Week #5: General Conference

Hey everybody!

    General Conference was awesome!  And its been a great week for our investigator too! Our lessons with Lookpu Hang are continuing to go well. Lookpu went to General Conference this weekend and I think he had a good experience. I say "I think" because he really isn't very responsive and gives short answers, but he's not really falling asleep anymore which is good news. Often times we'll explain what a principle is and the whole time he will be nodding and saying,"khnom yuul" (I understand) but then he'll ask what we're talking about. For example, before we gave him the baptismal challenge yesterday, we explained what baptism was and why it is important. The whole time he indicated he was following along and understood what we were saying. Then we gave him the challenge (which was good to finally get out there because two appointments ago, right in the middle of me giving him the challenge, he interrupted us and said he had to go to work) Anyways...we gave him the challenge and this time we were able to say the whole thing and he was like, ""khnom ot skoal boncromuktuk" (I''m not familiar with baptism). Grrr. Also we're having a hard time getting him to keep his commitments. Going to General Conference so far has been the only one he's kept and I think a large reason why was that we offered to come pick him up. However our teacher said that both these issues were pretty typical of Cambodians, that they say they understand but often they don't and they often don't keep their commitments. We said we'd call him this week to remind him to pray about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon and to remind him to continue to read. So it probably doesn't sound like it's been a great week for our investigator, but comparatively so it really has been. We are communicating so much better and we're hardly looking at our notes.  It's just so amazing!

    Sunday, we had an awesome fireside!  We had a retired BYU and NFL football player who now does sports broadcasting for CBS come speak to us. How cool is that?!? He started with his experiences as a broadcaster and how he gives his mission 100% of the credit to his abilities there. He shared how he has been continuing to preach the gospel by doing promotions like having the missionaries sing before a baseball game or how he started a program for Orphans in Philadelphia with the slogan "forever families", or how he was able to promote the mormon tabernacle choir and the MTC while covering the Salt Lake Olympics. He actually showed us these clips of him which was awesome! You could even say we were watching TV! Then, he shared an amazing story from his mission in South Dakota where he taught a man named Bob in his store at 6:30 every morning and whom he eventually baptized. Bob was at the fireside with his wife and his two daughters all to whom he was later sealed to. His daughters were there with thier husbands and kids to whom they were also sealed. This just shows the ripple effect that converting one person can have. He challenged each of us to go out and find our own Bob. It was so cool!

    General Conference was wonderful.  Nice to have a change of pace too. We ate, watched conference, went on temple walks, and had Conference reviews. It was a much needed break!

    Health issues continue to be an obstacle for our district. One my companions had a cyst which he ended up needing surgery to remove. Then another Elder has been having mini seizures. Often times they go unnoticed but I was talking to him one time and his eyes and mouth just started twitching rapidly for a few seconds.  When it was over he couldn't remember what had happened in the last thirty seconds. Scary. He's been going to tons of appointments, checkups,MRI, CAT scan, brainwave tests, seeing a neurologist, but we fasted for him and gave him a blessing.  He seems to be doing much better and it looks like the doctors are figuring out what to do to fix it which is great news for him! Then, his companion had an ingrown toenail/infection on his foot which he got surgery on yesterday and they said that if he hadn't come in when he did, even waiting just a couple more days, they would have needed to amputate his toe! I don't really know what to make of all this, but I say better to get stuff fixed now than in Cambodia!

    Got to go now, thanks for all your support, prayers and love!

Elder Hicken

Thanks so much for the jelly beans.  They were very fun! We all sat around and ate them guessing flavors, trying different combos.  It was good.  I felt like a girl, but it was good :)

Thanks for all you do.  I hope Virginia is/was good! Love you guys!