This is our week to be on foot, so we anticipate street
contacting a lot of white people and turning them over to their respective
English speaking missionaries. I feel like the weeks we don't have the car,
we're pretty much full-time referral-giving missionaries for whoever's area
we're in at the time. It's great for them, it's slow for us. On occasion I wish
there was just a Cambodian area where all of them were required to live and
then every door we knocked on would be someone we can potentially teach.
Obviously that's the definition of segregation and not okay on so many levels,
yet that thought has crossed my mind. Apparently walking is getting to my head
a little, probably because I forget what it feels like to exercise.
This past weekend was conference weekend, but only for us
and 1 of our investigators. They broadcast conference in about 10 different
languages, but Khmer isn't one of them. The LDS website indicates conference
will be available in 80 more languages between 2 days and 2 weeks after it
airs. So assuming Khmer is one of those languages, we'll be able to watch
it/listen to it with our investigators and members somewhere between today and
the end of April.
Conference was bomb-diggity though; we got to watch the
Saturday afternoon session with Brenda at her house on her home computer. I'm
pretty sure hers is one of the first computer prototypes and belongs in a
museum with other fossils of a similar age. It doesn't help that she's a Torch
user (which she explained by saying that it was faster than IE. Well, yes.
Everything is faster than IE. That's like saying I choose to ride a snail to
work everyday because it's faster than a banana. While true, this statement
disregards your other options, namely a Ferarri (mozilla), or an Aston Martin
(chrome). I would like to say that I converted her, but I'm pretty sure part of
her rational in browser choice has to do with that she likes the colors of the
torch desktop icon, and I just don't know how to argue with that).
I ended up downloading chrome for her and that only took 40
mins (surprising because I'm pretty sure the innards of her PC look like a
scene from the Flintstones, where there's little cavemen who have to hand draw
every webpage before its available for our viewing). We started the second
session 40 mins late, and it froze about every 5 mins or so (which provided for
snack/bathroom breaks) so by the time it reached 3:00 pm and the computer froze
for good, we had missed the last 3 talks of the session. But it was probably a
good thing for Brenda, who was tiring quickly and might have resolved to never
attend church if we'd ended up doing the full 2 hour session with her. A lot of
it went over her head, but in her closing prayer at the end of the lesson she
said, "thank you we got to watch the conference and learn
about...Jesus." So evidently she understood the overall purpose of the
talks, even if some of the words confused her.
And of course, that is our purpose and goal as missionaries:
to invite others to come unto Christ. I loved Ballard's talk where he
'followed-up' on two previous talks. That's something I'm working on being
better at as a missionary. It's difficult when you teach 20 lessons a week to
all different people with whom you leave different commitments. Sometimes I
show up at a return appointment and get their previous lesson confused with 10
others and don't remember exactly what I committed them to do. But if we want
these people to progress in receiving the restored gospel and coming unto
Christ, we need to help them make and keep commitments so that they'll be
prepared to make and keep covenants. And I can't help them do so unless I'm
following up with previous commitments, and helping them understand the
connection it has to their personal spiritual growth.
Hey, this week get your PMGs so we can start like a book
club next week. How cute would that be? Families that study together are silly
putty together (and who doesn't want that?)!
I've been in the WA-TAC 45 weeks, and the church is true
here too!
-Q
(just kidding. Sister McQuivey. But look how well that last
line rhymed)
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