A Historic First

March 4, 2014

On Saturday, the first Cambodian-called missionaries in this mission in 10 years had a baptism; the first Cambodian baptism since the Washington Asian branch dissolved 10 years ago. 

We're also the first ever Cambodian-called Sister missionaries in the WA-TAC, in the entire state of Washington, and in the USA. All other Cambodian speaking missions in the US only have Elders.

The entire baptism service was in Cambodian: all the talks, songs, and prayers. The only things that were in English were the baptism itself, the conducting of the service, and the testimonies from members.

Our mission president came to the baptism and took some pictures with us and Say (our recent convert) so expect those to end up on the blog within the next week. It was a pretty moving service, very powerful to see so many Cambodians drive an hour to come to a stranger's baptism just so that they could support him and show him that there are others in the church that speak his language. Say lives in Lacey, which is out of our zone and our area. It's about a 35 minute drive on the freeway (that is if I'm driving. It's 45 minutes if Sister Dunster's driving, and 25 if Sister Walker's driving). It takes a lot of time to drive there and back every Sunday for church, as well as our lessons which are usually on Saturdays. Most Sundays we are up by 6:30, leave the house a by 8, stay for 3 hours of church in the Lacey 1st ward from 9-12 (where Say attends), drive back to Tacoma, go directly to 3 hours of church the the Mountainview Ward from 1-4, come home and change  Say knows hardly any English, so when we're not there to translate for him at church, he just sits and listens to the speakers and doesn't understand anything, but feels the spirit and tries to teach himself out of the scriptures.