Tuesday, November 12, 2013

I'm Full time Cambodian and I love it!

November 12, 2013
The Twins are doing well! I've been working them hard so I'm lucky if one of them stays awake during planning at night. It doesn't help that they're battling a 2 hour time difference (1 for utah, 1 for daylight savings time) and that all 3 of us have some sort of variation of the same flu/cold. But we're missionaries and we don't have time to be sick so we're pushing through!

We've got a huge reunion planned this Saturday for the old Cambodian Branch which lasted 26 years and has been dissolved for 8 years. The most updated ward list is from 2004, so most of the phone numbers and addresses are totally incorrect. But we're working through the list and hoping for attendance of 100 of the original 600 members. We've called every phone number on there and are driving around to the addresses to deliver fliers which we made inviting everyone to the reunion. One side is in English, the other side is in Cambodian, because in most of the households there's a mix of some people (the parents) who can only read Cambodian, some who can only read English (the kids) and some who can't read either (the grandparents).
 My previous comp Cassell and I worked super hard on those fliers, including meeting with this monk Chao 4 different times to check our grammar and translation. He pretty much laughed and said, "who translate this for you? This make no sense! This funny!" to which I held my head in shame and admitted most of it was Google translate. According to him, our finished product "makes much more sense for Cambodian people" so at least we have that. We're hoping to meet with the monk weekly for language study help.
At this point with the reunion, we've gotten so many 'maybe's that we could end up with 10 people there or 200. We're hoping it's closer to the latter but there's no way to no for sure until it comes. All I know about Cambodians is that they don't ever keep appointments or schedule anything, but maybe if enough people give them enough reminders, they'll come to a party.
We're in a brand-new apartment so our bishop, Relief Society President, and Elders Quorum President have been trying to acquire us furniture. We each have a bed and a dresser, and dishes in our kitchen, so that's pretty much all we could ever need! Minus a microwave. I'm now learning how much I rely on a microwave every day now that we don't have one. But our bishop assures us one is coming  around the corner, so I guess this is the perfect time to exercise some faith.
Tell Tutu I got the package with the socks, the Target gift card, the Halloween package, and the one with the 6 foot tall pumpkin man. Thank you so much!

My new address is 7227 13th ave E apt # 21 Tacoma Wa, 98404
Love you all!


-Sister McQuivey

P.S.  As it turns out, they sell hair dye at the dollar store so obviously I had to try that out. I died my hair red for Halloween! I was missionary Jessie from Toy Story 2. I'll send pictures next week. Also it's permanent so that's interesting. I'm officially a Weasley!

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