Monkey See Monkey Do

Okay first thank you to all those who sent me emails and little notes on ze bloggg. Super awesome to see:) I am sorry though because this weekly is going to have to be shorterrr sorrryyy. I can only talk about the biggest highlights!!!

Wednesday 10-2

Okay this morning I had such a good personal study; I read about the people of Alma and how they were doing so many things righteously. They were good people but bad things kept happening to them again and again and again. They never forgot Heavenly Father though. As I was reading I learned that God gives us trials and hardships so we can prove our faith. Oh how great will be your gift and blessings in heaven if you can stay faithful in the hardest and most difficult times in your mortal life. Y'all should go read that chapter (Mosiah 23: 21-23) soooo gooood. Okay so today we had a pretty big breakfast but then we went to bishop's house and ate some pshum mun food (pshum mun is the second biggest holiday in all of Cambodia where they celebrate their ancestors.) Anyway it's banana wrapped in rice with some beans then all wrapped in banana leaves or pork wrapped in rice wrapped in banana leaves. They boil it for a couple hours then grill it. It's sooooooooo gooooood anyway I ate so much that morning, my stomach was so stretched which felt really nice because I've been hungry since I've got here. Not really but I haven't been stuffed like that for a long while.

Thursday 10-3

We had the AP's (a leadership position for missionaries) go with us today and it was super nice. Since me and Elder Rabe are whitewashing (we're both new to the area, doesn't happen that often) it was nice to be with someone who has served in the area before and knew all the members. So we did some learning this day!

Friday 10-4

We had zone conference, which is just presenting a bunch of numbers, we also had green mango for lunch and it's Mexican food. Which was pretty alright for Cambodia, but nothing like the restaurants back home.

Saturday 10-5

So our Mission President came and played volleyball with us at 6:15 in the morning! It was awesome. If we made a mistake we had to do push ups and even president did them! Totally tubular, hahaha such a good time.

Sunday 10-6

Since I'm 13 hours ahead of Utah time I was able to watch the evening session of General Conference during my Sunday morning. Wow. Wow. Wow. What a refreshing experience to just sit and listen to the words of our apostles! I just loved it so much. So let me share some of my favorite things from this session.

-the blessings we receive from being a faithful member will always far out weigh the sacrifices we make

-you won't get back what you had when you make mistakes in your life but do the best with what you've got. Amazingly Jesus Christ has the power to turn any trial into a blessing, if you allow Him to!

Also I'm so thankful for my family!!! And guess what that's you! Because we are all in Heavenly Father's family. So know that your brother (me) loves you and is rooting for you! Keep going strong, and if you're struggling then use the tools Christ gives you (The Book of Mormon) AND modern day prophets!!!

Monday 10-7

Today we went to Simpov Mountain⛰it was super cool! There were monkeys 🐒 everywhere and some were aggressive haha. But yeah there was a killing cave up there where the Khmer Rouge would bring other Khmer people and kill them in many different ways. Super sad super sad. It was a super good time though. I bought some bananas cause I was hungry but apparently so were they monkeys. They kept following me and hissing at me, showing their teeth. It was pretty scary, ngl but then I remembered who the alpha species was and showed them what's up haha. So I successfully ate my 11 bananas, they are smaller thought so it's easy to pound down that many. Anyway there was some really cool architecture here as well and I was stunned pretty much the whole time. We then played volleyball afterwards and I got so roasted. Luckily this is the land of big aloe so I just put some on and we all good nowwww. Then we had a family home evening with members and it was my first time eating food that I could barely get down. Lots of fish that was very very fishy. And the fish jerky we had there is made by leaving raw fish to dry in the sun for like a week. Then you eat it. We see it all the time being dried and it's got flies all over it.🙃so luckily I'm a missionary and Heavenly Father blesses me with an added immune system or else I might have woke up dead Tuesday morning hahaha

Anywayyyy that's the extent of my email this weeeeekk. Oh and if you haven't watched General Conference yet, go watch ittt! Just from the couple of hours I got to watch so far I can tell you it's amazingggg!!! It'll bless your life for sureeee.

Okay love you alll

Love Elder Acton