Clint Mission #23 6/22/98
Dear Family,
I guess I’ll start my letter it’s P-Day, and we finished our last appointment and want to go else where but the rain is coming down and we can’t leave the church.
Busy week. We were visited this week by Elder Richard E. Cook. A general authority and his wife. We met and had a great mission meeting with him. It was like Dansie Ranch when Elder Kerr came, awesome to have a General Authority all to yourself. A General Authority and his wife, 20 missionaries, Pres. and Sister White, and 3 couples. He gave us constructive criticism and then really gave this awesome talk, and then we shared testimonies for an hour. He also toured the mission, the property where the Stake Center ( the lst church building in Cambodia) will be built, and also our houses. ( We had a clean-up day the day before) Elder Cook is now traveling with Pres. and Sister White as they visit the couples in Vietnam, Laos, and Burma.
Elder Lloyd and I prepared a talk for the meeting with Elder Cook. We talked about getting the new members callings in our branches. We worked hard and had a good 15 min. talk prepared. The night before the AP called and said our time had been cut to 5 min. We felt bad because we had to use our personal study time to prepare and if we would have known we would have had more study time.
As Elder Cook shared with us stories about his Mission President experience in Mongolia, his testimony, and encouragement. I was really impressed and like always with missionary work found myself wanting to be better. Then we had testimony share for an hour. I especially liked Elder Harmon’s testimony about the importance of finding families. We had helped a family have their first Family Home Evening the night before. When they got there the family had written out a program of who would do what, made a dessert and wanted to play a game. Elder Harmon was really excited and saved the program made by the family.
During this testimony meeting, I really felt the spirit strong. It was a feeling in my heart, in my chest, the burning feeling of the Spirit. As someone was talking I realized I was really feeling good and I stopped listening for a minute and thought about these feelings. I felt the spirit again today and almost everyday as I share the Book of Mormon, Teach about Christ and bear testimony. It is so awesome when your trying your hardest , the investigator is trying to learn, and the Spirit is there. They get excited and understand!
Yesterday at church I really tried hard to get all of our investigators a friend, someone to sit by, and feel comfortable. I was really excited to hear that Luu Thom will receive the Aaronic Priesthood next week and baptize his 17 year old daughter and his middle son. It is so great to see this family from the first, to now be excited about the gospel. Every time Luu Thom and I meet I just have the uncontrollable ear to ear grin.
We have also been working hard on getting maps of our area so that we are familiar with where everyone lives. Each little area has a police station and we go find it and then try to motivate them into letting us have a copy of the map. We usually have to grease the pump a little “ If you let us take the map and copy it we will bring you extra copies”. . . On one of these map missions we went clear out past Charum peav to a little town called Phum Cam to get a map. Phum= city. Cam=Islam. Islam City and they have a India looking temple facing Mecca the works. While we were there it was prayer time and all the men in the village were headed for the temple. After copying the map, we both (Elder Heywood and I)
blew a tire on the rocky road. We left our bikes with a guy on the side of the road fixing tires and walked to the map place and back. It was quite an adventure but we got a really good map. Hopefully no one will have to do that again.
We are trying a new food schedule this week.
Breakfast = French toast
Lunch = Rice with Cambodian style stir fry
Dinner = 2 kinds of lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, pineapple, bananas
It is good healthy food and we won’t have to shop for much on P-day. Today I bought ice-cream, orange juice, and a small thing of cheese. Yesterday, Elder Lloyd, Elder Heywood, and I had the Rogers family “ Toads in the Road” for Sunday Breakfast. Please send me the recipe for eyekuken. Dad, I forgot!
Hope things are well and everyone is enjoying the summer. How is the pool?
One of the things Elder Cook left us with is the Gospel Works! I too know this as I have seen my life change and lives of others here in Cambodia.
I think last week I reported we wanted 5 people to commit to baptism. Well it was a difficult week. Sophael was sick. Hout went out of town. The others we did not get far enough on the discussions. We didn’t get any one committed. We had a good planning session yesterday for this week and will go after it again.
Thanks for the paper and English ammo, Mom! I love all of you and thanks for the letters, and the good Lake Powell report! I sure look forward to the E-mail.
Keep up the good work!
Love your Son, Brother, and Missionary,
Elder J. Clinton Rogers
PS We are teaching a young guy named Somnang. His name means Lucky. Saturday afternoon while looking for Lucky, we found his friend’s named Sit ( Saturday) and Sitit (Sunday) and they want to study the gospel-----true story.