Daniel's 3rd Epistle July 15th, 2008

Greetings from Cambodia,
Well, another week has gone by, and I’ve now been in the country for about a month. It's kinda scary. I feel like I just got here. But anyways, I'd like to relate some of the experiences I've had this week. Well unfortunately the food here as caught up to me, I'm developing my "iron stomach" as the missionaries here put it. They tell me most of them spend the first few months here sick, but then they all get well and can eat anything. I only threw up a couple of times. But I'm getting over it pretty quick.
Well, for my first story: We had our air conditioner broke, which here is quite the problem, so we called to get it fixed. We had to move a lot of furniture and such in our bedroom and. . . .(get ready for this mom) there was a giant spider/tarantula on our wall. This thing was like the size of my hand. . .oh my gosh it was so big. I absolutely hate spiders more than anything else, but I think my parents would have easily fallen over to see such a big spider in a house. We tried to smash it with a sandal, but it fell off the wall and ran, very fast I might add, under one of the beds. So we spent the next 15 minutes trying to kill this huge spider. . . my companion eventually killed it and removed it, while I. . . went into another room. :) Oh, one thing this culture is still working on is asking for special orders at restaurants, for example: In Phnom Penh, they have a KFC, which is so cool. One of the elders went in and asked for a chicken sandwich, but asked them to leave the tomatoes out. They responded with: 'sorry, the sandwich is made with tomatoes.' I laughed like crazy when I heard that, because it's very much like that in this culture. Oh like a few days ago, we were calling to rent a car for traveling to Phnom Penh, and my companion asked if we could get two cars to drive the group of people, so it wouldn't be so packed in the car. The Cambodian car rental service replied back: 'okay, maybe you call back later.'
Oh, good news. . . my bike had to be fixed (long list of troubles) and it's all better. For 1/2 a day my companion and I had to ride on the same bike. . . very interesting. Speaking of which, most people here drive around little "vespa"type motorcycles, if you can call them that. But they usually have anywhere from 3-5 people on these tiny little things that just wiz in and out of the thousands of other bicycles that share the streets. It's really funny to watch.
Well, we are now having great times here, we are teaching a lot of families, some of which are struggling to make ends meet, but they have such strong faith. We went and visited a new investigator we found, when another appointment fell through, her name is Sovahn, she's so cool. She said that she had been to other christian churches and didn't understand why there were so many churches and quit going to them because she was so confused and such. We just recently got in contact with her husband who was very much into the idea that "i'll believe what I can see."(fairly common here). But after teaching him for a while about the restoration and faith and prayer, he was anxious to meet with us again. They are such a sweet family.
I am so grateful to be here, we are doing great and the work is moving along. We are just trying to pick up the pace a little bit more, trying to do a little more each day. I love you all, sorry I didn't have any miraculous stories, but I guess such is life... for now :) I can't wait to hear from you again. Love you always.
Elder Ormsby