fun to get to do some fun stuff on P days. Last P day we tried to get into the tallest building in Cambodia and get to the top to look over the world. We didn't know if we were allowed in the building or not, but we just tried to play the "white skin" card up and acted like we knew what we were doing. Turns out anyone can go in there, but no one can go up because it's still being constructed on the inside. So we went to the next tallest building and did the same thing. No one questioned us when we went into the elevator and went up. Granted, there weren't a lot of people there because of the holiday, but nevertheless. So the highest level we could get to was 23 to look out. Which I guess was high enough. It was really cool.

It's hard to believe what a great tragedy Pol Pot caused for the Cambodian people.  It's interesting with Pol Pot because I'm pretty sure he's the one that did most of those atrocities, but I was talking to a member a few weeks ago and he was telling me how Pol Pot was bad, but how really most of the people were killed by Vietnamese people out on the provinces. I don't know if that's true or not, but I think that just reflects the general dislike that Cambodians currently have for the Viets because of various political maneuvers that have taken power and land from the Cambodians. And the Cambodians have a corrupt government leader that they're all ticked at anyways. Maybe you guys can read up on that and get more educated on it than I am.

Do you write to your mission president every week?  Yeah we write the pres every week. On a weekly check-in I usually run out of things to tell him: "same as last week, President."

We talked to Homers yesterday about their upcoming trip to Cambodia and I can say that I am a little jealous but will try not to covet. You'll be jealous of the Homers going to Cambodia until you come here and realize how nice America is. I'm a big fan of America since I got here.

Do you actually buy meat at the phsaa?  Yes, mother, we buy meat every week at the phsaa. You're going to love it when you come here. It's quite the experience. It costs $5 for one kilo of pork here. How does that compare to American prices? It's so funny to see a dead pig stretched out on the back of a moto or a whole ton of raw meat squished into somebody's little basket on the front of their bike (not in a bag or anything).

We received the letter you sent us from the little girl who wants an American pen pal.  She seems very sweet!  Do you know her?  Yeah, I've never met that little girl. The teacher gave it to me and he teaches out in the kites. She's probably above average educated. It's really an amazing system that America has in public schools even though they always get wrecked in the media. Because pretty much all they have here that I know of are private schools, and if you can't afford to send your kid there then either your kid doesn't get an education or goes to some other kind of probably bad school. I think that in 50 years or so they will mostly only speak English here.

I told Grammy how I was thinking about apple pie here last week. I also told her how I think my internal clock is telling me it wants it to be fall, but unfortunately it isn't. 

Our pets at home are so spoiled. There are so many skinny cats and dogs here and I just think about how spoiled Willy is.

They announced to us at the Zone Conference that they're opening two more areas for church stuff in Cambodia, which is a pretty big deal. It'll be really hard for them to establish the church there, but they know how to do it. The next transfer has about 30 missionaries coming in, and that's absolutely massive. Everyone is bracing for the impact.

It rained really hard yesterday and the streets flooded again and I've got some pictures that you'll all probably love and show all your friends, so enjoy those

Ok, I guess that's about it. 

We bought 30 eggs today, and that should hold us for the week.

 

Overlooking Phnom Penh from 23 stories

Trying to stay in the wake

Sam and his companion, Elder Yorgason

This morning at the phsaa

This is my zone and the central zone which is the Vietnamese

Sam sent the following email and pictures on Sunday, Sept. 21, 2014.  Our questions are in italics.

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

Subject: Happy Peach Season

Date: September 21, 2014 11:11:27 PM MDT

Hi Family,

I hope you're all enjoying your delicious peaches in this fall peach time. I haven't seen any peaches here but maybe I'll have to look and see if they have any.

I thought of one more thing you could send: another glue stick cap. A little kid lost the first one like my 2nd day in the country.

Also, last week I mailed a letter home from some teacher guy who has a student who wanted to write to someone in America and have a pen pal. She's 11 I think, so I was thinking maybe Isabelle could write her back. It shouldn't get there for about 3 more weeks or so probably, but that should be kind of fun.

Yeah, so for last P Day Elder Yorgason and I went to the Genocide prison that they've turned into a museum. It's called Tuol Sleng or S-21. You can read about it if you're interested. I just realized while we were there and seeing all that sad stuff how hard of a time it is for these people here, and I give them a lot of grief in letters home and stuff, but they're probably doing the best they can. It was so crazy to look at some of the pictures from the mid- late-70s, and lots of things really just don't look that different from what they do now. They just still haven't been able to develop or fully recover from all that yet. It's pretty sad. People have said that Cambodia now is what Thailand was like 30 years ago, and I believe it because Pol Pot really set these guys back. And a few weeks ago we were riding into the mission home and some white guy was like hey elders, so we stopped and he said he was a member but he's been to tons of Asian countries, and Cambodia is the least modernized of all of them (Vietnam, Philippines, etc.). It's just really sad and really unfair what these people have had to go through. And just thinking about them I know that they'll modernize and get to a good place, but it'll probably take a lot of years more. They're on the right path, just a really slow path. And hopefully the church grows along with the country. The October Liahona talks about the growth of the Church in Chile and it's crazy. In like 1970 it had 15,000 members and 10 years later it had like 80-something thousand. I can't even imagine that type of growth happening here, but we'll see. Cambodia has something like 13,000 members right now, but only a generous 3,000 are active.

I guess General Conference comes a little later here than normal, but I'm not sure, so we'll see. 

What's your favorite magic trick right now?  The scarf and thumb magic trick works really well if you use it in the right setting, and oftentimes the dim, poor lighting setting is lots of the type of lighting they have here, so it turns out pretty good.

Do you have sunglasses?  I haven't been wearing sunglasses yet. Do you think I really need to do that or do you just want me to look cool? Do you have a pillow?  I have a pillow. Do you teach English class, and if so, how is it going? Every Wednesday we do English class for an hour and a 30 minute spiritual thought after, then we attack people and try to get them to learn with us. It's kind of a week-to-week things with English turnout, but we probably average 20-25 in our middle class, and they also have a low and a high class too that people come out for. A senior couple from years past created an English lesson thing to do, so we go off of that, but really they are not very good. They have lots of  misspellings and misused grammar, but who's going to be the wiser here in Cambodia?

I know you’ve seen some examples of pretty weak leadership and some absolutely false beliefs among some of the members, but do you feel that you missionaries are, little by little, helping the church and its members progress? Yes, mom, I feel like little by little by little they are progressing. It's just nice to see kids and strong youth coming to church, because I've decided that it'll have to be those kids' kids that make the church strong. I just hope the parents are teaching them well and putting the right knowledge and strong beliefs into them now.

What's the literacy rate in your area?  For my situation, most everybody can read and write. There's plenty who can't, and that's not a huge problem-we just read to them. But the vast majority know how to read, even if their reading comprehension isn't that good. Lots of times we teach people and say something really simply and say it like a million times, and it just doesn't connect with them. I say this in the nicest way possible, but it's just really hard for some of the people to try to think. Example: a week or so ago we taught a kid who's 21 and did the Word of Wisdom with him. Explained what's forbidden to eat like twice, then had him explain what's forbidden to eat and he did it. Then Elder Yorgason asked him if he'd commit to live the WoW 100% and he said yes, and at that exact second he unscrewed his bottle of iced tea that he had and took a sip. So he just didn't get that. And all the time with that guy we explain stuff and ask him if he understands and he says he does. Then we say ok what is it, and he says he doesn't know, so we explain it again and he says he gets it, but he doesn't know. It's just ughh sometimes you just do all you can.

People here aren't really sure what missionaries are, I've found out. We were reviewing lesson 1 with a recent convert family a few weeks ago and they're the super good ones I've talked to you about before, but we were just kind of acting like we were the investigators and they were supposed to explain it to us, but they told us that we were prophets. We're like "no, no, no, we are definitely not prophets." And then another member a few days ago explained to our investigator that we (the missionaries) were apostles. So, yeah, strike 2.

It's Pchum Bun here, which is one of the two biggest holidays. It's essentially a 9-day holiday where there's a mass exodus from everyone in the city out to their province or homeland. Like more than 50% of the city probably goes and everything is closed. So that slows down missionary work, but it's a lot more peaceful and a little bit quieter, so that's welcomed.

Probably all for me. Keep on keeping on,

Sam

S-21 Prison/Museum

Cool picture

Meat at the phsaa

Sam sent the following email and pictures on Sunday, Sept. 14, 2014.  Our statements & questions are in italics.

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

Subject: Hello, hello, Yes it is I, your favorite son

Date: September 14, 2014 11:23:16 PM MDT

Hi guys,

I hope the sports updates I give you aren't too distracting.  You never have to worry about sending too much in the "distractions" category of info, dad. That's plenty welcome. It really makes my heart hurt to see the Angels absolutely killing it and all the things that are happening in baseball. I used to know so much about everything, the whole league, individual players--everything!! Now I know nothing. But I've been thinking the past few weeks about how much I love reading and learning about sports. Man, that is really what I love to do (you know, aside from spending time with family and preaching the gospel and etc yada yada). So maybe I seriously should consider some type of career that I could be surrounded in sports. I don't know, I was just thinking about that a little bit ago.

Do you get a little saddle sore from riding your bike so much?  Yes, thank you for asking, it is tough to be in a saddle all day. I sit on that bike a lot. But it's great when I get to go in the house at night and not have to ride it for 10 hours or something like that.

Church yesterday was pretty good. Because basically none of our main investigators showed up, so we didn't have to worry about things running smoothly or having a teacher or making sure people weren't peacing out before church ended. So yes, it was easier and less stressful than most weeks, but we didn't really accomplish the desired goal of getting people to church either. So we kind of won and lost. We have a couple investigators who are really good, and a couple that we dropped last week and a couple more we will drop this week. Most of the contacting just comes in down time while we're fixing bikes or something of that nature. Sometimes you just go up to people and ask them a random question that you already know the answer to and then you say oh, ok. Well actually we're missionaries from the Christian church...

Are you still liking your new apartment?  The new place is still nice. We're trying to keep it clean, but it's still miles nicer than the first place. 

We were wondering if your rice is white rice or sticky rice or something different.  The rice is just rice. I guess it's probably sticky rice. I don't know. It's white.. 

How is the sun? I need to start putting on more sunscreen more often than I am now. I think I've gained a few more freckles.

Do you have an exercise period each day or does all your bike riding fulfill your exercise quota?  We're supposed to exercise every morning from 5:30-6 AM. But oftentimes I don't quite make it up quite at exactly 5:30, and then I just write in my journal what happened from the day before. And we definitely ride the bike plenty. If I see myself starting to get fat, I'll start exercising more. 

In the photo you sent last week, how heavy were the barbells you were lifting?  I think that bench press was only about 60-something pounds. I did 35 reps, but back in the day 60 pounds was absolutely nothing.

[We sent Sam some pictures of Skibby playing powder puff flag football last week.]  Those were some sweet action shots of Skib. She's such a baller. 

We are trying to get our ducks to fly away but they keep coming back...  I hate to be the one to say I told you so with the mallards, but.....

What kind of music do the Cambodian people like, and do they play instruments?  They like a lot of weird music here. Actually, a lot of people are into David Archuleta even if they aren't mormon or know about the church. They kind of like that romantic-type of song. Kind of like Engelbert Humperdinck meets the 90s kind of thing. And usually they're a few months or years behind what's popular in the United States. They can kind of sing, but not usually because most of them can't read music, but they do their best. No one plays instruments that I've seen. I don't really share my talents, but I did get to play the piano by myself in the sacrament room this past week and that was fun. But all I remember is like the first two lines of tons of songs. That's it.

I meant to tell you a story of what happened last week at church. So the teenage girl who usually conducts the hymns wasn't there, and there was nobody to fill in leading the congregation, and so since I was sitting on the stand because Elder Yorgason pushes buttons to make the piano play itself. So when the first song starts they're like ok go, go, go. Go conduct the hymn, so I'm like ok that's fine, no problem. The first one is their  favorite song--I need thee every hour--and they sing it at least once or twice each week without fail, and it's the one I know the best. So I led it and they sang and it was fine. Then after that we had the sacrament hymn, so I got up to conduct, got ready, and started trying to sing it the best that I could and lead also. But about halfway through the first verse when I looked up at the congregation no one---NO ONE----was singing. I was like oh crap that's embarrassing, I must have been conducting and singing through a longer introduction to the song. Then it kept going and I realized that wow, nope this is the song, just nobody knows it so nobody is singing. And usually Elder Yorgason sings loud to help people out, but this week there was only only hymn book on the stand and I was using it. It was sooooo awkward of 3 minutes of listening to the piano play, trying to lead and sing, and being the only one doing it. Ugghhh

Then on the bike front this week I told you last week how my pedal and arm came off, so I had it getting fixed by some members and they gave me a temporary bike to use. On Tuesday I was riding their dumb bike and hear a loud pop and shoot, yeah the tire's popped. Like the whole tire not just the inner tube. After a while we got it to a repair place and they put a new tire and inner tube on for 8 bucks, which is average but a little high here. I was pretty mad because that was 8 dollars for a new wheel on a bike that wasn't even mine. Then when I ended up getting my bike back a few days ago i had to pay 3 dollars for it and I'm not sure they actually fixed the problem. Then last night we were riding home to end the day and my front tire went flat. We got to a place to fix it a little later and it had 3 holes in the inner tube, so they had to replace it. The couple that runs the place charged us 3.75 for it, which is a pretty big ripoff I guess. Like twice as much as it should be. But I was in a compromising situation because they'd already fixed it, so I had to pay it. I was trying to think how Jesus would act in a situation that he gets ripped off big time and gets a weak excuse that the inner tube came from Thailand so it's better. We were talking about it last night and figured he'd probably just take getting ripped off. But then for personal study this morning Elder Yorgason was reading in Acts 5 about a couple that ripped Peter off and lied to him about how much something was, and he stretched forth his hand and struck them dead or something like that. So we figured maybe that's how Jesus would have handled that situation. So we had every right to be mad that they ripped us off. I'm kind of joking.

There's a lot of good things to share, but if I tell you all of them, no one will be excited to see me come home. So I'll hold off. 

But I will tell you about one guy who was a 1st counselor in the Bishopric about 10 years ago and is now basically inactive. He comes once every 2 or 3 months. We visit him when he can and he came to fast sunday last week. But he told us a miracle that happened with him when he came: So he came and was apparently planning to pay tithing, but the Holy Ghost whispered to him "don't pay tithing" because if he did he wouldn't have enough money to buy gas for his moto to get back home." So he heeded the advice of the Spirit and didn't pay the tithing. What do you know, that Spirit was right! He had to buy gas to go back home. What a miracle. His testimony of the power of the Holy Ghost grew. Brilliant. Also, he called on himself to share the closing prayer, and he asked to bless all of the less actives that they could come back to the fold.

Ok guys, that's probably it for me. I hope you're having a good week and surviving school, work , children's choir, missions in California, etc.

Sam

The water pictures are when it rained last Monday and we were driving home.