Sept 9th, 2008

Dear Everyone,
I decided to just talk about some of our investigators. Right now we are teaching a guy named Tuen, Sophiap and two girls named Mann and Muat. I’ll talk about Tuen first. Tuen is like 36 years old or so and he’s a very interesting guy. We found him, or shall I say, he found us after a disappointing visit with a different, dropped, investigator. I was with Elder Douglas at the time and we were riding our bikes down a small path by his house when he called us over and asked us to teach him about God. He was a very strange guy and both Elder Douglas and I thought it would go no where, because the first thing the guy started asking was how many missionaries there were in our church and how many hours a day we go teaching and how much do we get paid. I don’t think he believed us when we told him we didn’t get paid, because he started asking if he could become a missionary too. So Elder Douglas and I taught him a few more times and he’d ask the same type of questions, so we figured he wasn’t really interested. So, when Elder Horton became my companion we didn’t visit him too often. However we started teaching him to pray. And then when we came back the next time he said that he prayed and that he felt something and then he described how he felt the spirit. He then asked us if our church had some holy book or scripture. Naturally, we gave him a book of mormon. The next time we came back he said he had read 2 hours every night for the past 5 days. (Our area is too big to visit everyday). He has now progressed to the point where he is going to get baptized on October 4th. He’s really great now. Sophiap, is very much like a standard Cambodian guy. He is very very kind, but learns very very very slow. He started taking the lessons because he was coming to our English class everyday and he has some member friends. It’s very interesting because some concepts of God being our Father and Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden are so totally foreign to him that we have to take an hour or so to explain and teach pretty simple concepts. God creating the earth took a while as well, most people can accept that as pretty straight forward. However, we have been having him pray and he follows all of the commitments… at first I don’t think he even understood why we were asking him to do all these things like reading a Book and praying to someone you can’t see and then sitting silently and paying attention to how he feels, but he received a witness as well, that this is true. He also committed to baptism, on October 10th. Mann and Muat are two sewing girls, well actually they are about 26 and 28 years old, but they are living at home, unmarried, not too uncommon for Cambodians. They sew all day everyday, and if they don’t sew, they are out in the family’s rice fields. However, they have been taught by like 4 sets of missionaries over like 8 months or so. And now their parents have finally agreed to let them be baptized and go to church. It took a lot of courage for Mann and Muat to ask their parents. In their culture, parents and grandparents hold places of terribly high honor, it is very very very improper to do or ask contrary to the will of the elderly. It was very frightening for them even to ask permission. But they are getting baptized this Sunday. So that’s way exciting! I may have the opportunity to baptize them, which would be way cool! Have a wonderful week and have a great time.
Love, Elder Ormsby