Madeline in Cambodia: Great Week at the MTC

Cumriabsua krom kruasa hauy mitpheak robch khnom!

Hello family and friends! I hope all is well! We had another great week at the mtc. We have so many sweet, mind and heart blowing moments here. I wish I could tell you all of them! Anyways I love the MTC so much but this week we definitely felt the brick wall that is the 7th week. I'm going to be honest the mtc is losing some of its "charm" or whatever you want to call it. I think we're all getting anxious to leave and anxious not to leave. But all in all it was a fantastic week. Let's see..

First, I have a new companion! Her name is Sister Galland. She's very sweet and so cute. She's going to Cambodia but speaking Vietnamese! She had a different companion speaking Thai but she was already way ahead in the language so they moved her up to the Thai Sisters that came in with me. So now Sister Galland is my companion! So Sister Benson, Sister Winters and I had a glorious three days of being a Cambodian trio. But I love my companion. I hope I can make the first weeks in the MTC for her a little easier.

Last Wednesday we did an English Fast. So 100% Khmer. It was both wonderful and horrible. My brain was exhausted by the end of the day. Actually correction my brain is usually tired all of the time. But the language is coming along. We've really started reading the script. It took me a week but I'm almost done with the first chapter in the Book of Mormon! I think our average speed on a good day is 2 minutes per line. Although we're slow and usually we don't know what any of the words mean, it's such a sweet time reading my favorite book in Khmer.

Our lessons this week were.. memorable..

Let's see who's first.. Om Tom! Om Tom is our teacher, Lookruu Garlick who is probably the most precious person alive. He is studying illustration at BYU and right now he's interning for a children's book illustrator. And guess what the book is about? Christmas! So literally he's illustrating a Christmas children's book how precious is that? Anyways so Om Tom is just about, or maybe more precious than Lookruu Garlick. Funny story: During our lesson, Sister Winters asked Om Tom to read a scripture. She said "this verse is about how we can have happy families." So he began reading and because we can't read Khmer or understand what he's saying, he ended up reading some scripture about like the worst possible sin you can commit and all this crazy stuff. We fixed our mistake afterwards but it was pretty pathetic and hilarious. Whoops. Good thing we can laugh at ourselves. Second, Van! I'm sad to say this but we probably had our worst lesson yet with Van. I don't know why it just wasn't clicking. He asked questions we didn't know how to respond and as a companionship we just weren't working together. We walked out of that lesson feeling really down. I guess that's good, because that means we care. So after a horrible lesson with Van and a changed perspective we ended yesterday with by far the best lesson we have ever taught. We taught Neakming Ranni. The Spirit was so strong. We tesified of the Restoration. We testified of Joseph Smith. We testified that he did see Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. This is His church. Oh it was so so good. I think this was the first lesson I truly testified with the Spirit. So although we had rough moments this week, we ended up being okay.

I think what made that lesson with Neakming Ranni so special was the Sunday devotional. President Holland (Elder Holland's son) spoke to us about the restoration and of the life of Joseph Smith. It was quite something let me tell you. My testimony of Joseph Smith has changed from knowing to loving. I am so grateful for the life he lived so that we could have this glorious gospel.

Thank you for all your love and support! This gospel is so so good!

Love always,

Sister Mortell