Dear Elder Slavens

Sunday, October 9, 2016

22 liters of a diet soda that will remain nameless

We all know it's you, Diet Coke.

I love you, Diet Coke.

I've moved up in the world. I have finally gotten a companion who was born and raised in Cambodia. His name is Elder Ouk and he is tiny. He is 5 foot 4, and 103 pounds. He has been a member for 3 years, he was raised in an orphanage owned by a member of the church, and he teaches me how to play cards like old Cambodian dudes and speak like an angry Cambodian woman.

This week was wacko nutz. We had a million meetings and like no time to do anything. But all the meetings were way fun and GenCon'16 was way good. Especially the West Valley Choir. How cool were they?!?!??! There's not one weird looking guy in the whole choir!

We watched Conference at the church. The 3 Americans watched up stairs while all the Cambodians watched the translated one downstairs together. I brought a pillow, blanket, and mattress from our house and set up fort.

Next week we got even more meetings. Crazy Crazyy.

If you don't have to go to meetings, shout hurray.

Ok Bye.

We had buffet sushi

My new crush: A grandma

This van had 25 people packed into it

Meeting number 1

Meeting number 2

Watching conference

The best talk from conference

Elder Uhi left me

My new companion

Just kidding. This is him. His name is Mara Ouk. You should all send him a letter.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B17amY5DCedhX1RaWU1ndVlodVE?usp=sharing

Sunday, October 2, 2016

My next companion is Cambodian

This week was a(nother) holiday in Cambodia. Called Pshoom Ben. I think it is to celebrate your ancestors? Not sure. Let's just go with that. It's to celebrate your ancestors. And it is SUPER dumb. Everyone goes to their hometowns. Which means a ton of people leave. But also a ton of people come back who have been gone forever. So we got to make new friends.

All of our new friends were drunk.

Holidays in this dang country are just drinking days. It is so awesome. Alcohol is crazy, man! But drunk people are super fun. Me and Elder Osborne have a competition going to see who can get the most shirts from drunk people. They love giving you their shirts when they are drunk. We both are tied 1-1.

We have one dude named Nevin who came out with us all day during the holiday and he laughed like a girl the whole day. He wasn't drunk, I think he was just drunk in love, I guess.

We had a party eating baby duck eggs (what is that called? Bloot or somehing like that? Fertilized duck eggs?) with a dude, and he came to church cuz it was so fun and he was impressed with how many I could eat.

Our mission president told us to take one day to clean our house since everyone was gone and there was nothing to do, and so we enlisted the help of our neighbors who are all 6 and had them scrub-a-dub dub our house for us.

Ok cool, picture time

We had a dope nas party

We ate way more noodles then one man needs

And I totally caught him reading our Book of Mormon! Nice try....

Me and Elder Osborne were comps 4 a day

When walked to the house that was flooded in water

Kids were playing in that sick water. No wonder they always have extra toes.

Looks... appetizing

Kids being kids

Dinner

The new instagram face- Pig face (to rival 'duck face')

I made a soup out of a fish head for a branch party. Doesn't it look GOOD?!?!

We had a mission wide movie night, and I got to re-unite with my fave companion ever

This was where everyone ate my fish head soup

They all hated it and we threw it away lol

Sunday, September 25, 2016

Loaves and Fishes Upgrade: Rice and Noodles

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7E-PDYqOyc

The church's history in Cambodia. Brought to you by a Cambodian woman. I wish I knew Cambodian. Then I could tell you what it says. But I don't.

You wanna hear what happened this week? I'll tell you what happened this week!

NOTHING!

Yet everything...

It all started with an idea. That is how it always starts. An Idea. The Idea was: Zone Unity. Missionaries are broke up into units called zones. There are like 25 people in a zone. And the zone I am in consists of American people, Cambodian people, and Vietnamese people. We are the only zone with Vietnamese people. They don't know Cambodian. The Cambodians don't know Vietnamese. How in the monkey's butt are you supposed to make them be friends?!?!?!?

I'll give you a hint.

Yogurt lids+origami+flonkerton= OLYMPICS

So we did the Olympics. We downloaded the song and put it on repeat the whole day. We had games such as "Vegetable derby racing" and "eat a doughnut on a string" and "water balloon volleyball" and "human foosball" and much much more. We had an opening and closing ceremony. There was even a miracle. We didn't bring enough food for the lunch, but then somehow everyone was full.

Then for the rest of the week we built a house for a lady in our branch who has no legs. She scoots around everywhere on her butt. But the house she is in now has all the ledges she has to lunge over and junk, it's just way too hard for her. So we decided to fill her house up to get rid of the ledges. No more ledges! It took forever. But is was way funner the funnest.

Bey Bey

The opening ceremonies (The tilde over the E is for style)

First there was a human tunnel

Then on with the games! First was the vegetable derby

Then a High School Musical roller coaster

I wish we had pine wood

The team to get it down the ramp the fastest won! Each companionship represented one of the 25 provinces in Cambodia.

This looks like a pokemon

This one had a little person in it

Remember in Shrek when they rode in that big onion carriage?

HUMAN FOOSBALL!!!

Water balloon volleyball

Next was the mummy wrapping challenge!

And then a Cambodian game where you try not to laugh while saying animals names and not showing your teeth, and if you re-name an animal or you laugh or show your teeth, you get SLAPPED IN THE FACE with baby powder

And then the doughnut eating competition

And then the closing ceremonies

And then we met some weird dudes

And then we tried to visit this lady's family, but her house flooded

They had to bring in a boat

This is Elder Hale. He lives in my house. And he convinced all these kids that he could actually rip off one of his thumbs. And they all tried to do it too. They asked me to pull on their fingers as hard as I could until it came off.